OK, my second thing is, how do people, esp. none soccer fans deal with the fact that kids play so much soccer, and aren't brought up more on traditional US sports? I would hate it if, while I was living in England, my kids were playing more basketball or baseball, than soccer. Soccer seems to be the 'kids' sport here, so what I don't understand is, where does go once these kids grow up, surely they still like it, so why isn't it more supported? Just how well is soccer progressing into the mainstream in the US these days?
A couple of issues here. Remember in this country pro soccer is a summer sport. It goes head-to-head w/ baseball. Lots of baseball dads feel the same way about soccer as you would if your kids took up basketball. These dads don't take their kids to MLS matches, so the kids don't get the experience. Importantly, Pro soccer went bankrupt in the early 80's. Its a damn shame that the NASL couldn't have morphed into MLS, but there was a 10 or so year lag between the end of the NASL and the '94 World Cup/'96 MLS start. MLS and US Soccer have had to build up from the rubble. Real progress is being made - check into the list of daily newspaper articles and on-line print columns. Press coverage is easily a order of magnitude larger than it was 6 or 7 years ago.
Part of the reason it's a "kiddie sport" around here is parents view it as safe - which is mostly is for 6 year olds. As you get into middle school (12-14 year olds) there isn't much soccer to be had. It usually re-appears at the high school level (15-18 year olds) in a much more physical form. By then, most kids have moved on to other sports. The "safe sport" stigma is still attached, however. Most high school kids think soccer is "soft". My mom still admits that she wasn't prepared for how tough soccer really was (I had three x-rays in one season, my brother had a cat-scan the same season - he was a goalkeeper). So, basically, kids play the sport when they are very young because the risk of injury is low, then when things like tactics might be introduced there isn't much in the way of organized soccer, and by the time kids are old enough that they can play organized soccer again, they've moved on to other sports, and don't want to be viewed as playing a "soft" sport. There are leagues to play in at all ages, but above about 8 or 10 and before you get to high school there aren't cheap alternatives like school teams or a local YMCA league. The only real alternative is traveling teams, and those are expensive (and pay-to-play to boot).
I can see an improvement in the amount of coverage, I have quietly followed the MLS from when I was back in England, I just wonder how much repect it is gaining by the typical american, I've always heard jokes about it being a sissy game etc.... Has that perception changed much? the above was typed before the further above post, which answered the question.
As a youth soccer coach I'll give this one a shot. There are a couple of things I have noticed. First, soccer has become accepted as a good sport for kids of all sizes. My dad (I'm 33) started me playing soccer, even though he never did and knew nothing about the sport, because we are short. I am 5'7". He realized that many South Americans excel at the sport and he wanted a sport his kids would have a good shot at. The parents also seem more "enlightened". They are willing to let their kids play a sport that they know little to nothing about just because the kid wants to. In this same vein, I would let my kid play baseball if they really wanted to. I would sit in the stands in anguish, but I would smile and cheer and encourage them. Luckily, my kids seem to love soccer as much as I do. Just a couple of things I've noticed over the past few years. Scumby
I think it's changed some... but not enough. The biggest problem is getting people to put aside their preconceptions and actually watch - because virtually none of these soccer-bashers have actually tried watching games. Hell, that DCU-Dallas game last weekend should've settled the fact that 0-0 draws aren't always boring and that soccer isn't a soft sport.
Foosinho makes some good points. Soccer has primarily been a suburban sport - at least in White America. To wit, the Burn & Fire are both playing in horrible stadiums because they really want to draw the suburnbanites. Also, until MLS started up, pro soccer wasn't an option for athletically gifted kids. I think that's changing - kids can watch MLS - and many foriegn leagues. Then there's the MNT. There are a lot more options that weren't available or apparent. There's a whole immigrant market, but that's another post another time.
I think that's just now starting to change and here's why soccer might be poised to grow in popularity over the next 5-10 years -- just one man's opinion, but... I'm 33 years old. I started playing soccer when I was 7 years old, but was a part of the first generation of kids in the US who had ready access to soccer as an organized youth sport. Talk to someone closer to 40 (or older) and they usually don't remember much soccer being available, especially in parts of the country where football and baseball are so huge (think: mid-west and central US). It could probably be argued that soccer as a youth sport grew first in areas with larger immigrant populations. For me, that was the California bay area, but it's probably a similar story in southern California, Florida, and the bigger cities (NY, Chicago, LA). Ok, so fast-forward 25 years and all those kids are now finding themselves with kids of their own and (hopefully) some disposable income that's earmarked for "entertainment". In my case, that means season tix to the Rapids, buying the MLS Shootout television package, picking up shirts and souvenirs here and there, playing the game, coaching a youth team, staying up late to watch World Cup matches, and generally being a fan. Though she recognizes football, basketball, and baseball when she sees it, my daughter (3 years old) has no doubt about what Daddy's favorite sport is. And thus far, she loves it as well... I know that, for now, that's simply because she's a "Daddy's Girl". But I'm hopeful that as she gets older, she has lots of positive memories surrounding the game, wants to play the game herself, and has the same love for it that I have. I have several friends and neighbors who are in a similar situation -- they played as a kid, may still play as adults, and are exposing their kids to the game as well. So, combine the fact that soccer-playing kids are now soccer-watching (and money-spending) adults, with the fact that US-based soccer kids are having some success in the world (the US in the World Cup semi-finals?!?), and you have a fairly strong foundation on which US Soccer and MLS can build the game. They just need to not screw it up.
