History Main / SoccerHatingAmericans

* In ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'' episode "The Cornhusker Vortex", where Leonard is trying to learn about American football so he can spend time with Penny, Sheldon is revealed to know all about the sport, and his explanation comes complete with an Ann Coulter-esque (see below) dig at soccer:

Funnily enough, Association Football has been the subject of the US's CyclicNationalFascination on three occasions -- in TheSeventies, when several star players signed the New York Cosmos; in the mid-[[TheNineties '90s]], when the US hosted the World Cup; and in TheNewTens.

* Though toned down from the commercials the show is based on (see Advertising above), American football coach ''Series/TedLasso'' does come to his new Premier League job comically ignorant about soccer; he fails an on-the-spot challenge to explain the offside rule, and when asked if he even knows the names of any players he only comes up with "Ronaldo and that guy who can "[[Film/BendItLikeBeckham bend it like himself]]".

* The "baseball-hating Europeans" inversion is seen in ''Star Trek: The Completely Useless Encyclopedia'', where the British writers diss [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Benjamin Sisko]]'s favorite pastime as the second most boring sport in the world. In defiance of UK stereotypes, however, the sport they think beats it is "bloody cricket". (And, in the same way as some Americans find soccer effeminate, they point out that in Britain, baseball is "the girls' game rounders".)[[note]]The Star Trek timeline, explaining how we begin roughly here, and end up with the Federation, is used by its writers to plot the novelizations. British readers have been bemused by the fact that in around 2200, apparently baseball has supplanted all other sports and there is even a professional league in Britain. The British response to ST authors asserting this has been to point out [[PunctuatedforEmphasis Never. Going. To. Happen. Because]]. UsefulNotes/{{Cricket}}.[[/note]]

** Ironically enough, Canada managed to qualify to the World Cup 2022 in Qatar for first time in three decades, and doing as the first place in CONCACAF qualifying rounds, even over traditional powerhouses as Mexico, the U.S. and the Central American countries.

Again, soccer being seen as ''effeminate'' in the United States isn't helped by the fact that the Americans are typically among the best at ''women's'' association football.

* The "baseball-hating Europeans" inversion is seen in ''Star Trek: The Completely Useless Encyclopedia'', where the British writers diss [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Benjamin Sisko]]'s favourite pastime as the second most boring sport in the world. In defiance of UK stereotypes, however, the sport they think beats it is "bloody cricket". (And, in the same way as some Americans find soccer effeminate, they point out that in Britain, baseball is "the girls' game rounders".)[[note]]The Star Trek timeline, explaining how we begin roughly here, and end up with the Federation, is used by its writers to plot the novelisations. British readers have been bemused by the fact that in around 2200, apparently baseball has supplanted all other sports and there is even a professional league in Britain. The British response to ST authors asserting this has been to point out [[PunctuatedforEmphasis Never. Going. To. Happen. Because]]. UsefulNotes/{{Cricket}}.[[/note]]

* ''Series/EverybodyLovesRaymond'': Debra Barone's father has pretensions of being a well-travelled polyglot. During one Thanksgiving visit, he switches the TV to a ''futbol'' game between two South American sides and waxes lyrical about UsefulNotes/AssociationFootball. This disgusts the all-American Frank Barone, irritates Robert, and, strangely, bemuses the professional sportswriter Ray Barone. Who, given his profession as newspaper sports journalist, should at least be able to recognise a game of football as most of the world knows it.

For a long time, one major exception to this was the United States of America, which only loved the traditional American team sports of UsefulNotes/{{baseball}}, UsefulNotes/{{basketball}}, UsefulNotes/{{ice hockey}}, and [[UsefulNotes/AmericanFootball their own game, which they call football]] ([[UsefulNotes/SeparatedByACommonLanguage a.k.a. gridiron]]). However, since [[TheSeventies the 1970s]], numerous attempts have been made to make the sport more popular in the States, and it has slowly made some major inroads: America has [[UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueSoccer a fairly successful domestic league]]; the ''VideoGame/{{FIFA|Soccer}}'' video game series is incredibly popular; their women's national soccer team has won four [[UsefulNotes/TheWorldCup FIFA Women's World Cups]] (including the two most recent in 2015 and 2019); the men's team has vastly improved from joke team to regularly competing with soccer-crazy Mexico for the position of top dog in the North America confederation (CONCACAF) with several of its members playing for Europe's top clubs; and many children (more girls than boys) grow up playing it. It probably helps that many chunks of the US have big Hispanic populations, who love the sport. However, in spite of all of that, soccer still lags well behind other sports in America in terms of popularity, and it has nowhere near the religious fervor it has in other countries.

