Europe gets screwed ag- wait, what? (Inazuma Eleven)
 

From GAF:

Goddammit about fucking time.

Trailer in case you don't know what this is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X69QTgk7YAs&fmt=18

Pardon me if I'm wrong, but it appears to be a RPG about soccer. Soccer isn't exactly very big in USA, is it? Unless it has been changing, because that's what it always seems like to the rest of the world.

About the game itself: Dang, that's some A-grade over-the-top soccer match. Reminds me of Captain Tsubasa. A lot.

It's craaaazy.
 

Well, it's not like we don't play soccer; we just don't have a professional league for it. It's sort of just the thing we keep to primary and secondary schools, and then it sort of just stops once you hit higher education and adult life.

I guess you could say America is backwards when it comes to sports, since we have football and baseball, which are played nowhere else and next to nowhere else, respectively.

You guys DO have a professional league for it.
Namely the MLS, or Major League Soccer, founded in 1993.
Fifteen teams total; fourteen from the US and one from Canada.
MLS being part of the USSF (or more commonly the US Soccer), which itself is associated with the FIFA (meaning it's pretty serious business.).

Then there's the USL (United Soccer League), which comprises the lower "class" of (semi-)professional soccer in the US.
And below that is the United States Adult Soccer Association or USASA, which comprises of the amateur teams.


And baseball is pretty big, internationally speaking. It's not a major focus in most countries, but it's big. The Dutch female baseball team is doing pretty well from what I hear, actually, and I understand many of them are playing for big American teams...

EDIT: I'll admit looking up the numbers and the info on the lower and amateur classes, but I knew of the MLS beforehand.
I mean, shit. Where do you think the US national team comes from?

Softball is bigger than Soccer. For women anyway. But going to Inazuma Eleven, the trailer got me really interested in the manga... Now I may have a new favorite since ES21 is gone.

What I don't like is how the game seems to run on a gimmick and doesn't seem more like an arcade game. But that's just me.

The US has a national team? :O_o: My life is a lie! :gonk:

I think that pretty much sums up the coverage soccer gets around here. Football, baseball, and basketball are pretty much the big three. Then maybe hockey, golf, and tennis in no particular order. I always pretty much assumed any soccer playing on the super-extra-special sports networks were coverage from Britain. Maybe they were, maybe not, but I've never heard of any major city having super-extra-special pride in a soccer team, so, yeah, really not all that big.

The trailer for the second game is even wackier: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5buGPLMtVc&fmt=18

It's a JRPG with football battles by the developers of Professor Layton/Dark Cloud/Dragon Quest VIII and IX that's been garnering a lot of popularity in Japan and even has an anime show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2sEYOgGmxc&fmt=18

Reviews have been pretty solid, so far.

Lemme just make sure it's not by Squaresoft and isn't a minigame stuffed into Final Fantasy X real quick.

Okay, no, it isn't. Carry on.

Blitzball wishes it were as cool as footie.