To me this sounds like you haven't really taken the time to understand how any sport works. Usually there's a lot more going on than "kicking a ball around", and these subtleties of planning and strategy are really what make them fun.
But at the end of the day, it really is just kicking a ball into a net.
The military has planning and strategy too, but there the goal is replacing a government, or saving lives, or changing a society (or less noble causes) -- things that can change millions of people's lives in huge ways. So I can get into military planning and strategy, for example.
But if it's just to kick a ball into a net... after the game, and after the world cup, I find myself asking, "why do I even care?"
Saying that sports is just "kicking a ball around" is like saying software development is just "banging away on keyboards", in that it is easy to dismiss something as trivial when you choose to ignore a lot of details.