The point that I'm trying to get at is that, I agree with you that there's a sense in which different people are going to prefer different things, that people w

The point that I'm trying to get at is that, I agree with you that there's a sense in which different people are going to prefer different things, that people who are more invested in a given sport are going to be able to see more of the nuance in it, and that as someone who's not invested in soccer there's certainly a lot that I'm missing. However, I don't think that it completely comes down to personal taste. There can still be areas where the flow of a soccer match can be more samey or less intrinsically exciting than in certain other sports. For example, soccer doesn't have the same moment to moment, head to head, back and forth of something like tennis or boxing. That's not to say that it completely lacks those moments of conflict; say when a defender is staring down an oncoming striker. However, as far as I am able to tell, they are less dense compared to something like a tennis match where they take up the whole of the playtime.