Soccer in the United States

Youth soccer in small-town Indiana in 2005.

Soccer, also known as football, has long been a popular sport in the United States. It is the most popular recreational sport for both boys and girls, and according to "History of Soccer: The Beautiful Game", has been so for about 25 years. This late 20th century boom is attributed for the most part to the existence of the North American Soccer League from the 1960's to 1984, and the New York Cosmos, its marquee team which included among its players stellar names like Franz Beckenbauer and Pelé.

The term "soccer mom" entered the American vernacular as a result of this growth.

However, professional soccer has been less popular in the United States than in the other Americas or most European nations. Its professional first-division league is not as well-attended in general as the major leagues of baseball, basketball, or American football, but Major League Soccer is also much younger, and has far fewer teams. Major League Soccer debuted in 1996, while these other major U.S. leagues have each existed many decades longer.

Although MLS is also much younger than most other countries' first divisions, and has only 13 teams in 2007, they are still already the 12th most-attended premier division in the entire world . In 2006, MLS broke its all-time record for attendance at a regular-season match, which saw 92,650 spectators fill the Los Angeles Coliseum on a Sunday in August.

In 2007, with the arrivals of international superstar players including Juan Pablo Angel and David Beckham, attendance records for specific MLS teams and stadiums continued to rise. Additionally, the USA national team and Mexico national team have been playing to full houses in the U.S. in recent years, and have also broken several stadium, city, and state attendance records for matches held in the past five years. Television viewership of soccer in the U.S. is at an all-time high, with many channels now dedicated to the sport.

Until recently, American soccer was more of a regional phenomenon than it is today. Soccer flourished in hotbeds such as New Jersey, New York, St. Louis, Southern California, and in areas with large immigrant populations that grew up with football (soccer) in their homelands. But soccer is now gradually gaining popularity across the country, partially due to youth programs, the creation of a respectable professional league, and the success of the men's and women's national teams.

History of soccer in the U.S.

The first soccer club in the United States was the Oneida Football Club of Boston, Massachusetts, founded in 1862. It is often said that this was the first club to play association football outside Britain. However, the Oneidas were formed before the English Football Association (FA); it is not known what rules they used, and the club wound up within the space of a few years. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, the club is often credited with inventing the "Boston Game", which both allowed players to kick a round ball along the ground, and to pick it up and run with it.

The first U.S. match known to have been inspired by FA rules was a game between Princeton and Rutgers in 1869, although the game included features such as extremely physical tackling and teams of 20 each. Other colleges emulated this development, but all of these were converted to rugby by the mid-1870s and would soon become famous as early bastions of American football. (For more details see: History of American football.)

Early soccer leagues in the U.S. mostly used the name football leagues, for example: the American Football Association (founded in 1884), the American Amateur Football Association (1893), the American League of Professional Football (1894), the National Association Foot Ball League (1895), and the Southern New England Football League (1914). However, the word "soccer" was beginning to catch on, and the St Louis Soccer League was a significant regional competition between 1907 and 1939. What is now the United States Soccer Federation was originally the U.S. Football Association, formed in 1913 by the merger of the American Football Association and the American Amateur Football Association. The governing body of the sport in the U.S. did not have the word soccer in its name until 1945, when it became the U.S. Soccer Football Association. It did not drop the word football from its name until 1974, when it became the U.S. Soccer Federation.

Two further football leagues were started in the 1967, the United Soccer Association and the National Professional Soccer League. These merged to form the North American Soccer League in 1968, which survived until 1984. The NASL also ran an indoor league in the latter years.

Indoor soccer was a great success in the 1980s to the 90s, in part due to the input of the North American Soccer League. When the NASL folded, other leagues, including the Major Indoor Soccer League filled in to meet the demand. 25 years hence, the current version of MISL exists with eight teams slated for the 2007-2008 season.

American soccer today

Professional soccer has expanded somewhat in recent years, beginning in the mid-1990s. The 1994 FIFA World Cup was played in the United States for the first time, winning the sport more recognition. In the 2002 FIFA World Cup, the United States team did surprisingly well which also succeeded in winning more converts. Both the 1999 and 2003 FIFA Women's World Cups were held in the USA, and the United States women's national team is one of the best in the world. As of April 2007, they were ranked number one in the world by FIFA, and won two of the four FIFA Womens World Cups held thus far. Their home crowd of over 90,000 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California for the 1999 World Cup Final remains the largest crowd in the world ever to witness any women's sporting event.

A number of American soccer leagues have existed. Today, the first division pro league is Major League Soccer, which has 12 U.S. teams plus one in Canada as of the 2007 season, with expansion planned for an eventual 18-team table within next five years or so, according to the league's Commissioner, Don Garber. The United Soccer Leagues contains dozens of minor league pro teams in three men's divisions and one for women. A new 8 team slate of the women's pro major league Women's United Soccer Association is planned for a 2008 debut. The Major Indoor Soccer League thrives in a few cities, and has exisited in one form or another for over 25 years.

Other international leagues, such as the Primera División de México and the English Premier League, are highly competitive with MLS for fans watching the sport on television. Major League Soccer matches are all shown live on TV, but so are matches from all around the world. The U.S. even has at least 5 national networks devoted mostly or completely to the sport, the largest and most-well known being the Fox Soccer Channel, a 24-hour a-day channel, with live news 7 days per week, and the main channel showing Major League Soccer matches, news reports, league and team programming.

The overall league structure of soccer in the United States is significantly different from that used in almost all the rest of the world, but similar to that used by other North American team sports leagues, in that there is no system of promotion and relegation between lower and higher leagues but rather a minor league system. The playoffs employed by the leagues differ from most European championships, but are more popular in the Western Hemisphere.

