Why men's soccer will never be popular in the U.S.

WORLD CUP GOALS

Clint Dempsey: 4 in 10 games.

Wayne Rooney: 1 in 11 games.

And who can forget Dempsey's goal against England in the 2010 World Cup, where he first embarrassed Steven Gerrard and then abused poor Robert Green? If I remember correctly, the U.S. won the group in that World Cup, with England finishing second.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUQFqlgpf_w

Explains the traumatic brain injuries that are so prevalent in your American "football".

barney23 wrote:

Explains the traumatic brain injuries that are so prevalent in your American "football".

I love soccer but the #1 reason why it will never take off in America is because it's a rich white person sport.

In every other country it's a poor person sport accessible to everyone.

/end

100% correct. The other reason soccer in the US is doomed is because there is to much emphasis on plays, formations etc. In other parts of the world the best players are allowed to create, be inventive etc. It's not called the beautiful game for nothing. Messi, Ronaldo etc would have been coached out of the sport in America.

and another coach wrote:

Actually the "pay to play" model used in youth soccer is why soccer will never become as popular as it is all over the world. You see, in EVERY other country if you are good at soccer opportunities for you to improve and play FIND YOU. In the US, only the folks with money to pay for clubs are given access to top level coaching. So, if you are poor and can play soccer, you might as well find another sport in America.

So, with that model how can America grow it's home-based professional league so it rivals even the second tier European Leagues and how can the national team compete with the best countries in the world at The World Cup?

football (which Americans and only Americans call it soccer) is the most popular and most important sport in the world, like the Americans or not. It doesn't matter.

But Americans, culturally speaking, have a hard time admitting that. They have a hard time admitting that "elsewhere is better, after all, we are the Americans, we are the bests, we rule the world". Then you start with these "macho" arguments of "we like big fights" to justify and try to diminish Football as a sport - yes, either you are right and the rest of the world is wrong, or perhaps you can be wrong, but only because you like "fights and macho sports" more than the rest of the world.

give me a break.

One day eventually Americans will start doing like the rest of the world and measure heights in meters and centimeters (not foot or inches), temperature in celsius (no fahrenheit), weight in kilos and not pounds and yes distance in kilometers and not miles. This will be the day when one realises that doing it differently is not because you are "cool rebels that do it differently and smarter than the rest of the world" - no, is just dumbness.

So? That is your big picture research? Now do prevalence in athletes or ex-athletes 40 years and over; I'll wait.

Meanwhile: "Researchers with the Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University have now identified the degenerative disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in 96 percent of NFL players that they’ve examined and in 79 percent of all football players."

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/new-87-deceased-nfl-players-test-positive-for-brain-disease/

If the refs protected strikers like Messi, soccer would be much more exciting. Teams long ago learned to blunt the impact of great players like Messi and Ronaldo by just knocking them down outside the box. That's why Messi's highlights so often show these great runs for about 3-5 seconds before he's knocked down. There should be a yellow card on most of those knockdowns to deter them. Soccer's popular enough even in the U.S. There's far more participation in soccer among the youth than in (American) football. Now basketball is an American game that enjoys world-wide popularity, not at the level of soccer, of course, but it is growing rapidly everywhere.

A lot of comments on this thread are pretty outdated.

For the most part, top players are not emerging from street ball in impoverished countries. This isn't the 1970s. Top players are identified VERY early in most of the world, and they are trained professionally for their entire careers. Long gone are the days when only Brazilians who grew up in favelas knew how to dribble. Also, street ball is, in general, dying out. I don't know how much time you've spent in South America or Central America, but n the 1990s I felt like I was tripping over stray soccer balls all the time. Not so much now; even poor kids are on their phones all the time.

Pay-to-play isn't as big of a difference between the US and Europe as people claim. True professional prospects in the US do not have to pay to play. And non-professional prospects in Europe do have to pay (though often a lot less than in the U.S.). The big difference is that the U.S. doesn't have the same scouting network to identify pro prospects early, so many more slip through the cracks.

The popularity of the sport for spectators in the US is highly dependent on demographics. Incidentally, that was formerly the case in England, where football was considered uncouth for "middle class" (what people in the US would call "upper class"), though the EPL has largely transcended class divides now. In any event, some people in the US confidently assert that "nobody watches soccer" because nobody they know does. But the US viewership numbers are pretty good and growing. EPL is on at every bar in major cities (helped by the fact that European games rarely happen at the same time as US pro sports competitions). If you want to watch a match at a designated supporters bar in a major city, you have to show up hours early. Sometimes you simply can't go to the pub unless you're a member of the club and you bought a ticket (if it's a big match). MLS is also extremely popular in terms of live attendance. I think what a lot of MLS people failed to realize was that as soccer grew in popularity, their main competition for TV viewers wasn't going to be MLB; it's EPL and La Liga. Even with the competitive season in the summer, lot of US soccer viewers don't watch MLS on TV simply because it's not as good as EPL, but they'll happily go to games for the atmosphere.

