People just see the outliers and genetic freaks that turn into superstars and completely forget that 80% of the rest of the league is from the US.
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Because we have been playing those other sports at a high level for decades where soccer is very new. That’s decades of not only infrastructure but people who know how to play the game and teach the youth.
I can find a lot of parents who can teach kids how to play the basics of football, baseball or basketball at a decent level especially for high school sports. Soccer hasn’t been like that for very long but it’s starting to come around.
It’s not just that it’s a lesser priority it’s also that we’re just seeing the first generation of adults who are having kids who actually know anything about soccer
I’ve coached a lot of soccer.
I never played at any level. There literally was nobody else to coach the teams.
Because we have generations of experience teaching those sports. Soccer is essentially the only team sport not to have originated here.
But, if you look at baseball or basketball, the gap between the US and other nations is shrinking faster that we’re shrinking the gap in soccer.
Exactly this. My dad was my rec coach before playing travel for this exact reason. He legit went to the library to get a book on the rules of soccer and basics. Meanwhile for basketball and baseball my rec teams had dads that had played in college and in triple A.
It’s a huge reason I had to go play travel, the gap in coaching was insane and I didn’t start travel ball till about 7th grade and was so far behind
Purely anecdotal but a story I have heard from a ton of people in my age group
We didn’t invent hockey, or golf, or track and field, or gymnastics, or women’s soccer. Baseball is rooted from England. We’re still one of the best countries in all those sports.
I would argue the rest of the world has barely caught up to us in basketball. We still dominate international competition in both men’s and women’s. We aren’t dominant in baseball, but are still one of the best countries in the sport. And we have a larger head start there than any other sport.
The cultural growth of a sport can take a LONG time and progress is not always linear and easy to see. Issues with the US youth sports systems aside, there is real tangible growth in popularity for soccer in the US.
I think continued growth of the domestic pro leagues is the key to everything. MLS popularity is blowing up (attendance viewership), salary growth in MLS makes it comparable to second tier European leagues (English League One, 2. Bundesliga, La Liga 2, etc.) and keeps young talent in MLS until they can make the move to top flight clubs, MLS franchise valuations where the top teams are becoming as valuable as some of the bottom end of NHL/MLB, growth of MLS youth system (MLS Next Tier 2 --> MLS Next --> MLS Next Pro --> MLS) to provide a real development pathway from U13 to pro-level. USL system as a real viable league that is expanding and going to promotion/relegation model in 2028, that can put pressure on MLS to keep getting their **** together and hopefully considering pro/rel model as well.
The sport is also just booming in popularity among youth too. Kids are every bit as obsessed with Messi/Ronaldo/Mbappe as they are with major NBA/NFL stars. Hell in my town just outside of Madison, WI soccer is THE sport. Kids hardly care about football or basketball, but they are competing for state titles (and winning quite a few) year in and year out for both boys and girls soccer.
Also don't discount the influence of massive latino population growth in the states. That cultural love of soccer isn't lost at the border and will be a big part of the growth of the sport.
I think continued growth of the domestic pro leagues is the key to everything. MLS popularity is blowing up (attendance viewership), salary growth in MLS makes it comparable to second tier European leagues (English League One, 2. Bundesliga, La Liga 2, etc.) and keeps young talent in MLS until they can make the move to top flight clubs, MLS franchise valuations where the top teams are becoming as valuable as some of the bottom end of NHL/MLB, growth of MLS youth system (MLS Next Tier 2 --> MLS Next --> MLS Next Pro --> MLS) to provide a real development pathway from U13 to pro-level. USL system as a real viable league that is expanding and going to promotion/relegation model in 2028, that can put pressure on MLS to keep getting their **** together and hopefully considering pro/rel model as well.
The sport is also just booming in popularity among youth too. Kids are every bit as obsessed with Messi/Ronaldo/Mbappe as they are with major NBA/NFL stars. Hell in my town just outside of Madison, WI soccer is THE sport. Kids hardly care about football or basketball, but they are competing for state titles (and winning quite a few) year in and year out for both boys and girls soccer.
Also don't discount the influence of massive latino population growth in the states. That cultural love of soccer isn't lost at the border and will be a big part of the growth of the sport.
I have my doubts on the last two paragraphs but would be cool if true. I don’t follow high school recruiting that closely, but I haven’t seen a 5-star football or basketball player opt to play soccer instead.
I really thought there would be substantial movement in U.S. soccer after the momentum of 2010 and the advent of how dangerous football is, leading parents to push their kids more to soccer in the fall. But that hasn’t really materialized like I thought it would. Or it’s going slower than I thought it would.
This is largely because there are almost ZERO elite athletes that aren't specialized in one sport by high school anymore. Once and a while you get a football/basketball or football/wrestling dual-sport athlete that could go either way at high level. It's not necessarily a good thing but, unless you're an extreme outlier, kids have to pick a sport to specialize in year round by like 12-13 to have a shot.
I was the assistant coach when my daughter was younger. I was basically the "set up the obsticles" guy. That and since I am into working out I was responsible for conditioning. Other than that I had no idea what was going on. Then I moved her to VSA for better training. They had a coach from South Africa and another who was from Kenya. I was just like "Ok these dudes at least sound like they know soccer better than me"
Btw I missed saying it earlier agreeing with your point here but extreme props for stepping up and doing that and giving the kids a chance to play and pursue a potential love of the game.
Well done
On the whole that's correct, because football and basketball reign supreme in the US. That doesn't mean there isn't real growth though. There are young athletes though that are choosing to specialize at soccer at young ages that very well could have been high level athletes in other sports.
Think about this team, average age of 26. Think about where the sport was in this country during the 2010 WC for example when they would have been ~10 on average.
- MLS median salary was $80K --> today it's $350K
- MLS only had 16 teams and ~4mil annual attendance --> today its 30 teams and over 11mil annual attendance
- US R16 loss drew 14.9mil viewers --> 2026 R16 loss drew over 30mil viewers
Doesn't mean there aren't issue though, because certainly a huge participation cliff exists for soccer around that 12-13 age because it is expensive and not always accessible and all those issues. Those need addressed but, even if they aren't, there is still going to be a growing pool of US talent.
It would be like if England tried to bring a team over to the NFL.
They have athletes, but woul be very limited in terms of coaching and player infrastructure. Plus, most of their best players are going to be going to soccer first. To add to that, most of their country would look at American football as more of a novelty, many of them making fun of it and making it difficult for kids to want to buck the trend and go that route.
Once they finally build a team, they struggle to find other teams to practice against since it was hard enough to field one good team, must less several good teams to help your team get live reps. Then, once they finally a few a couple burners at wide receiver, a solid QB and a good running back, they come over and get the dog-**** kicked out them by a US team that lines up and runs it down their throat who have DBs that shut down their offensive threats because they face players like that every day in practice.
Fast forward a few years and once they finally put together a serviceable team, they now struggle to keep up with the different offensive and defensive schemes and improvements that are happening in the US.
After years of getting their butts kicked, a majority of their fans lose interest and question the die-hard fans, openly mocking the rules, players, coaches, and overall failures.
Just look internationally how things have been trending. Yes US is still the best by far. That however has shrunk significantly in the past 30 years. Soccer has had almost 100 years to try to get close on the international level, and isn’t.
32 states have fall high school soccer. Football is king in America as we know, so that will get the lions share of the top athletes. Not to mention, men’s college soccer is not offering pay like football, which is a driving factor for a lot of kids, obviously.
