Soccer is a large part of European culture, but I think it's a very broad generalization to say, "all Europeans are hard-core soccer fans" because there are Europeans who don't like soccer or don't follow it. To look at it another way, the inverse is also true-many Europeans believe all Americans are really hardcore football fans, while in reality many of us are not, although there are many fanatics. And also, remember that most europeans call soccer football and we don't. Why is that?

I think that the american culture is so relatively new compared to the culture of most european nations that perhaps europeans have more of a history of uniting together over a shared activity.