Pay to play is absolutely the rule. You'll be hard-pressed to find any exceptions. In this city, you can do a summer camp for $80 for over two months but to do a soccer camp from the city costs $100 for one week, to do a private rec soccer camp costs $135 for two evening hour long practices a week for three weeks, while doing the same rec league in fall or spring costs $220 for about 8 weeks. To do the competitive travel league costs $1,000 per season plus all the travel costs and hotel and other fees, which probably mean $8-10k per year. School sports programs don't exist in elementary schools and are only for a month per year for any given sport in the middle schools, so that you don't get more or less free sports (but about $20 per family per game to actually attend the games) until high school when there is already, as I have seen this year, a huge gulf between even the girls in the city who typically have not done club soccer beforehand and the typically suburban girls from wealthy areas who have done years of travel club soccer and win most of their games 8-0 by the early second half when they're called because of the unfortunate mercy rule.

By contrast, where money's not so much of an issue, the city track teams clean up in the sprints and jumps and are very competitive at district and regionals for the titles with the suburban teams, often beating them.

Pay to play is no longer the rule. Many, if not most, MLS academies are free at this point. If you're good enough, finances won't matter. To be sure, many academies and "elite" clubs are still in the pay to play mode. But things have been and will continue to change, away from pay to play.

As someone else pointed out, a bigger issue at this point is scouting. Finding those talented players who are outside of the mainstream is still a challenge.

Looking at a reddit thread from 3 years ago, 21 out of 23 MLS academies were free.

The vast majority of youth soccer clubs are still pay to play, but for the truly elite player with ambitions of a pro career, there are plenty of clubs that will provide a free academy program.

zxcvzxcv wrote:

Pay to play is absolutely the rule. You'll be hard-pressed to find any exceptions. In this city, you can do a summer camp for $80 for over two months but to do a soccer camp from the city costs $100 for one week, to do a private rec soccer camp costs $135 for two evening hour long practices a week for three weeks, while doing the same rec league in fall or spring costs $220 for about 8 weeks. To do the competitive travel league costs $1,000 per season plus all the travel costs and hotel and other fees, which probably mean $8-10k per year.

Of course people pay a fortune for club soccer and camps. Nobody is disputing that. People pay a fortune for club soccer in Europe too. The question is whether people who have legitimate pro prospects are paying. At least for boys, the answer is largely no, on both sides of the Atlantic.

And financial aid has been available for top players who lack resources for as far back as I can remember. On my club teams in the 90s, many of the best players were paying from 0 to 10% of the normal fees. Granted, you had to have parents who were invested enough in soccer to find out about those opportunities (chiefly soccer-crazy immigrants at the time), but the opportunities were there.

I haven't been able to find any info on whether any non-MLS academies are now free, although as has been pointed out, these academies surely have scholarship or financial hardship programs.

But here's more current info on MLS academies:

The best (boy) players in America compete in the MLS Academies and receive outstanding training. Free to those recruited, players do not typically pay for team dues, club fees, uniforms, travel, nutritional counseling, and physical trainers. MLS’ Sporting Kansas City even provides its youth soccer players with adidas cleats and warm-ups.

https://www.soccertoday.com/mls-to-the-rescue-with-new-elite-competition-after-u-s-soccer-shuts-da/?cn-reloaded=1

context wrote:

We in the US long ago discovered that hands and arms are actually useful when playing sports.

Ya but in basketball you can only use one of those hands at a time. Otherwise it's a double dribble. And you can't use your foot either.

critic 100 wrote:

In real football, cheerleaders get wiped out by two 230lb pound linebackers while tackling a 200lb running back on the sidelines, she gets up, shakes off the hit with a smile, and continues to cheer.

The soccer guy gets his foot stepped on, calls 911, gets the surgeon ready for a major operation to remove the leg.

How can any American support such a wimpy sport?

Women's soccer, different. No fake injuries. after falling down, they get up and finish the game.

Any sport that finishes in 90 minutes and the final score... 1 to 0. = let us watch paint dry.

More action in the stands. Maybe, rather than following such a boring sport, the TV crews should focus on the fans.

Great fights there.

i'm pretty sure soccer IS the most popular sport in the United States by participation....

Life is passing you by.

MLS announced the academy free thing last August and one local program I have looked into already on numerous occasions since October of last year. Their competitive program fees were over $1k just to start, plus all that travel. Anyone who could get into a competitive program that actually is free would presumably already have to have had years of competitive soccer and coaching to qualify for it. That's totally out of reach of the city soccer kids.