AH Challenge: Soccer in the CSA

So here's the POD;

August 1867- A British arms investor from the civil war (which ended with the CSA winning [obviously]) invests in a sporting complex in Richmond which includes the first professional sports team in the CSA, Richmond SC (sporting club), a soccer team.

Your challenge is to turn soccer into the largest sport in the CSA and make it into a world cup competitor and international soccer power.
 
I don't think it would be that much of a stretch. Gridiron and arena football are already popular down south (and high school football an obsession for the Texans). Baseball and Basketball came from the north, so those would be eliminated as competition. Of course, association football was played by a bunch of ruffians in England (well, in the Middle Ages it was viewed as a sport of the lowly peasants), so the gentry down South might not get into right away. The slaves might dig it, since it only requires a ball and two areas to act as goals, and it could become popular with the lower classes of southern society.
 
Top