One of the better inflammatory thread titles I have read.
I didn't start the thread.
Was a reply in another thread and my post was used to start this thread.
Soccer (I assume this question is directed at Americans) requires knowledge of the game. You can't watch one game or ten games and understand what is happening; what is good and what is bad. Fortunately both of my children played soccer from age 5 on. That changed my view of what I thought was a horribly boring sport. I suspect I would have become a soccer fan if Sacramento had a high level team. Soccer/football is the most popular sport in the world. Aren't its detractors even curious as to why that is so?
The long and short of it is that I would withhold judgment on any sport until I became very knowledgeable.
That's the crux of the issue. Knowledge of a sport and it's where I disagree with @
VF21 and her post above. It's only perceived as not as having "
tangible results (yardage) after each play" if you don't really understand the finer details of the game, the skill, the movement, the misdirection which goes into a build up. Holding possession, having a build up and creating a shot on goal or even a shot at all is considered a clear tangible result. Nice skill/footwork to create an opportunity is a tangible result. It's why many times there's an applause following.
This lends even more to that line of thinking. "
And, while in soccer the ball is almost always being kicked around, it doesn't often result in anything to cheer about. Watching guys run around and randomly kick the ball (which is what it looks like to me most of the time) just doesn't give much for the average fan to appreciate. "Yay, so-and-so. Run! And run somemore!" Not too much nuance there, is there?"(not picking on your VF, just using your post as an example of a different viewpoint)
It only appears as randomly kicking a ball around without purpose of you don't understand what's happening. Just like someone who knows nothing about basketball wouldn't understand what or why a team is running a pick & roll or the difference between a man and zone defense. It'd just be more, hey, there's five guys out there, if you're open chuck it at the rim. Soccer is not mindless running and random passing, far from it. But, at the same time I don't really blame Americans for thinking that because they didn't grow up watching real footy, they grew up watching American soccer which by and large is randomly kicking the ball around. If most of what you have to go on is American youth soccer, college soccer, a large % of MLS, etc, then that viewpoint makes sense, but don't for a second believe clubs in Germany, England, Spain, France, Brazil and Italy, among others are playing that same type of game.
It's no accident one of the best passers the NBA has ever seen attributes much of his vision to playing footy growing up, in Steve Nash. Here's a quick video showing some of the skill within the game. Not many goals but most footy fans appreciate the skill within the game.
And that is different than anything you'd see in youth American soccer or really anything stateside, which is what many have been introduced to. The whole soccer mom and orange slices phenomenon.
), there aren't any results on the way to the ultimate goal. 
