Gomez

Daniel Gomez
Professor Morgan
UWRT 1102
26 March 2015
The Love for the Beautiful Game
The United States is extremely obsessed with sports, except for the most popular
sport in the world, soccer. The FIFA World Cup is the soccer version of the Super Bowl
where the best thirty-two countries play, and it only happens once every four years. The
United States has hosted the World Cup once, and the United States even scored the
fastest goal in the 2014 World Cup. If the United States is so crazy about sports, then why
is soccer the exception?
The love for the World Cup in the United States has been growing more and more
with each World Cup that passes by. Americans love to get together and watch the World
Cup but once this great event is over, they forget about soccer. The love for one of the
best sports event in the world is there but the love for the actual game itself is not. In
America, there are other big sports, which has lots of fans like football, basketball, and
baseball. These sports attract huge crowds to the stadiums, bars, restaurants, and even
other people's houses in order to watch the sport take place. The Super Bowl is the
biggest event here for Americans, and they love the game just as much as the event that
happens every year.
Major League Soccer, MLS, has only about twenty teams. MLS is the soccer
league that is played in the United States. This league is not very popular and does not
have as many fans as the leagues that are played in Europe. As of April 15, 2015 the

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average attendance for MLS games were 21,343, and the aggregated attendance was
1,152,534 people (MLS Statistics). The average attendance for Englands Barclays
Premier League games, BPL, were 36,032 and the aggregated attendance was 11,530,453
people (Prem Statistics). That is a humongous difference. MLS has grown over the years
and become more popular, but it is nowhere near as popular as the European leagues are.
In America, everyone loves winners. This is one reason why soccer is not so
popular in America. The mens U.S National Team has never won the World Cup before;
they have not even reached the final match in a World Cup. The Womens U.S National
team has won the World Cup before. Most people watch the mens soccer game, and
without the men winning, it brings no interest to the citizens of this country. Winning the
World Cup would make soccer grow more in this country (Keolanui).
Americans do not like ties. They always want to see a winner. Baseball is a sport
that is not timed, but the game goes on for a good while until there is a winner. In soccer
there can be a tied game and Americans always want to see a team win, which makes
soccer less interesting. After the game is tied, the game goes to a penalty shootout and it
is an easy win for the team that makes no mistakes when kicking. After a long and intense
game that ends in a tie, and then ending up losing because of luck is not the way
Americans like sports (Keolanui).
When someone talks about soccer, and people relate it to professional athletes, not
everyone thinks of American players. Some people might think of Tim Howard, or Clint
Dempsey because of how well they performed in the past World Cup. There are other
great American players but there arent too many out there. American players are not as
recognizable as the players in Europe. America usually has the best athletes in every

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sport. Most of the best football, basketball, and baseball players are Americans. Soccer is
an exception and this makes it be a little less important because it doesnt make one as
proud (Keolanui).
One of the biggest reasons why Americans dont love soccer is because there are
no commercial breaks. The game has two halves and each half lasts forty-five minutes,
with fifteen-minute halftime. There is no time to get up to get a beer, or go to the
bathroom, or grill some food while watching soccer. The game might only get one goal
and a person might miss the goal if they want to get up and do whatever it is they need to
do. There is also no time for the commercials that everyone enjoys watching, like the
ones shown during the Super Bowl. This makes less television networks want to
broadcast games in America since they wont make any money from commercials
(Keolanui).
According Ivan Waddington and Martin Roderick, in each society there is a
limited amount of space for sports, and once that designated space is filled by
one sport (such as football in the U.S.), there is little room for other sports.
(Ontko).
These two researchers say that once a countries sports fan conscience is taken up by a
sport that is the main sport for them, then there is very little room for interest in other
sports. Andrei Markovits, a professor in the University of Michigan, says that in the
United States, soccer was not adopted because American football and baseball where the
main sports in the country and therefore soccer could not be part of the culture (Ontko).
Markovits also says that football has characteristics that are uniquely American. Since the

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American Revolution, the U.S has wanted to be different and distinguish itself from other
countries.
Since sport plays such a crucial role in society, the urge to assume a national
sport divergent from that of Great Britain ultimately led to the diminished
popularity of soccer in America. (Ontko.)
During the 2014 World Cup that was in played Brazil, the world came together to
watch the best players in the world play in order to get crowned as the best country in the
world at soccer. The United States first game, which was played against Ghana, was the
most watched soccer game ever on ESPN (Thompson). The U.S beat Ghana in the first
game of the group stages in an intense game between the two countries. Soccer isn't
becoming America's new baseball. The World Cup is becoming America's new Summer
Olympics, says Derek Thompson, a reporter for The Atlantic. The amount of people that
watched the World Cup has been increasing with the years but it is still nowhere near the
amount of people that watch the Super Bowl. The average audience for the NFL Super
Bowl is 108.7 million, the NFL average is 17.4 million, the MLB championship is 14.9,
and the U.S-Ghana game was only 11.1 million (Thompson).
In the last World Cup, there were more than three billion interactions on
Facebook. About 26.5 million people in the United States watched the final between
Germany and Argentina. There were about 17.3 million viewers on ABC and 9.2 million
on Univision. This is an increase in the amount of Americans that watched the last game
of the World Cup in 2010 with 24.7 million viewers. The average viewership for all 64
World Cup matches was up 39 percent over 2010 on ESPN and its sister station ABC, and
34 percent on Univision, Nielsen said (Bauder). The amount of people that watched