[[folder:Films -- Animation]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/FlushedAway'', an American tourist rat (in a cowboy hat) is watching the World Cup final game along with the other rats in the underground city. He asks why there's no helmets, no quarterback, and why no one is picking up the ball. "I tell ya, these Brits don't know the first thing about football."

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]

* In ''Series/CobraKai'', Johnny visits his friend Tommy in the hospital, and upon seeing him watching soccer, says "You're watching ''soccer''? It's worse than I thought."
* ''Series/SportsNight'' has a subversion, where Dan, as a sports reporter, has to talk about association football, but has absolutely no knowledge of the sport. When he challenges Natalie to name one team, Natalie and some extras list half a dozen on the Eastern Coast alone, revealing Dan as the only one in the office who doesn't follow the sport.
* On ''Series/{{Succession}}'', Roman Roy listens in American confusion as a European business contact explains his plans for a soccer team:
-->'''Eduard:''' Agent in Spain, big baller. I buy the club, he loans me nine shit-hot players. We climb the ladder, take the second Champions League space, UEFA goes full European super-league, flip it, walk away.
-->'''Roman:''' I have no idea what you're talking about, but it sounds fucking slick, dude.

* ''Series/WorldsDumbest'' Whenever the show features a clip in which soccer is included -- even briefly -- much of the cast is quick to add their disdain for the sport in their commentary.
-->'''Nick [=DiPaolo=]:''' Soccer's not boring enough when it's played by humans, let's slow it down even more underwater with fish!
* ''Series/EverybodyLovesRaymond'': Debra Barone's father has pretensions of being a well-travelled polyglot. During one Thanksgiving visit, he switches the TV to a ''futbol'' game between two South American sides and waxes lyrical about UsefulNotes/AssociationFootball. This disgusts the all-American Frank Barone, irritates Robert, and, strangely, bemuses the professional sportswriter Ray Barone. Who, given his profession as newspaper sports journalist, should at least be able to recognise a game of football as most of the world knows it.

* Though toned down from the commercials the show is based on (see Advertising above), American football coach Series/TedLasso does come to his new Premier League job comically ignorant about soccer; he fails an on-the-spot challenge to explain the offside rule, and when asked if he even knows the names of any players he only comes up with "Ronaldo and that guy who can "[[Film/BendItLikeBeckham bend it like himself]]".
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ82aMQONvc This clip]] from the early '90s British SketchComedy series ''The Mary Whitehouse Experience'' made fun of how the US had been awarded the upcoming 1994 World Cup despite their version of football being completely different ("a game of rugby between two teams of motorcycle messengers"), before offering their own take on how the Americans would probably go about hosting and covering the event (short version: disgracefully).
* In ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'' episode "The Cornhusker Vortex", where Leonard is trying to learn about American football so he can spend time with Penny, Sheldon is revealed to know all about the sport, and his explanation comes complete with an Ann Coulter-esque (see below) dig at soccer:
--> I grew up in Texas. Football is ubiquitous in Texas. Pro football, college football, high school football, peewee football - in fact, every form of football except the original, European football, which most Texans believe to be a Commie plot.
* ''Series/ThirteenReasonsWhy'': One episode from season 2 has this dialogue:
-->'''Caleb:''' Wanna take your mind off it all and watch Madrid destroy Barcelona Monday night?\\
'''Tony:''' What makes you think I like soccer?\\
'''Caleb:''' You're Mexican and you're gay. How could you not like soccer?
* On ''Series/BlackIsh'', Dre wants his son Jack to play football to learn lessons about life. When Bow suggests Jack could learn the same things from soccer, Dre denies it because "soccer... is ''stupid''."
* When ''Series/TheGrandTour'' visited America, the British hosts got into a fight with the local audience over which sport deserved to be called "football". A series of jump cuts implies the argument turned violent and the crowd beat the presenters up. (The same thing had happened the last time the show visited America, only that time it was over the hosts' claim that the RAF was the best air force in the world.)

* ''Series/CrazyExGirlfriend'': In the song "Sports Analogies," Josh and Nathaniel are singing about every analogy relating to sports, but at the end we get these lines:
--> We're American men, we like all sports except for soccer.\\
'Cause soccer's just a bunch of foreigners running around.
* On ''Series/MarriedWithChildren'', Peg becomes a FagHag to a gay man she goes out dancing with every night. When the gay man's husband tries to warn Al about it, Al himself briefly falls for the husband when the latter says that he enjoys watching sports...except for soccer, which he doesn't really consider to be a "man's game".
* ''Series/BobHeartsAbishola'': Bob asks Goodwin and Kofo to explain soccer to him, but their explanations of the intricacies of the Beautiful Game go over Bob's head. Later, Bob is making chili and the others complain about how long its taking; Bob explains that it takes patience... and that's when he realizes that soccer is just like that. For their part, Goodwin and Kofo try to watch American Football and find it too violent and senseless, until they realize one of the players is Nigerian and suddenly become rabid fans.
* The "Jay Street" episode of ''Series/HowIMetYourFather'' sees the British Charlie try to get his New Yorker friend group to watch a soccer game, but nobody is interested. Prior to the game Valentina and Sophie deride it as boring, while during the game itself they are all more excited about how Sophie and Jesse kissed, but Jesse's ex-girlfriend is back in town.

