Soccer in the U.S.

It is the FIFA World Cup Championship game, the biggest possible day in soccer for the entire world. Meanwhile while everyone in the world is watching this classic showdown between Italy and France, there is a Red Sox and Yankees series in baseball. Yet, all over the news and T.V. Stations people are analyzing of the baseball game, what playoff implications there are etc. Why is the majority of America and its T.V. Stations focused on a regular season baseball game while arguably the biggest game in the world is going on? Why hasn't soccer made it nearly as big here as it has in the rest of the world? On that same day, there is a youth soccer team who had just won its own championship. The coach decides it would be great to take the whole team out for pizza and watch the game. He figures it would be great for them to be able to watch and learn from the best of the best. They arrive at the pizza restaurant only to learn that there is no cable T.V. Station that is broadcasting the game, the only way you can watch the game is on a satellite T.V. The entire team is disappointed. Soccer is very popular among American youth, and has the most professional players out of any nation in the world. But according to Barry Cadigan, “During all this participant growth, the professional game has come and gone in this country. Several attempts at establishing the pros along the lines of the NFL, NBA and major league baseball have failed, even though some efforts, like the North American Soccer League, have had the backing of some of the country's richest corporations.(38)” Why doesn't a sport that is so popular among young Americans, and a country which produces the most professional soccer players in the world, mix well.

Soccer is the most popular sport in the world, by far. According to ProgressiveU.org, The World Cup in soccer is watched by billions of people all over the globe. It is even watched by more people than the Super Bowl, the biggest sporting event in the United States. Unlike the Super Bowl or World Series, the two biggest championships in America, the World Cup is a true world championship. It consists of 32 teams from countries around the world(ProgressiveU). Soccer is the fastest growing sport in America, but it will never become close to what it is around the rest of the world, or close to any of the other four major sports in America, football, basketball, baseball or hockey. It will probably not even become what tennis or golf has become, at least not in the near future. This is because soccer is very dissimilar from many American sports.

Soccer, unlike all other American sports, does not permit the players to use their hands. Soccer players foot skills are amazing, but it seems as if Americans are unable to grasp how great they are.

Soccer also does not permit substitutions. Although this seems like a minor detail it is not. Soccer players only come out if there is a very severe injury or if a red card, a penalty resulting in being thrown out of the game, is given. However, a player who is given a red card is not replaced, instead the team plays with one less person on the field. All of the other American team sports see substitutions as a key to the game. Teams with depth in the NFL, NBA, MLB or NHL are the only teams that win games throughout the season. In baseball pitching changes are the biggest and most important decisions that can be made by a manager during the game. Who pitches for how long can win or lose a game, or make a manager a genius or an idiot. In the