Soccer contractors throughout this country consistently complain that soccer is not a contact sport. This is just another verbal montage used to invite the people out of the masses to complain even more about soccer's existence in this country.

Football is a contact sport.  Well, duh.  That's the basis for this sport.  Every play there is contact of some sort or another, including those missed scoring opportunities (otherwise known as field goal attempts).  Often, the contact is brief and uneventful, usually resembling two bears "hugging it out" (sorry, this just called for the old Entourage reference). Occassionally, a player will get laid out and the crowd goes nuts and the player goes nuts like he's just slain the dragon and saved the town for all eternity (but that's another story).  So, yeah, there's a lot...and I mean a lot of contact in football.

But that's not the argument here. 

Soccer is a contact sport. Well, duh. The contact in a soccer match would never live up to the violence levels of American Football, but there is contact...and a lot of it.  The slide tackle is the most obvious form of contact in soccer.  But what many people don't realize is that the slide tackle can be highly dangerous.  Poorly executed slide tackles result in snapped legs, broken ankles, torn/sprained ligaments to name a few.  Goalkeepers are not exempt from contact either, usually having to barrell through players to get at an attempted cross.  These are plays that most resemblent of the football tackle...the only differences being that the players aren't wearing pads (other than shin pads) and the players aren't trying to "lay out" their oppoenent, they're just going after the ball.

There are many videos that show this "contact" on the soccer field (for some dirty tackles, check out some of the Roy Keane vids at Youtube).

So, next time you want to spout off about no contact in soccer, check out some videos (readily available online), and heck, even try it out for yourself.  You'll think twice about claiming soccer not being a contact sport.