Well I finally agree with you on something. I play pickup. Our group is open to all. There's new and experienced. There's young and old. It's a true hodge podge of players. Its a free for all. But the invisible hand of organization tends to do its thing and there ends up being some positional structure naturally. Anywho, most importantly it gets people playing. They dribble, they pass, they move, they shoot, they defend, etc. Over the years I have used it to work on various things. Maybe I want to work on scanning, on passing, on a particular move. Once my kid is bigger, in a year or two, I'll bring him.
Yeah that's not "popular" Popular is when kids are playing on their own. pickup games. I only see that in immigrant communities. These kids go to the park and they play soccer without coaches telling them what to do.
What???? You have a very narrow definition of "popular". I'd say when millions of kids are playing it year after year, it's pretty popular. The pickup is a (sadly) long gone activity for kids, as are much of the things we did when I was a kid. Parents are not nearly as open to letting their kids, especially elementary school aged kids, venture too far from home w/o proper adult supervision. Doesn't mean the kids don't like soccer, it means their parents won't let them go. Also, most kids who like soccer are practicing 2 or 3 times per week, with games on weekends. Here in Maryland, you can't pass a park that has soccer fields on the weekend w/o seeing kids playing soccer all day long. When I was coaching, I was amazed at the number to teams in my team's age group that all were located within a 15 mile radius.
When I was a teenager, I played pickup soccer almost every night through the summer, in suburban Salt Lake County, with a bunch of other whites. I don't see kids playing soccer anymore; does that mean soccer was popular in the 90s and is not popular anymore? In fact, I don't see kids playing pickup sports of any kind anymore: football, basketball, golf, UFC... But you said those sports are popular above. Are they not popular? If they are, how good is this metric for determining popularity?
I played a bit of everything including soccer. Yeah it was more popular in the 90s. That's when everyone actually cared about the World Cup, remember. And had posters of Pele or some random Dutch player on their wall. Who does that anymore When I go to parks where immigrants hang out they play soccer. A couple times I took my kid and we played with Afghan kids. We need to get back there. Once during off season I put a message to the club team for a pickup game and lots of kids showed up and had fun. I guess you just have to set a time and place and kids will show up. But kids aren't doing it on their own, until they get older. I see some older kids getting together. But not big groups. Part of that is how many kids there are. Some cultures have many kids. They go hang at the park and the kids play. By popular I also mean adults. The adults here don't know soccer. Their kids plays rec soccer, but they don't know soccer. They aren't watching European soccer and they don't know tactics and stuff. They know baseball and football tactics. They play fantasy football. Etc. They know basketball. I don't know basketball or football. I know a bit of baseball because I've been studying it because my kid plays. When I go to the baseball games, its not like I can talk soccer with anyone. They just have a rec-level knowledge if anything at all. The parents have them do soccer to get running practice for baseball. I guess there is a lot of fragmentation. A lot of people don't like baseball too (esp soccer folks). But what I see around here is a lot of youth baseball, flag football, basketball, and rec soccer. Even with my kid in club soccer he is like a unicorn in this neighborhood. I guess its the neighborhood we're in. But that gets back to cultures and stuff. We're in a white neighborhood. But my kid's soccer teammates are hispanic (in a completely different area than where we live).
I think we're just comparing anecdotes here. I know a dozen kids in my neighborhood and family who are exceptionally knowledgeable about soccer. It's their favorite sport to play, they watch RSL live and on TV, they talk European transfer news, follow the champions league, have favorite domestic and international players. I have multiple adult friends who I only really talk to about soccer. None of that proves anything about soccer's popularity, but none of it existed in the 90s.
y este muerto de hambre, nombre apellido todo hermano, como le va a pegar a un niño de 14 años, es un animal debe morir como minimo el escombro social ese pic.twitter.com/itelBUXqXT— 🌹chxbiz (@swaechxbiz) August 21, 2025 Is this the soccer culture we are missing?
When you all say "great" what exactly do you all mean? Even the top National Teams go from great to bad to great to bad. USMNT is no different but at our own level which isn't part of the elite. We are down bad right now but eventually we will get out of it. When we do, majority of US fans won't be satisfied and keep on saying that "US will never be great because we aren't winning World Cups", as if that were easy to do.
We are technically better than the Alexi Lalas days, but not better in terms of results. And that's what matters. Based on how much money is spent on soccer in America we should be better. We are not getting a very good return on our investment.
It isn't about just spending though. Colombia, for example, doesn't spend much and look how many top players they produce. It is much deeper than just spending.
Culture. We don't have it. Kids in other countries just play, watch, talk and live through one sport. In schools during breaks, before school and after school, in the streets, parks, backyards, anywhere they can play soccer they play and always find other kids to play with.
This is why we've hit our ceiling. Anybody expecting the USMNT to accomplish anything past a RO16 appearance every 4 years (barring a fluke like '02) is deluding themselves.
I've said this before, even reaching R16 every WC isn't easy to do. Since 1994-2018 only 2 National Teams did it without interruption and that was Mexico and Brazil. Mexico was grouped in 2022 so that leaves only Brazil. Argentina, Spain, France, Germany etc all have been grouped in a WC in that time frame. Usually after being the defending WC champions. US fans just have way too high of expectations, delusion-like, that think we should be improving year after year and never have any set backs.
I think it's mainly because 1. It sounds so defeatist. American culture has always been about striving for the best and accepting nothing less. Hence the whole "Project 2010" pipe dream. And 2. To most casuals, supporting a team where "failure" at the same stage every time is considered success is simply boring and unfulfilling. Many fans hope to see some sort of improvement and aren't willing to concede that such improvement is unfeasible in this country. So they get frustrated when we accomplish our goals because we didn't improve. Then they get frustrated when people who live in reality point out these facts to them and claim we're "setting expectations too low".
That expectation is fed by not living in a world with real competition with the mainstream American sports. You don't have real competiton on a global scale, as pointy football, baseball, basketball are niche sports elsewhere. So the casual soccer"fan" in the States, the ones not interested enough to dig into knowing more about the game, probably sees soccer as just another sport (in the USA spectrum) and projects his expectations gotten from the standing of the USA mainstream sports onto soccer and then gets disappointed.
Sounds off to me. Casual sports fans in the U.S. realize other countries are much better at men’s soccer. If anything it’s still seen as primarily foreign rather than “just another sport” in the domestic landscape. Online at least it’s the hardcore U.S. soccer fans (the kind that obsessively follow Americans in Europe) who expect the U.S. should be close to that next level success where getting past the round of 16 is expected. It wasn’t casual sports fans doing “real coach” victory laps when Pochettino was hired.
Well, you're the one with best access on how casual and dedicated fans see things, so I bow to that and kuddo to the casual ones for being the realists. Bit surprising to learn the ones with more time watching and I guess better understanding of the game are the ones with the rosy glasses views.
Yeah, we Dutch won a baseball "worldcup" some years ago, but those core American sports being played globally, doesnot make those competitions are anywhere near USA levels. Let's say the best are like Eredivisie vs EPL.
Casual sports fans aren't realists either... their expectations are often distorted in the opposite direction because they've absorbed the stereotype that Americans are bad at soccer, and I've known a fair number of them to expect to lose to Caribbean minnows and be surprised when the USMNT wins any games at all.