Soccer as a kid's sport really took off in the 70's but was really low level with nobody really understanding the game. As a spectator sport it alos was present with the NASL full of old but great stars such as Pele and Beckenbaur. However this generation produced the first level of the home grown fans (non-immigrant). As you can imagine most of them are just in their 30's and only just starting to have kids and coach. This generation was also the base of the first American soccer players to make any noise whatsoever at the international level. You have to remember that the US never qualified at all for forty years in a relatively weak confederation composed of mostly small central american countries. Only Mexico is what you would call a decent soccer power. The current generation of players is much better. Most are from families were the parents at the very least watched soccer and are conversant with what might be needed. Additionally their coaches might have actually played at a decent level once. Add this to the continuous number of immigrants coming to the US and we'll soon see that a substantial part of the American people will be soccer families. How do otehr poeple take it? Not so bad. It isn't like it's threatening to take over all the other sports. Besides, every American relishes the idea of being able to beat the rest of the world at it's own game.
I don't fully agree with this. About 20 million Americans play soccer. Far more than any other sport save basketball (I think it's about 64% more than play baseball). The growth in players 18 years of age and older is substantially faster than the overal growth numbers (i.e., adults are picking up the sport; more than 4 million now play soccer). Not only are more Americans playing soccer, but they're playing more soccer per person (growth in numbers of players since 1987 has been about 24%, but growth in days played per person has grown by one-third). While kids aged 6-11 are the largest single group of players, about 9 million, the are over 6 million players aged 12-17. I agree that soccer participation is skewed toward the wealthy. In general, though, the problem is that relatively few soccer layers are soccer fans in the US. Many millons play, but few of those players bother to watch MLS.
I live in Maryville, TN just south of Knoxville, just North of the Smokey Mts. I spend alot of time traveling in the mountain areas of Tennessee, Georgia and North Carolina, in other words areas where one might not expect to see anything soccer related. But now, driving through SMALL towns (3,000 or 4,000 people) such as Blairsville and Chatsworth, GA, Robbinsville and Murphy, NC, you see lots of baseball parks. With soccer goals in the outfiled areas. And when school is in session, you see the kids kicking a ball around in the yard. When people in these areas are playing soccer, not to mention the literal human wave of Latinos moving into the area, I think we can rest (comfortably) about the way people see the sport in America. Now, I must find an excuse to leave work and be home in front of my TV for the Real v. Juventus CL game today. (Its on the deuce right?)
Critical Mass.... I think that we are now achieving critical mass as a sport. Yes, you might think I'm premature but one of the characteristics of critical mass is that you don't realize it until after the fact. Cases in Point: (1) The number of new stadiums. Remember the NASL was just a league. When it went poof, there was nothing left. Stadiums mean something. The MLS could take a dirt bath next week, but if you have soccer specific stadiums, someone is going to playing in them next year. (2) Support for the national team. Last year in April the US played Mexico in Denver before the WC. It drew 40,000 fans. This week's rematch will sell out an almost 70,000 seat stadium. And at premium prices. I remember when they drew 15,000 fans on a good day. (3) Quantity and quality of players. I can remember when the USMNT was composed mostly of players with foreign connections. Either they moved here and became naturalized or they had been playing in Europe. The player pool is growing every year now and there's some very fine players coming up. I could go on and on, but I think that in years ahead, we will remember this time as when we made it over the hump.
