Reasons Why Soccer is Better than Football

Known as both soccer and football, soccer is an amazing, international sport that's loved by millions of adoring fans. As unique as this sport is, it comes with colorful and friendly fans, skillful players, and fair games that make it difficult not to love. Not to mention that soccer is an exciting game to watch both on the television and live in a giant stadium.

However, there is one sport that it is constantly being compared to, and it's football. Even though soccer is also called "football," fans of the American sport are always comparing football to soccer (for some reason). While the style, rules, and even fans are diverse in both sports, fans from both are always getting heated over which sport is better. But you and I both know that soccer is better than football. Why? Allow me to clearly show you the reasons.

Soccer is way more popular than football.

Soccer is so much more popular than football, by far. According to the 2006 FIFA Big Count, there were about 265 million soccer players in the entire world and 270 million if you include referees and match officials. This goes to show how involved people are in soccer. Either as a player or taught to become a referee, soccer is loved and enjoyed by so many individuals.

Since football is only played in America, the amount of football players can't top the amount of soccer players there is. Not many people from outside of the country like football, either. It's mainly a sport dominated by Americans.

Soccer equipment is less expensive than football equipment.

Have you seen the amount of gear football players are wearing in every single game? It's as though they're going into battle every time and need a ton of gear to get them prepared. And that gear isn't cheap either. They're buying gear in order to protect themselves from getting injured by the opposing team.

Unlike football, soccer doesn't need all that heavy-duty equipment in order to play. The only soccer equipment they need are cleats, a few shinguards, a jersey, and shorts. That's basically it, and they're so much cheaper than the crazy gear football players are always wearing, which is another reason why soccer is better than football. Football players are constantly under hefty gear when playing in a game while soccer players can run free in the lightest and minimum amount of gear for all of their games.

It's pretty easy to learn how to play soccer.

Soccer doesn't require you to learn strategies and plans in order to play. Sure, you can learn how to be skillful with the soccer ball, but that isn't required when playing in a game. You only need to learn the basic rules of soccer with a few regulations. Overall, it's a straightforward sport.

In football, you'd have to follow set plays and a lot of regulations. Football is a complex sport compared to soccer and you can cause a lot more mistakes in football than soccer.

Everyone plays soccer, only America plays football.

I've mentioned this before, but this is certainly one of the main reasons why soccer is better than football. Everyone plays soccer! Across the entire globe, about 200 countries are heavily involved in the sport! Countries like Africa, Turkey, Argentina, Brazil, Japan, Italy, America itself, and so many more play it. It's truly a united sport that's loved by nearly everyone across the globe.

As for football, only America is heavily involved in it along with watching the games live and on television. In fact, many countries mock the American sport, because it's taken the name "football," which is still used to refer to soccer in the majority of countries.

You don't need physical strength to play soccer.

Ever wanted to play football in high school, but the coach literally yelled at you in the face saying that you're too "skinny" or "not strong enough" to qualify? That's because in order to play football, you basically need physical strength to tackle down players from the opposing team. What a great sport that unites all diverse players, right?

For soccer, you really don't need physical strength, because you're not pushing down anyone. Sure, possessing physical strength is a plus in soccer, but all you need is knowledge of the game and speed!

Soccer players don't get injured as much as football players.

Among the reasons why soccer is better than football, there are so many injuries that occur to football players. I mean so many injuries compared to soccer. Since football is a sport of pure strength, this leads to literally tackling each other to the ground and some even end up in the hospital for severe injuries and broken limbs. I dare you to tell me that this is a safe sport.

Yes, I won't deny it, soccer players do get injured on the field, but not as much and often as football players. They'll twist an ankle, get a bad bruise from falling, or perhaps pop out their kneecap, but it's way better than getting a concussion from having your head bounce off the ground after being tackled. Football players aim to tackle the player with the ball while soccer players simply want to capture the ball from the player through techniques and skills.

The goals are better to watch in soccer than in football.

In soccer, once a player scores a goal, the entire crowd immediately go nuts over that one goal. And they'll continue to scream in joy for a few minutes. Jumping up and down and shaking the person beside them, soccer fans will literally go crazy if their all-time favorite team scores one goal.

Sure, football fans go crazy over a touchdown, too, but they're not as passionate about it as soccer fans. Plus, the screaming doesn't last as long, either. The soccer commentators are clearly more into the game than football commentators—you can easily tell when a soccer player shoots a goal and the commentator is screaming "goal" for a couple of minutes in one breath.

Height doesn't matter in soccer, either.

Among the reasons why soccer is better than football, just like physical strength, soccer players don't need a precise height, either. For football, you can't be short, because you'll literally be crushed under the giant players. You'd have to be about six foot or taller to be qualified to play football.

In soccer, you can actually be 5'6" and become an amazing player. In fact, widely popular Argentine soccer player Lionel Messi is 5'7" and he's one of the best soccer players ever. Even retired Argentine soccer player Diego Maradona is 5'5"! This goes to show that height really doesn't matter in soccer, but it unfortunately does in football.

There's constant pausing in football, not in soccer.

During a football game, they'll pause the game for every... single... tackle. I get it, that's how the game is played, but it's sure annoying to watch. Once they pick back up after a tackle, a few seconds later, a tackle will occur and they pause the game once more. Many people can agree with me on how frustrating that is.

Soccer is more of a smooth game where they don't pause as frequently. Since there's no tackling, they play everything in one shot until a player scores a goal, causes a foul, or gets the ball out. Soccer will always have you at the edge of your seat, because everything happens at one time. Football sometimes doesn't even give the game a minute to fully play before a player tackles another and completely pause the game again.

Soccer is an Olympic sport.

Finally of the reasons why soccer is better than football, is because soccer is an Olympic sport unlike football. It's actually been an Olympic sport for more than a century! And soccer will continue to be featured in many more Olympics in the future.

Even though football was in the 1932 Summer Olympics, it still isn't considered to be an official Olympic sport according to the International Olympic Committee. But now, soccer won't be a male-only sport in the Olympics anymore, but female as well!