football is a GREAT sport and so loved because it is almost a perfect sport as it SCALES perfectly. It is:
- very economically accessible : a couple of trash cans and a ball) but if you need a ton of money (short and long term) to have a great team (development schools, scouting, training grounds, team-building, etc)
- physically accessible : as long as you are fit any type of body can contribute : small and skilled, tall and slow but good tactically, etc ... any fit bodies with sufficient knowledge and skill are good enough, tactics can also be tailor made for body types ... you just need a right combination, you don't need 6'6+ roid addicts.
- tactically and rules accessible : You don't need much skill to get a 5v5 court game but you need extraordinary individual skill to do what suarez does on the offside trap, extraordinary tactical skill to do what xavi does, and extraordinary skill to plan an entire game as a coach with almost no control after it started (in comparison to basketball, american football, etc). You also need to be a master at fouling to avoid getting sent off (pepe is an artist tbh

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- culturally accessible : long ball english game, tiki-taka, nigball, continental, italian, iceland-style : there are many styles of play suited for different types of peoples, body types and cultures.
- because the game is so varied tactically and culturally you get counter strategies for every team, only rarely are there truly dominant teams (2002 brasil - stacked beyond god tbh). Italian style usually counters german style, chilean style counters argie style, french style counter spanish style, german style counter argie style and so on ... that's why you get REAL grudge matches.
- goals mean something : it's always do or die, you don't get many scoring chances. It's like life, you don't get what you want all the time, when you got the chance you got to man up and take/exploit it. DAF86's analogy is a good one tbh
An accessible easy to learn hard to master game. It's no wonder EVERY country loves it except for the mentally impaired people who think sport = athleticism only. Sport is like life sons, you adapt to win, it doesn't matter how you win (athleticism, smarts, planning, intelligence, creativity), the game doesn't railroad you into playing a certain way. The beautiful game is like life flexible, ever adaptive, accessible yet hard to conquer, the game is alive.
Imo this is very hard to grasp for americans because you live is such a closed railroaded world tbh, there is much to learn outside of it sons.