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Daley Blind of the Netherlands, centre, scores his side’s second goal during the World Cup round of 16 soccer match between the Netherlands and the United States.
Another quadrennial, another reminder that The Beautiful Game hasn’t yet won the pageant in the United States.
If it had, we wouldn’t head home from each World Cup (the ones for which we manage to qualify) before the big boys get down to business. The U.S. men’s team this year did reach the round of 16 before falling to the Dutch, 3-1. Quite an achievement for a country in which a survey earlier this year listed soccer as the seventh-most popular sport in the U.S., behind the National Football League, Major League Baseball, college football, the National Basketball Association, college basketball and the National Hockey League (but ahead of tennis and pickleball).
Our main problem is, our talented young male athletes have multiple career choices, most of which will lead to bigger paychecks than they’re likely to earn should they get good enough to play in European pro soccer leagues. There is no doubt that the members of the American team are wonderfully talented. However, think how powerful our team would be if every young boy with athletic skills dreamed of being the next Lionel Messi. There are so many options for a young Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Judge, or Kevin Durant.
Let’s make it clear. We’re talking about men’s soccer now. The U.S. women rule. Our female footballers have won four of the eight World Cups, including the last two, and have never finished worse than third. Thank you, Title IX, for helping create a world where talented American girls can become great soccer players instead of cheering the boys on.
And (duh alert), the opportunities to make a career out of sport are much more limited for women than for men. It is assumed that our women’s team does comprise many of our best female athletes.
The women actually get a bounty from the men’s knockout round appearance. Thanks to a collective bargaining agreement, the women’s team earns as much as the men do from FIFA, about $6 million. That’s more than the team got for winning the last World Cup.
To return to why we don’t rule in men’s soccer, though:
Sports journalists in this country have been told at least since the 1970s that soccer is the sport of the future, that its dominance on the American sports scene is just around the corner. Well, the street to NFL-level acceptance has now stretched well into the 21st century, with no corner in sight.
There is no denying that soccer is played by many Americans, young and old. There are numerous soccer programs and travel teams in the Fredericksburg area. In a survey earlier this year, 31 percent of Americans said they’re soccer fans. Participation in high school soccer rose by 32 percent from 2002 to 2019. It’s almost de rigueur that American kids play the sport at some point after the age of 4.
However, we are not yet a soccer nation. Maybe we never will be. Maybe it’s because we are wealthy enough to support myriad professional sports leagues, all of which lure young, talented kids with the promise of fame and riches. Maybe it’s because we see baseball, football, and basketball as part of our American heritage, whereas soccer is the world’s sport. Maybe we’re just too easily distracted to bond with games that too often end with one goal or less scored by both teams.
Whatever the reason, soccer’s heyday in the U.S., if it ever exists, is still in the future.
Kudos to the American men for making it to the round of 16. Maybe 2026 will be the year the U.S. breaks through and makes everybody a soccer fan and every athletic kid a futbal fanatic.
As we have for the past half-century, we plod forward, looking for that corner.
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Daley Blind of the Netherlands, centre, scores his side’s second goal during the World Cup round of 16 soccer match between the Netherlands and the United States.
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