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Interesting discussion once again. Before I moved to Finland nearly 5 years ago, I found myself bored to tears by soccer. My favourite sports were: Basketball, Baseball, and Baseball in exactly that order. Hockey never interested me and never does.
Though we have basketball here it's at such a low level that I never cared to watch it. Used to pay ridicuous sums of money to watch NBA games. For lack of anything better to do I tried to learn something about soccer, first by kicking a ball around and then by learning the rules and watching the games. I was immediately hooked. I think many Americans don't understand the skill level of the top players, as we don't play often or at all. I think the rules confuse us, and I think as a mainly defensive game it is not in our culture. Pretty much the same as a pitchers duel in Baseball. It may be the best sort of game in the purest sense, but many people get tired of watching it. We want instant action, hence Basketball increasing in popularity since the 80's.
Well the skill level seems to have declined in Basketball over the last few years (Johnny can't shoot), and though I get sentimental about baseball (saw a great Yankee Met game while visiting NYC), it has gotten even slower than I remember (a true summer sport). I think more people would be into soccer if they had players they could identify with. I LOVE Real Madrid because they seem to have picked up all the best players in the world who I learned about from watching highlight reels. I suppose even now in th US you don't have so much of an opportunity to watch those...
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