I hate that has been your experience with youth football. When my boys played, we had training for coaches meant to teach and be passed on to the kids.

3 - 8 y.o. soccer regardless of boys, girls, or co-ed is like watching grass grow in my humble opinion.

America's youth started going to hell when soccer was normalized. Pansy-fication of America started there. Just look at Europe-full of soccer, full of pansies.

The boring soccer I was talking about was little kid soccer. High School and club soccer can be better to watch. Our youngest granddaughter at 16 was national level. Traveled to Europe to play, and made goals in Germany and Holland. And then she just quit playing. Too intense at that level, I think. Even at that level soccer is no fun to watch - for me anyway.

Being totally bored, I took a lot of action shots with my big Canon. Got good photos of kids and grandkids. She’s the one about to put foot to ball.

Soccer...boring as hell to me.

The only World Cup we ever watched was when Ireland was still in it. The wife is red headed and mostly Irish. I went to Victoria Secrets and got her a complete new set of fancy undies in green, for the game watching. It was a good World Cup…

for watching, it would have to be youth baseball / softball for me. watching paint dry and even boring for the players with a bunch sitting in the dugout waiting, players on the field just standing around waiting, pitcher, batter, catcher are the only ones that have much action frequently ... parents screaming and so laser focused on their little future pro ...

I knew nothing about soccer until a friend talked me into helping him coach when our kids were 3-4 year old, herd ball, picking up rocks or flowers ... once I learned more about the game, I found it really intriguing regarding how to best coach and training the players as they progressed into actually have somewhat of a vision on how to play, use the field, etc. I knew I had to improve as well to better coach them as they were all pretty quick to pick most things up, a lot quicker than me. After about 18 years coaching from U-6 thru U-18 division 1 club, I still enjoy watching the skills and tactics of the higher levels of soccer ... but kinda painful to watch the grandkids in U7 & U9 but they are coming along.

to me any Under 8 sports of any fashion is merely a social event to get introduced to the basics of whatever sport it is. There will be standouts even in the younger groups but that could quickly fade as others start catching on.

Parents are the biggest a-holes that ruin a lot of youth sports ... at least for me, drives me nuts.

For those not old enough to remember soccer was the first sport around here that gave participation awards, trophies, to all that played at the end of the season. The first year it was offer here me and another Dad who coached our team tried to not give them out but the parents raised hell with us and so they were given out. Our team was terrible because when we chose the players they were the ones that no other coaches wanted. We never worried about winning at that young age and just let them just have fun kicking the ball around. We were so bad that our reward was an extra juice box for the kid that was the dirtiest at the end of the game and most of the time it was the goalie. We would laugh because when the ball was at the opposite end of the field you could look and the goalie would be rolling on the ground to get dirty. Every kid on the team wanted to be the goalie just to get the juice box at the end of the game. We never won a game but they sure had fun and got some exercise.

I truly believe that soccer is the reason we have participation awards for everything nowadays and is a sport for those who are not tough enough mentality or good enough physically to play in other sports.

Not sure I agree with the baseball comments . This weekend we had three home runs (one was a grand slam) and a no hitter until the next to last batter of the game. Granted, it’s not rec league where everyone gets to play, it’s a highly competitive team playing other good teams. Occasionally there is a crazy parent but it’s not as often as some may think. For the most part parents/coaches are pretty chill as the expectations for level of play are already there. Actually, the worst interaction I’ve seen were rec league parents.

In our area, soccer came onto the scene in the late 90’s and your correct, was comprised of kids not tough enough or talented enough for baseball or football.

I played 1 season in soccer and I dominated, but it wasn’t challenging so I didn’t go back. It was like a wolf being in a pen full of poodles.


Mom’s are the reason we have participation trophies. Mom’s on the sports fields will portray some of the biggest double standards in existence.

When moms started being allowed in the dugout or on the sidelines in any role other than a spectator is when things started to tank