As yet another 30-something that started when he was 7-8yrs old on the East Coast (Northern Virginia) there was plenty of soccer going on along both coasts and the larger Midwest cities, but not much in the smaller Midwest communities. I was on a travelling team and even the small podunk towns in VA had teams we would drive to, although we literally played on cow pastures a few times. When I then moved to a small Missouri town when I was 15yrs old my Mom actually had to start up a soccer club so my sister and I could both continue playing, only the Lions Club had teams up to age 8 or 10(?) and then nothing after that. Nothing soccer-wise my age was available except in St. Louis, 2-hrs away. Once the league got started there was plenty of competition locally and we travelled to other towns/cities to play games as well once they got going. Sadly, my High School didn't have a team until right after I graduated. This was the case throughout the area and probably contributed to a lot of soccer players quitting soccer and start playing other sports. Just a few of us diehards continued playing, enough to have an under-18 travelling team. Now that my generation is old enough to have kids and continue the tradition I'm sure the fan base will continue to grow. The problem that we have with supporting MLS specifically is we're nowhere near an MLS city to make weekly trips, so we support our local team, the Des Moines Menace in the PDL. We do watch when an MLS game is on TV, we're usually at a bar after one of our league games and catch the Saturday afternoon game. And I'm happy to say that a lot of the podunk towns in Iowa have club teams for all age groups and in the High Schools now as well and the sport/fan base will continue to grow! Now if we can just friggin' figure out where to put the new $22million stadium promised for the Menace and we'll be set!
So much of what the MLS needs is those suburban parents acceptance. I'm a father of four, aged 6 to 12. When it comes to sports, they take my lead. I follow pretty much everything except for basketball, but my kids know that soccer is pretty much my favorite. We attended MLS matches regularly when we lived in MLS areas. (NJ and CA). They thought it was a big deal and followed it because I made it a big deal and followed it religiously. But they were definitely in the minority amongst their friends when they would talk about going to games that their friends did not know even existed, and all these kids played on a least one soccer team. Maybe MLS needs to affiliate itself better with the youth programs in their catchment areas. The perception that MLS is a rinky-dink league that will soon fold is a commonly held view.
The young twenty somethings... In my job, I work with a lot of undergraduates, and over the course of the last several years, I've noticed a big big shift in the presence of soccer in the consciousness of the 18-21 year old cohort. when I first started teaching at the undergrad level in 1990, soccer was pretty much off the radar. Today, I'm joining up with a bunch of my undergraduate colleagues for the RM-Juve match. These folks have been playing "since they were able to pull on their own cleats" as one of them told me. For this crowd, soccer isn't some kind of alternative sport or niche thing, it's what they've grown up with and what they follow, period. It's quite a different view of the sport, and one that bodes very well. I think MLS will ultimately make the investors pots of money. Also, I play a lot of pick up at the university, too, and where in the early nineties, there were very few Americans who stood out on the pitch, now the American undergraduates hold their own and have fancier moves than most of the latins and Europeans with whom I play. I think that this level of skill reflects the fact that they've all be playing a lot and competitively. Just like most of these kids don't remember Ronald Reagan, they don't have a strong memory of life before soccer came of age in the US. I think those of us who are 25 and up will be the last who recall when soccer wasn't a firm part of the soccer landscape. Certainly for today's teenager, MLS has been around pretty much their whole sporting lives. G.
My statistically insignificant story: So I went to pick up my son yesterday at his afterschool care program (he's in Kindergarten). I happened to be wearing a Chicago Fire jersey (actually, it was under a jacket with only the "IR" in "Fire" visible). So I walk into the school cafeteria and one of the daycare teachers (a guy in his mid-20s) says from across the room, "Hey, is that a Fire jersey?" I said yeah and he responded that his little brother follows the team (and he does, to an extent, as well). I asked if the family has some Chicago connection (this being North Carolina and all) and he said no, his brother's just a huge fan. Not a big deal, I suppose, but it sure felt nice. Plus, the Fire fan's familly is of a demographic (African American) that we often don't think follows soccer closely. Look, I know that there are far, far more young black kids in North Carolina who dream of being the next Michael Jordon than worship, say, DaMarcus Beasley. Still, it's progress of a sort.
i dont' know how relevant all this is but.. i've grown up on the easter shore of maryland, and the only sports we had to play until highschool were soccer in the fall, and baseball in the spring. i've played soccer my whole life, and i still love it now.( i'm in college by the way) i didnt' even know things like pop warner football existed until after i graduated high school and started working in a shoe store over the summers between college. dads would come in with their kids looking for cleats and i'd take them to the soccer section, only to find out they wanted football cleats i also know that back during my grandfathers generation apparently all the small towns around me used to have town soccer teams, like they have softball and baseball teams now. i dont' what happened to them, but i've met a few people who remember the teams or their dads playing on one of them
I see soccer continuing to grow in the U.S. But I hope that it won't transition into the NFL style popularity - where being a fan becomes the main job. I like that soccer fans can usually play the game, and do on a fairly regular basis. I see that a little bit now at suburban soccer games. The kids are running around - the adults are sprawled in lawn chairs enjoying barbecue and keeping the popsicles cold in the cooler. Get up and kick the ball around, people.