We take the NFL team put them in futbol uniforms and they do their best at soccer to see who is better at the sport best 3 out of 5. Then we take the soccer team put them in football (NFL) gear and play the best the states got in the NFL? That way we can finally put to rest which is the better sport. Plus this would attract a shitload of fans of each sport and each team only gets 1 month to train. Whoever comes out best the the US will concede soccer is the hardest and best sport. If the soccer team win then it will truley show which is real football

  • wjrii@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    9 days ago

    The NFL team would be miserable and probably have soft-tissue injuries, and eventually would not be able to stop the soccer players from navigating around them like cones, assuming they ever could. Assuming the soccer players could learn the byzantine rulebook in a reasonable timeframe, they would be instantly broken into little pieces and do nothing of note. No one would enjoy either contest, and we would learn nothing.

    As for why they didn’t catch on, first I’m not so sure they didn’t, as tennis in particular has always had its place in the American culture, though its association with the “country club” class may have limited its ceiling. American soccer has its issues, and it is not pressuring the “traditional” American team sports, but attendances are healthy, sponsorships are good, and quality of play is decent, with a starting 11 being roughly comparable to the bottom half of the English second division. Roster rules would mean an MLS club would quickly get ground into dirt in that English second division, but matchday 1 might be pretty competitive. Taking your question more generously, though, competition from baseball, followed by organizational disarray, followed by competition from college gridiron football, followed by competition from professional gridiron football, accompanied by the “not invented here” syndrome, left it seen as a sport for immigrants and then as a safe yet cheap option for suburban children. Meanwhile ice hockey and basketball were also carving out their markets.

    Televised World Cups and Pele started to erode that some, but more organizational disarray left the country without a proper professional league from 1984 until 1995, and when it was restarted it was intentionally done in a manner to control costs and favor management, which it ironically was able to do because it could always argue the players could seek employment in other countries.

    • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
      2·
      9 days ago

      Roster rules would mean an MLS club would quickly get ground into dirt in that English second division, but matchday 1 might be pretty competitive.

      Interesting, what are those roster rules?

      • wjrii@lemmy.world
        3·
        9 days ago

        There are so many. Some highlights though:

        • There’s a salary cap of $6.5M, which is actually more “League One” than Championship, but there are loopholes to exploit (Beckham rule and its offspring most prominent among them), and MLS is full of Americans and Western Hemisphere players who are good but would never get UK work permits so their wages are a bit depressed compared to second and third tier British players.
        • Maximum senior roster of 30 players, of which 10 are (nominally) supposed to be on the equivalent of 1800 pounds/week. Exceptions here as well, but in broad strokes the bottom of the roster is WAAAY cheaper than even the middle.
        • Several of them are supposed to be 24 or younger, further limiting the pool.
        • There is an internal market to trade them around, but teams can only have an average of 8 non-domestic players. Rules slightly vary for the US teams versus Canadian.
        • The league is legally one business, and holds all contracts. The “owners” are investors in the league who have a contractual agreement to manage a team. It happens much less often than it used to, but you occasionally see things that appear to be league office meddling in player movement.