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Originally Posted by Koni
In my country the problem is that most people that are good in sports have trained all their life, so they don't have very good education. And that influence their behavior. It's not always valid, but it's somehow true. I know that in your country is different, because you have college sport, so those people still go to college. In We do have sports university, but the good players are not there. This school is more for the ones that might become later coaches.
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I get what you're saying. Soccer is way different in the US. It's actually considered a middle to upper class sport. You get your education and you play soccer. You hit it with college. One of my niece's teammates (an African American sweet girl) can barely afford to stay on the traveling team because of the expensive. She also misses a lot of practices and the coaches are getting fed up. It is expensive to play soccer here. I should know. I played it all my life and I know how much money my parents forked out. I made every top team I tried out for so the expense was that much more because we traveled all around the country playing in top tournaments.
So, here, soccer is considered a "yuppie" sport almost. That actually kind of bothers me because it means lower income families cannot afford to have their children play this sport.
It is very different in Europe and that is what you're driving at. The France native I know has explained this before too. It does seem like many players who ended up playing professionally are not super educated and many do come from far from perfect homes. It is an entirely different situation than what we see here in the US. Our national coach, though, said this is a shot at the US. He doesn't like how soccer here is an "educated, yuppie" sport. He wants the diversity, he wants those lower economic status kids to get a chance to play.
I guess as a result you really do have different types of atmospheres and tones when you watch matches and how the players act, how the fans behave. You are what you surround yourself with.
But like
Betty mentioned with hockey here... the violence on the ice is there big time but then again that IS ice hockey too. Hockey IS a violent sport. You can check, you can hit legally. Some players take it too far for sure which is why there are suspensions and all oft that. However, the fans don't really respond as a result. You still don't see fans going crazy just because they saw a fight on the ice. They don't turn and start fighting with others physically or anything like that. This sport out of any in the US/Canada is the most violent sport yet fans don't respond to what they see with the players on the ice either. Not really. There are a few isolated incidents but nothing consistent so I don't know...