Brittany Murray/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images
· 5 min read
We all know that what Americans call football involves minimal foot-to-ball contact, not to mention a rather concerning amount of tackling-induced brain injuries. Still, Americans prefer to revel in the junk food-filled indulgence of Super Bowl Sunday while the rest of the world celebrates every “gooooal.” It seems only once every four years the World Cup elicits some stateside enthusiasm for football of the spherical ball variety (which henceforth shall be referred to as “soccer”).
But it hasn’t always been this way—soccer once was as American as watching a “World” Series that includes only North American teams.
Turns out America and soccer go way back: The US Soccer Federation claims, perhaps apocryphally, that soccer’s roots in the US can be traced back to a Native American game called “Pasuckquakkohowog”, which means “they play football.” While it’s unclear how many pre-Columbian history scholars the USSF has on its payroll, it’s an indisputable fact that the modern version of the game was big in the US in the 19th- and early 20th centuries…before the sport fell out of favor.
After the Civil War, kicking a ball around was a popular pastime among working-class European immigrants and New England prep schoolboys alike.
Boston is widely known as the cradle of the American Revolution (and American road rage), but in 1862 it became the home of America’s first organized soccer team, the Oneida Football Club. The proto-soccer they played had elements of American football, with legal handballs and probably plenty of knocked out teeth. The sport grew from there with new rules and less violence:
Once the USFA got FIFA recognition shortly after its creation, the US was on its way to becoming an international soccer superpower.
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The post-WWI era came to be known as the Golden Age of American soccer. The American Soccer League (ASL) was established in the early 1920s and its matches drew crowds comparable to those at NFL stadiums around the same time. Scottish and English fans watched angrily as the US teams snagged their best talent.
The popularity of the sport (and the eagerness of its governing bodies to dominate it) caused its fall from grace in the eyes of Americans, but nevertheless it persists. The USFA and the ASL relentlessly fought for influence, culminating in the so-called soccer wars of the late 1920s.
The ASL ended up boycotting USFA’s National Challenge Cup, which caused the latter to nearly lose its FIFA recognition. It also eventually made some fans question whether they should waste their time on a sport that had turned into a battle of corporate acronyms and was beholden to a foreign entity.
The start of the Great Depression also didn’t help, as Americans began to spend less time at the stadiums and more time in soup kitchens.
The US national team got third place in the first World Cup in 1930, but US soccer began a steady downward trajectory from there.
Fast forward six decades and in 1994 only 20% Americans were aware that they were hosting that year’s World Cup. But there’s still hope for soccer in the US. Since the MLS kicked off in 1996, the league has been able to recruit some big-name overseas players, and its top games have attracted millions of TV viewers (even if some were tuning in just to see David Beckham’s new haircut).
MLS is not yet a rival to the MLB, but at least it looks like the soccer team of the nation’s most populous city will soon finally stop playing home games on a baseball diamond: New York City FC, which is currently housed at Yankee Stadium, recently reached a deal with the city to build a 25,000-seat arena in Queens.
And while the US men aren’t likely to take home the World Cup trophy, the US women’s national team is the world’s best. They’ve notched four World Cup wins since the inception of the women’s tournament in 1991.
Successes in professional soccer have kept soccer moms and dads busier than ever: The number of kids playing the sport has gone up by 89% since 1990.
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