The English and Spanish-language telecasts of the 2006 FIFA World Cup Championship Final combined to attract an estimated 16.9 million American viewers, comparable to the average viewership of the 2005 World Series of Major League Baseball, according to The New York Times. Interestingly, Univision paid more than three times as much for the Spanish-language television rights for the 2010 and 2014 FIFA World Cups as Disney's ABC and ESPN paid for the English-language rights to the same competitions. In 2007, the CONCACAF Gold Cup attracted record television viewership, and in the case of one particular group stage match, it was the most-watched primetime program on any network that night among 18-49 males. The Univision telecast of the Final between USA and Mexico was the third-most watched Spanish-language program of all-time in the United States, beaten only by two FIFA World Cup finals matches.

Writers have speculated on why soccer is not as popular in the U.S. as it is in some other countries. Theories include that other sports cornered the market before professional soccer could prosper; that soccer is a "foreign game"; that Americans do not dominate the game; that there are too many draws; and that there is not enough scoring. The U.S. has many popular sports, including soccer, and this proliferation and abundance of choice is perhaps the biggest reason of all that soccer does not dominate the sporting landscape in the way it does in numerous other regions of the world.

More and more Americans, having played the game in their youth are now avid spectators, especially in the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic, Texas, South Florida, and California. Most cities with Major League Soccer Teams have large fan bases. In addition, as Latin American immigration is increasing overall in the entire nation, so is the popularity of soccer.

One factor contributing to the relatively slow pace of soccer's growth in popularity is the competitive nature amongst various American youth sports programs, primarily centered around community clubs in the pre-teen years and secondary school teams thereafter. In some regions of the U.S., High School soccer and American football are both played in the fall and a student generally cannot devote time to both. Until the 1980s, most high schools in the U.S. did not offer soccer at all, and youth soccer programs were extremely rare until the 1970s. Thus, older generations of Americans living today grew up with virtually no exposure to the sport.

In recent decades, more and more pre-teen youth sport organizations have turned to soccer as either a supplement to or a replacement for American football in their programs. Soccer is far more economical for a cash-strapped youth organization than American football (far less player protection, fewer officials and less complex field equipment is required in soccer) while at the same the insurance risks associated with American football far surpass that of soccer. Simultaneously, with increased urbanization, American high schools have grown to the point where most offer soccer as well as American football in their autumn sports seasons.

The result is that the participants of these expanded programs have become today's American soccer athletes with representation in many teams in Europe as well as in Major League Soccer.

U.S. Men's National Teams Players Today

The U.S. men's squad has grown from a perennial also-ran to a more respected status around the world. In 2007, for example, they won their second consecutive CONCACAF title, and in that Gold Cup tournament held on U.S. soil, attracted large crowds of people of all nationalities in the six host cities.

A short list of U.S. National Men's Teams members playing in some of the European 'big leagues' currently would include...

In ENGLAND:

Carlos Bocanegra - D - Fulham Bobby Convey - M - Reading Clint Dempsey - M - Fulham Brad Friedel - GK - Blackburn Rovers Marcus Hahnemann - GK - Reading Tim Howard - GK - Everton Brian McBride - F - Fulham Johann Smith - F - Bolton Jonathan Spector - D - West Ham United

In GERMANY:

Steve Cherundolo - D - Hannover 96 Benny Feilhaber - M - Hamburg SV Kamani Hill - F - VfL Wolfsburg Heath Pearce - D - Hansa Rostock Preston Zimmerman - F - Hamburg SV Sal Zizzo - M - Hannover 96

In ITALY:

Gabriel Ferrari - F - Sampdoria

U.S. women professional players today

The women even have their own professional leagues in the U.S., the most famous being the Women's United Soccer Association. In its original form it featured world-renowned American players such as Hall of Famers Julie Foudy and Mia Hamm. The original WUSA ceased operation at the end of 2004, but reformed for the 2008 season, once again with eight teams in their table. The W-League of the USL and the WPSL are successful national women's leagues which have proven staying power, with teams across many states.

The USA women, in fact have been role models for other countries' female soccer development programs at all levels, from clubs to national teams. Relative lack of attention afforded the women's game in traditional soccer-playing countries may also have contributed U.S. Women's National Team's historical dominance in international competition. Other factors include: Title IX, requiring college and public school athletics programs to include women' athletics; the relative equality (and especially rejection of hardened gender roles) for women in the United States relative to many other countries; and the abundance of female athletic talent in the United States.

American soccer leagues and associations

• Major League Soccer
• United Soccer Leagues
• National Premier Soccer League
• Women's Premier Soccer League
• Women's United Soccer Association
• Major Indoor Soccer League
• National Intercollegiate Soccer Officials Association
• National Soccer Coaches Association of America
• American Youth Soccer Organization
• United States Youth Soccer Association
• United States Adult Soccer Association
• United States Soccer Federation

American teams

• United States men's national soccer team
• United States women's national soccer team

The following national teams of U.S. unincorporated territories compete in their corresponding regions. Their governing bodies are either member or associate in the corresponding regional federations. For all but American Samoa, players for these territories are, like most local residents, U.S. citizens. Natives of American Samoa are U.S. nationals, but not U.S. citizens.

• American Samoa national soccer team
• Guam national football team
• Northern Mariana Islands national football team
• Puerto Rico national football team
• U.S. Virgin Islands national soccer team

See also

• United States soccer league system

References

• "American Exceptionalism: Soccer and American Football" by Ivan Waddington and Martin Roderick, 2 Sept. 1996, retrieved 6 Dec. 2005.