How could Soccer could have become more popular in the USA?

Malone

The US is relatively an outlier in being a major country where professional soccer is not one of its most popular sports. Yes, youth soccer is quite widespread, but I'm referring to the game at the pro level.

The US actually held the World Cup in 1994 but it doesn't seem to have boosted soccer to the level of the NBA, MLB and certainly the NFL. What could have changed soccer's success?
 

KingSweden24

Don’t have a giant pissing contest between the FA and the actual club competition organizers through the 20s and then limit the severity of the Great Depression immediately thereafter
 

ejpsan

Unfortunately Associated Football was seen as an " immigrants" game while baseball was the "All-American" game and as Rugby football evolved over the years in to gridiron football and became associated with college and was seen as more desirable compared to working class soccer.
So for soccer to become more popular either more colleges play it then gridiron football or it is an acceptable sport for "Real Americans" to play.
Form my understanding from other members on this site that soccer clubs in Europe were factory teams and later evolved in to forming leagues.
 
Gokbay

Gokbay

ejpsan said:
Form my understanding from other members on this site that soccer clubs in Europe were factory teams and later evolved in to forming leagues.
Click to expand...

Depends on the clubs in question, but yes a lot of early clubs were working class in nature and there were city leagues/competitions before national leagues were created.
 
Tabs

Tabs

Perhaps you could make it where the restrictions on American football in the early 1900s are more severe. The sport was extremely dangerous when it started, and if I’m not mistaken, many politicians supported banning the sport, and in California, it was replaced with rugby for a time. Now, I’m not convinced you can ban American football (Teddy Roosevelt was a known fan of the sport and is part of why it was able to reform into a safer sport and survive), but perhaps if the sport gets further restricted, more people would turn to soccer with time.

It’s certainly a bit of a stretch. But I can’t think of any other way it can be done.
 
QTXAdsy

QTXAdsy

One idea is to have the USA, not Mexico, to host the 1986 World Cup and if the United States puts on a decent showing then it might help increase interest in the game much sooner, especially if they managed to get out of the group stage at the following tournaments.

Wonder who'd host the 1994 World Cup then?
 

thekingsguard

The big one? Have a pro league earlier that can attract superstar talent and make fortunes.

Pro soccer players make shit in the US mostly - you have starters making below the poverty line, hell, I made more as a cub reporter than many MLS players.

Meanwhile you can become a millionaire riding the bench for a couple years in the bif four.

That's why soccer - initially just as popular with kids as baseball or football or basketball - starts bleeding players at middle school. Who the hell is gonna push thier kids to play soccer professionally when the big 4 can make them rich or at least get them into college.

Until you fix that? Soccer will be a game for children, rich white suburbanites, and the occasional immigrant before they ditch it for baseball.
 
SealTheRealDeal

SealTheRealDeal

Malone said:
The US is relatively an outlier in being a major country where professional soccer is not one of its most popular sports. Yes, youth soccer is quite widespread, but I'm referring to the game at the pro level.

The US actually held the World Cup in 1994 but it doesn't seem to have boosted soccer to the level of the NBA, MLB and certainly the NFL. What could have changed soccer's success?
Click to expand...
Make it so that Brits don't loose their lid every time us North Americans call it soccer.

Seriously, the amount of snobbery around "the working class sport" is quite ironic.
 

Reyne

SealTheRealDeal said:
Make it so that Brits don't loose their lid every time us North Americans call it soccer.

Seriously, the amount of snobbery around "the working class sport" is quite ironic.
Click to expand...
Yeah because calling it soccer when the rest of the world calls it footbal is stupid. Then claiming a half assed version of rugby is footbal is just ...
 

ChaosNDiscord

Well the name soccer come from England because it was easier to say than association football...

Maybe is sports clubs had become more of a thing in the USA you might see more popularity of the sport since it is pretty inexpensive to set up and play. Alo some of those clubs could form the nucleus of later professional teams similar to Vfb Stuttgart in the Bundesliga.
 

Intosh

Football is a very popular sport, because it required only a ball to play. Many children are playing with a tennis ball in school yards or on parking between the cars. It is the perfect "street sport".

All US sports required a investment in equipment, base-ball required a glove and a bat, not counting a helmet, American Football required to buy a full armor, and the same for hockey which required also an ice-ring.

The only street sport in the USA is Basket-Ball but still it required a minimum of infrastructure.
 

EWHM

Intosh said:
Football is a very popular sport, because it required only a ball to play. Many children are playing with a tennis ball in school yards or on parking between the cars. It is the perfect "street sport".

All US sports required a investment in equipment, base-ball required a glove and a bat, not counting a helmet, American Football required to buy a full armor, and the same for hockey which required also an ice-ring.

The only street sport in the USA is Basket-Ball but still it required a minimum of infrastructure.
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Sandlot football in the US, as played when I was a kid, just required a ball. But it DID require a lot of space, even though we pretty much never played on full sized fields. A lot of houses in those days had acre or half acre back yards, and that was generally considered sufficient.
 
Duke of Nova Scotia

Duke of Nova Scotia

Intosh said:
The only street sport in the USA is Basket-Ball but still it required a minimum of infrastructure.
Click to expand...
Not true stick-ball was everywhere and could be played anywhere, and can include as many kids as you can near fit reasonably on a street or dirt lot.

It's about connecting it to something that will be looking to be emulated later. Maybe have it introduced into the army as a cool-off/training exercise, where the Army v Navy game is Football and not egg-ball. Vets will want to play it when discharged, and their kids will want to play too, so on so forth.

The American-Football debate of the TDR years would be the perfect time to have it be superseded by football in College as well as was mentioned. He even could make it so Rugby and Football both settled in, American-Football didn't come out of nowhere, and a realigning it with the global Rugby norms and rules could work. Though that might send the USA towards being a Rugby nation instead.
 
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