* This trope is likely the reason why the soccer sub-series of ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'' is called ''VideoGame/MarioStrikers'' instead of ''Mario Soccer''. European releases [[MarketBasedTitle add the word football to the title]] since association football is held in much higher regard outside the U.S.

* [[http://tumblr.amnh.org/post/137813925519/texts-from-titanosaur-part-2 This set of fake texts]] from the American Museum of Natural History imagines the museum's famous ''blue whale'' as a Soccer Hating American, in contrast to a soccer-loving dinosaur from Argentina. (Well, the model was built for and is displayed in an American museum...)
* Website/{{Google}} featured a series of comical logos during the 2014 World Cup. On a day when the US team was playing, [[http://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2014/7/1/5862056/google-made-a-football-futbol-world-cup-doodle-for-usa-belgium the logo showed ]] the big "G" showing up to a soccer game carrying [[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant an American football and wearing a helmet]].
* A common internet joke for soccer fans is to point to American football as a NonIndicativeName, and it should really be "handegg". After all, which sport uses something shaped like a ''ball'' and primarily requires use of your ''foot''? [[spoiler:The name "football" was derived in order to distinguish the family of sports bearing that name from sports played on horseback. "Soccer" comes from Oxford University as a shortened form of "Association Football" to distinguish it from "rugby football" or "rugger." To be classified as a "ball" it doesn't have to be spherical and the eggs of several species are indeed perfectly round. Finally, use of the hands is part of the strategy of soccer, as the keeper uses the hands more often than not when given the opportunity and players MUST use their hands for a throw-in.]]

* Downplayed in ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OWs4VEcbxQ 1st Generation vs. 2nd Generation Mexicans.]]'' The 1st generation Mexican-American guy wants to play football but he brings a soccer ball, which confuses the 2nd generation Mexican-American guy.
* Website/TheOnion: ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xLn-X8YJRg Soccer Officially Announces It Is Gay]]''

* ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitansGo'' has the episode "Kicking a Ball and Pretending to Be Hurt". [[spoiler:It's shown that people only like soccer because they are mind-controlled.]]

* Garrison Keillor on the drawbacks of living in Europe:

* [[http://tumblr.amnh.org/post/137813925519/texts-from-titanosaur-part-2 This set of fake texts]] from the American Museum of Natural History imagines the museum's famous ''[[UpToEleven blue whale]]'' as a Soccer Hating American, in contrast to a soccer-loving dinosaur from Argentina. (Well, the model was built for and is displayed in an American museum...)

* Back in 2013 and 2014, NBC promoted their Premier League coverage with [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KeG_i8CWE8 Ted Lasso,]] a fictional American football coach played by Creator/Jason Sudeikis picked to manage Tottenham Hotspur in England. The character would later be adapted into an Creator/AppleTVPlus series of the same name (see Live-Action TV for details).

* Most of the jokes in the [[WebVideo/HonestTrailers Honest Game Trailer]] for the FIFA video game series are about how the narrator finds soccer incomprehensible and boring. He ends it by saying that he probably doesn't understand because he's an American.

Contrast RugbyIsSlaughter, where American football is seen as the wimpy option.

* Back in 2013 and 2014, NBC promoted their Premier League coverage with [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KeG_i8CWE8 Ted Lasso]], a fictional American football coach played by Creator/Jason Sudeikis picked to manage Tottenham Hotspur in England. The character would later be adapted into an Creator/AppleTVPlus series of the same name (see Live-Action TV for details).

* Downplayed in ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OWs4VEcbxQ 1st Generation vs. 2nd Generation Mexicans]]''. The 1st generation Mexican-American guy wants to play football but he brings a soccer ball, which confuses the 2nd generation Mexican-American guy.

-->-- '''Josh and Nathaniel''', ''Series/CrazyExGirlfriend'': "[[https://youtu.be/om80Y_V3fhw Sports Analogies]]"

The attempts to grow the sport in America have also met widespread resistance in some circles. Many Americans just plain don't like the sport -- considering it boring. And this is reflected in the media, where American characters will often go out of their way to bash the sport for all of the above (as well as the players' [[TheatricsOfPain propensity for faking injuries]]). Another problem with soccer in American eyes are the low scores. Baseball and hockey are "low scoring" if they end 3-1. In American Football, a game that does not go into double digits is considered low scoring, and in basketball, triple-digit games are a common occurrence. In soccer, the tendency over the last decades has been towards ''lower'' scores. The last thing that irks Americans about soccer (and is frequently mentioned in anti-soccer rants) is its propensity for ties. While US sports fans tolerate the occasional tie in hockey and football, they greatly prefer games where there's a clear winner, and baseball and basketball will go into overtime until there ''is'' a clear winner, however long that takes.

