American soccer fans have heard it forever. “Soccer isn’t physical enough.” “Real athletes play football.” “Soccer is just a bunch of grass fairies running around kicking a ball.” “If I wanted to watch a game where nobody scores, I’d just watch literally any Big Ten football game.”
Well, just in time for the off-season, I’m here to make the case that the English Premier League and soccer in general, should not only be the next sport you take interest in, but it will become one of your favorite parts of the weekend.
Flow of the Game
One of the main complaints I hear is that soccer is “boring” and the game doesn’t move fast enough for their preference. These complaints also come from people that will happily sit and watch a baseball game for 3-4 hours that ends in a 1-0 pitchers’ duel. Of the many beauties of two 45-minute, continuously running halves, the most noticeable is the constant flow of play. No media timeouts, no Cialis commercials in between quarters, no “now-up-to-the-booth-to-talk-to-Jesse-Palmer-for-no-damn-reason.”
The game is allowed to go through it’s ebbs and flows. Patient, tactical buildup like a great Vivaldi concerto, met with physical, unrelenting defensive pressure. Precise passing, mesmerizing dribbling skills, and bulldoggish physicality, climaxing with one of the great emotional outlets in the sports world: a stunning goal, orchestrated by a few of the world’s finest athletes.
Blue Bloods and Underdogs
American sports are littered with great rivalries, David and Goliath stories, and rabid fan bases. The English Premier League (also commonly referred to as the EPL) is no different. Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Tottenham Hotspur are considered the favorites to do well in the league nearly every year. They’re the largest, richest, and most well-known clubs in the Premier League. They sign the highest profile, most expensive and talented players in the world. Those clubs have enormous fan bases spanning the globe and participate in some of the most intense rivalries in sports. Manchester United-Liverpool and Chelsea-Arsenal feature thrilling matches and a genuine detestation between each fan base that dates back a nearly century or more.
Yet, those six teams very rarely make up the final top six at the end of the season. Smaller clubs like Bournemouth, Southampton, Burnley, and Crystal Palace have enjoyed plenty of success in the Premier League competing against the big English clubs, including a miracle title run from Leicester City last season to capture the league crown. The underdogs are easy to cheer for, and are often competitive with the larger clubs.
NO TANKING
One of the most annoying new developments in American sports, especially the NBA, is the idea of intentionally losing to gain a better pick in the next draft once the season has been determined to be lost. In the Premier League, such an idea would be heresy and lead to very real and damaging consequences. At the end of the season, the bottom 3 teams in the Premier League are relegated down to the English Championship Division (similar to the FCS in college football), while the top 3 teams of the Championship Division are promoted up to the Premier League to compete against the big guns.
Teams near the bottom of the standings are forced to be competitive every single game, lest they be relegated and lose out on tens of millions of dollars in television revenue and an entire season’s worth of exposure to the world soccer community. The Premier League does not have a salary cap (though a recent policy change now forces teams to balance the books on player signings over a three-year period to help level the playing field a bit), so every extra dollar a club earns can go towards signing players to help their team improve. Imagine the Los Angeles Lakers being sent down to the NBA D-League because they finished last in the Western Conference.
Fandom
Being a supporter of a Premier League team can be challenging, but very rewarding. First, the matches are obviously played in England so actually seeing your team in person requires a trip to Europe, unless you’re a fan of a large club like Chelsea, Manchester United, Real Madrid, or Barcelona, which make regular stops in the United States during their summer preseason tours.
Fortunately, you’ll rarely ever have to miss watching a game due the time difference. Games usually start at 7 AM, 9 AM, and 11 AM Central time on either NBC or NBC Sports Network on both Saturday and Sunday, with the higher profile games playing later in the morning. Matches rarely, if ever, overlap with American sporting events and virtually never run longer than 2 hours.
American soccer fans, though more common in recent years due to solid World Cup performances by the U.S. National Team in 2010 and 2014, are still uncommon and love talking about the game with other fans. We virtually never grow tired of talking about it since we don’t get to very often.
Oh, soccer doesn’t have “moments” like buzzer beaters, Hail Marys, or walk-off home runs? Take a gander at this:
The English Premier League has something for every kind of sports fan. Legendary teams, upsets, rivalries, big moments, world class players and managers, and NO COMMERCIALS. Take a flyer and check it out for yourself sometime.