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Comment by radiator | Hacker News Reader

I find it good that US is not better at soccer. Soccer or football has gained too much importance in Europe and South America. We have seen it encourage unprecedented levels of gambling, insane amount of efforts from the youth chasing the dream of professional football, fan violence inside and outside the stadiums, corruption where magnate owners of sports clubs use their popularity to influence politics, and more.

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The United States experiences the same sort of issues, just with different sports.

Lol it’s the same with the sports in America. People love gambling on sports no matter what country they live in.

What you describe is pretty much true for every single american sport too

>unprecedented levels of gambling

Welcome to FanDuel and DraftKings

>insane amount of efforts from the youth chasing the dream of professional football

Look at college sports, it's actually even more insane than anything else in Europe

>corruption where magnate owners of sports clubs use their popularity to influence politics

Look at how public money spent by universities on sports (especially in the South) or how pro teams' funded by local taxes. And when the rich doesn't get a deal they just move the team away. The Minneapolis Lakers moved to Los Angeles where there are no lakes. The Oilers moved to Tennessee where there is no oil. The Jazz moved to Salt Lake City where they don't allow music.

>fan violence inside and outside the stadiums

This is the only thing you might be right about it... but hey it's US, land of the free guns you don't need fan violence for that

Philadelphia Eagles and Detroit Lions fans have something to say about fan violence.

OK I 've never been to the US, so I believe you. Then the problems are more widespread: not only soccer, but professional sports in general are harmful in my opinion.

I really have to disagree with you there. Football's damage to society, which I no doubt does exist, much less than the damage due to class divide and capitalism as a whole.

Football in England is sometimes demonized by the media, but specifically footballers. Footballers have historically been the punching bag of the low brow media. "Rio Ferdinand on 150k a week does something bad". "Wayne Rooney caught in latest scandal, 200k a week ace in shambles" etc etc. They love to mention how much they earn, but they never talk about how football is one of the very remaining professions which are purely meritocratic. The few professions where talent is enough and offers social mobility. Most footballers are working class and yet they're blamed, and football is blamed too.

But what's so bad about something that brings people together to bond over a game? Hooligan violence isn't really a thing anymore. Gambling is a separate issue. It's not football's fault that people like to gamble. The politicians could make it illegal.

I do think the professional players earn too much, including from gambling. Gambling and football go hand-in-hand. More than half the ads during the game advertise betting. This is obviously a huge part of their business. Politicians could not make it illegal, this is the whole point, because football has control over them.

Football really doesn't have control over politicians. There are only 20 premier league teams and most of them aren't very influential, only a few big clubs. In terms of scale they are dwarfed by the financial services industry in the UK. Arm for example could buy all of the premier league teams (with their own equity, not cash on hand).

Everything you said (gambling, fan violence, billionaires who get money from cash strapped cities) applies to the US. If you substitute soccer with NFL, MLB, and NBA the statement stands.

I would say you Americans are more into gambling while in Europe fan violence is a bigger topic. Like just last week, after PSG won the Champions League title, there were cars burning in Paris:

https://apnews.com/article/psg-arsenal-paris-budapest-champi...

Honestly this is why i stopped playing and watching any soccer. Every match the city would turn into a fortress and still there would be regular riots, the game seemed to have taken second seat and its more about whats going on around it. Even when games got cancelled because of violence in the stadiums, the ‘game’ would continue outside (violence). So tiring, boring, destructive, terrible.

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