I would like to add a few commentaries to the already accurate answers given here.

I'm french, and I used to be a rugby player before I moved to the states and played football there as a linebacker.

First of all, soccer is not as shiny a sport as football is. In a 90 minutes game, you can hope to see 3 or 4 great moves at best which makes it quite boring for an audience used not only to great catches, TDs but also dunks in Basketball for instance.

To correct something said by a previous contributor, soccer injuries are more common than one might think. Most of these injuries hurt the lower part of the body and create very important damages since the blows mainly come from behind.

Rugby and Foot players are injured quite often, but that is no big deal. Soccer players suffer more dramatic injuries.