All joking aside, I honestly must have by chance never seen a good or even decent game.
Well that could be part of it, but it's probably more a lack of familiarity which is always the greatest obstacle to anyone enjoying a sport. I at least appreciate that you're not insistent on '99% of the world loves a boring sport!' like so many.
- Community. When your friends and family are into a sport, it can be infectious. When your friends and family don't care for a sport, and even hold contempt for it, that's infectious too. It's actually part of the American heritage to hate on soccer and make it the butt of jokes.
- Tactics/strategy. I could link anyone interested to summaries of all 32 teams that lays out the tactics employed by each one. I've seen that to some Canadian/Americans the movement of the ball or of players seems straight-forward and purposeless and that's because they don't appreciate what's actually happening. To people who watch hockey casually/infrequently, all they see is the puck moving up and down the ice. They don't appreciate the overall battle of wits. Same thing.
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What they're doing with their feet. Anyone who's played soccer regularly as an adult (which, again, is most of the world) understands the complexity of using your feet to control a ball. The skill, athleticism, fitness, and intelligence required... while using the feet that you're also using to run. This means that there's high skill on display constantly, especially in the World Cup. The impression I get, though, is that many people unfamiliar with soccer experience dribbling, passing and shooting as if they might as well be using their hands. But it's much, much more complex.
Don't get me wrong. I don't expect many people to find Nigeria vs Iran very interesting. Just like none of us are all that entertained by New Jersey vs Edmonton.
/rant
