European interest in soccer poll

[bluedabadi]

Just wondering about this... personally I have very little interest these days. I've also heard about declining interest in Italy due to match fixing scandals etc.. in the UK due to overpricing...
What do you think?

[Mika]

I've lost pretty much all interest in soccer over the last few years, I was a season ticket holder for 12 years with one club and gratefully exchanged that a couple of seasons ago for a Leinster one the overall excitement and entertainment has gone from the sport and I think people have just become saturated by the coverage it gets (still amazes me that in during a HEC weekend the english premiership scores take precedence over the home provinces results on radio news??)

[eternally_optimistic]

My footballing interest these days is mostly in playing 5 a'side football with friends.I have turned off the professional game bigtime over the last number of years.There is too much ridiculous jargon and overemphasis on tactics & formations.Added to that alot of the players are just athletes not footballers,ie physical strength and fitness is seen as more important than having an actual ability to play football ! Sagna at Arsenal is one such player that springs to mind. I prefer watching archive games from the 90s and before.

[ronk]

It's hard to extrapolate. The situation is different in Ireland because we've been exporting our players and our interest in soccer.

Rugby has combined success on the international stage with, at the same time, being international competition that we can go and see, that we can feel connected to.

Why be a Manchester United fan who's never been to Manchester and knows (and cares) nothing about the city when you can be a Munster fan (who's almost never been to Limerick or Cork).

[dipper]

It's hard to extrapolate. The situation is different in Ireland because we've been exporting our players and our interest in soccer.

Rugby has combined success on the international stage with, at the same time, being international competition that we can go and see, that we can feel connected to.

Why be a Manchester United fan who's never been to Manchester and knows (and cares) nothing about the city when you can be a Munster fan (who's almost never been to Limerick or Cork).

I grew up playing and watching and soccer all the time and was a big fan of Man United (despite having never visited Manchester) but I've completely lost interest. I only found out that United beat City today when I went on facebook a while ago and saw some of my friends posts. I do go to the home international games but it's more out of national pride than anything else. I think moving to Dublin a few years ago and getting to see so much top class rugby is probably the reason for it. Top class professional sport on my doorstep! Oh and I finally visited Manchester for the first time en route to the Heineken Cup final last May

[brian_c]

In fairness a rugby fan site isn't the best place to gauge interest in soccer. Personally I never had any interest in it, rugby was my introduction to pro-sports, but amongst my non-Leinster season ticket friends rugby is just an interest, soccer is an obsession. I think soccer reached saturation point over the past few years and is just regressing to the mean at the moment, but when I go to places like Norway soccer is the be all and end all, no other sport comes close. Rugby barely made the human interest section of the Sunday paper when Magnus Lund started for England there.

[orfeo]

I doubt if there is any decline , just watch, world cup coming up , wall to wall soccer and I will watch every minute of it . I would guess that outside the olympics the biggest sporting events would be 1- fifa world cup. 2 Uefa Euros .3 African Cup of nations. 4 Rugby world cup 5 Cricket world cup. 6 Copa America

the borefest that most of the Premiership can be blinds us to best ''the beautiful game'' offers us elsewhere.