-->'''Caleb:''' Wanna take your mind off it all and watch Madrid destroy Barcelona Monday night?
-->'''Tony:''' What makes you think I like soccer?
-->'''Caleb:''' You're Mexican and you're gay. How could you not like soccer?

--> The score's been zero-zero for, like, 40 minutes! This shit is boring!
--> It's only the most popular sport in the world, but whatever.
--> It's not a sport. It's running.

--> We're American men, we like all sports except for soccer.
--> 'Cause soccer's just a bunch of foreigners running around.

Finally, there's also the issue of soccer being seen as effeminate by many Americans. Compared to sports like hockey, baseball or football, where the athletes often hit the balls or pucks (and occasionally each other) with large blunt instruments and/or regularly ram into each other, that sort of contact violence is comparatively lacking in soccer. There's also the [[TheatricsOfPain stereotype of soccer players "diving"]] [[MinorInjuryOverreaction to exaggerate their injuries,]] which makes them look bad when the OnlyAFleshWound mentality is more admired. The fact that America's women's teams are so much more successful in international competition than their male counterparts and the sport's previously-mentioned popularity among teenage girls don't help either. Hence soccer in the United States falls victim to the GirlShowGhetto. At best, soccer is seen as acceptable for young boys, but not for older male teens or men.

* On ''Series/ModernFamily'', Gloria is rooting for Colombia at a sports bar and gets in a fight with a Dutch fan, prompting Jay to come in and make peace.
-->'''Jay:''' Why don't you sit down, I send you over a beer, and my wife and I watch from over there. That way, everybody enjoys the game. Except me, because I prefer a game where something happens.
** He later complained that the game ended tied at one goal each, one of which was an own goal.

* Or alternatively Soccer Hating Filipinos. While the rest of Southeast Asia is mad with soccer, the Philippines a former US colony prefers basketball instead (or volleyball for women's sport) Prior to 2010, which saw a renaissance of the sport in the country due to regional success of their men's national team who went on to qualify for their very first Asian Cup by the end of the decade. The Philippines was largely able to do this by recruiting players abroad with Filipino heritage where there is a more credible soccer grassroots program. Soccer or more known as just football in that part of the world is just viewed as a sport for the elite outside the local football mecca in the Visayas where this trope does not apply. Common complaints of skeptics also apply in the Philippines, such as the low scoreline of football matches in contrast to basketball games. Some haters even question that the fans of the game are only in it for the handsome players and pejoratively suggests that male fans are gay and generalize fans irregardless of gender don't care for the sports at all.

Finally, there's also the issue of soccer being seen as effeminate by many Americans. Compared to sports like hockey, baseball or football, where the athletes often hit the balls or pucks (and occasionally each other) with large blunt instruments and/or regularly ram into each other, that sort of contact violence is comparatively lacking in soccer. There's also the stereotype of soccer players "diving" to exaggerate their injuries, which makes them look bad when the OnlyAFleshWound mentality is more admired. The fact that America's women's teams are so much more successful in international competition than their male counterparts and the sport's previously-mentioned popularity among teenage girls don't help either. Hence soccer in the United States falls victim to the GirlShowGhetto. At best, soccer is seen as acceptable for young boys, but not for older male teens or men.

* ''Series/TedLasso: Unlike the original advertisements (see Advertising for details), the trope is downplayed as the eponymous character is more ignorant than hateful of soccer and he takes on the role of team manager with great enthusiasm.

* Despite this trope, many soccer fans, especially European ones, agree the role the U.S. played regarding the corruption cases with which FIFA was involved was instrumental, even if some of them also agree the only reason the Americans became involved in the whole deal was to find a way to prevent Russia from hosting the 2018 World Cup -- something they not only failed at by a mile, but also, ironically enough, the American soccer team failed to qualify to the tournament, for the amusement of many. On the other hand, [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment many people are still arguing]] if the inclusion of the VAR (Video-Assisted Replay), a feature normally included in American sports like American football, and never considered for use in soccer for [[ValuesDissonance cultural reasons,]] is still considered a good idea, due to the very insistence of the American sponsors of including it.

* In ''Series/CobraKai'', Johnny visits a friend in the hospital, and upon seeing him watching soccer, says "You're watching ''soccer''? It's worse than I thought."