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MLS Cup 2014 was only about two million people (MLS). When compared to the
amount of people that watched the World Cup final is a lot lower.
America has tried to get soccer to be more popular in the country. MLS
teams have been bringing well-known players to the country like the famous Spaniard
soccer player David Villa, and the Brazilian superstar Ricardo Kaka. Those are just two
of many players that are starting to play in the MLS at the end of their careers. Former
Arsenal striker and French player Thierry Henry played in the MLS and retired in the
MLS, and David Beckham was also someone who played in the MLS. More and more
teams want to bring more talent from Europe to America, but it is not as easy as it sounds.
Most of the young players in Europe want to stay there and improve because they have
better coaches and training techniques. The players that come to the MLS are players who
have been around for a while, and are close to hanging the boots. Bringing these famous
players to the MLS has caused more people to become interested in the league and pay
more attention to it.
Bringing well-known players to the league is not the only way to get people to
love soccer more. Every league in Europe has rivalry in it. The Barclays Premier League,
BPL, which is the league played in England, has about 4 different rivalries. This makes
soccer more intense and makes more people watch the game because they obviously want
their team to beat their rivals. One of the main rivalries is the Manchester derby, which is
Manchester United against Manchester City. In 2012, it was estimated that more than 600
million people across the world watched the game on television in which Manchester
City won 1-0 (Montague). This is a huge number of people who watched just one game
between two huge rivals in Europe. The Australian League created rivalries in their

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soccer league in order to get more people to love the beautiful game. The main sport in
Australia is not soccer, but the Australians love both soccer and Rugby (Pelosi).
Another strategy that Australia used to get its citizens to love soccer was to find
talent at a very young age. This means that Australia found some extremely good and
talented players who were very young and had not been signed to any club yet (Pelosi).
The problem with developing players, who are born here, is that these players want to
grow up as a player and play for a team overseas where they can make a good amount of
money. The MLS must become a very profitable league so that these players would want
to stay in the league (Pelosi). Another aspect that players look at as when they want to
grow as player are better coaches and playing techniques, which in America is not as
good as the leagues in Europe (Pelosi). Coaches, just like in any other sport, are
extremely important for players so having a bad coach means having a bad future as a
player because they wont get the chance to develop their skills.
All in all, Americans do not love soccer as much as the rest of the world does.
One reason why soccer is not as popular is because there are other sports that are more
important for Americans than soccer. Americans love winners, and in soccer that has not
happened yet. Another reason is that nobody likes when a game ends up in a tie, or is
defined by luck during a penalty shootout. There are very few commercials during soccer
games, so less television networks broadcast soccer games. With more supporters of the
beautiful game in this country, the U.S National Team might win the World Cup, and
make soccer one of the main sports in the country.

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Works Cited
Bauder, David. "The World Cup Final Was The Most Watched Soccer Game In U.S.
History." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 13 Sept. 2014. Web. 6
Apr. 2015.

Keolanui, Craig. "Top 10 Reasons Soccer Is Not a Major U.S. Sport." TheRichest. 18
June 2014. Web. 19 Apr. 2015.

"MLS Cup Watched by Nearly Two Million Viewers, Capping off Record -setting MLS
Postseason." MLSsoccer.com. 11 Dec. 2014. Web. 6 Apr. 2015.

"MLS Statistics." 1 Apr. 2015. Web. 19 Apr. 2015.

Montague, James. "City Beat United in Battle of Manchester - CNN.com." CNN. Cable
News Network, 1 May 2012. Web. 4 Apr. 2015.

Ontko, Kelsey, Julia Fogleman, and Lucas Nevola. "Why Is Soccer Less Popular in the
U.S.?" Soccer Politics The Politics of Football. 5 Nov. 2009. Web. 7 Mar.
2015.

"Prem Statistics." Barclays Premier League Statistics. 1 Apr. 2015. Web. 19 Apr. 2015.

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Pelosi, Jean-paul. "How to Make Americans Love Soccer: Just Copy Australia." The
Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 10 Apr. 2013. Web. 5 Mar. 2015.

Thompson, Derek. "Americans Love the World Cup; We Still Don't Care About
Soccer." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 23 June 2014. Web. 8 Mar.
2015.