ToJ-
I think see where your confusion lies. In the Trading Card Database, sets are categorized as a whole. They don't get split up and categorized card-by-card like they do in SCF's listings for multi-sport sets.
However, people do get categorized by the various sports. In your soccer example, if you use the browse drop-down in the header on any TCDB page and choose soccer, then follow the link to "names", you can navigate to the player's name. Take, for example Stephanie Cox. From her page, you can see all of her cards in 2012 Panini Americana. Clicking on any one of them will take you to the card page. On that page, you will see links like this above the name:
Main / Non-Sport / Sets / 2012 / Overview
The presence of the "Non-Sport" link on that line will tell you that the set is categorized as non-sport. Clicking on any one of them will take you to that point up the organization tree. Overview takes you to the set's overview page, the year link will take you to the page for all of the sets in that category of the same year, the sets link takes you to the page that displays all of the years of sets in the category, and the category link (in this case, non-sport) will take you to the top level page for the category where you can choose to navigate to areas like "Names" or "Sets". It's kind of like a giant web of information...;)
There are a lot of features and functionality here. It takes a while to master the many different ways to search and navigate the database.
-Tom
Ted Musgrave card collection 98.9% Complete: Cards Known: 1013, Cards Owned: 1002
I prefer the company of people who disagree with me for the right reasons over the company of those who agree with me for the wrong reasons.