Why the United States Doesn't Take to Soccer

SAN FRANCISCO — On the Fourth of July, Marcus Beisel and his extended clan were glued to a TV set here. They watched in anticipation, and then horror, as their beloved Germany lost in overtime in a semifinal of soccer's World Cup, whose championship game Sunday in Berlin — matching Italy against France — will be watched by more than a billion people. (Yes, with a B.)

Avid sports fan Jeff Wong, meanwhile, didn't notice any contests on the Independence Day schedule worthy of his attention, so he took his family to a county fair in nearby San Rafael. Arcade games, petting zoos and all that jazz.

So, let's recap. Come World Cup game time, one American sees an epic athletic ballet that taps into generations of ethnic pride, and the other sees a chance to pet a goat.

Cue Rodney Dangerfield.

There's no disputing the deep disconnect that endures between those in this sports-crazed country who respect and adore what the masterful Brazilians call "the beautiful game" and those who don't.

Beisel, 35, a banker and son of German immigrants, grew up in this melting pot of a city playing soccer and watching games with his family. "It's not just a game for us, it's a part of our cultural identity," he says. "Each team reflects that nation's culture. The Brazilian players dance. The Germans are physical and precise. It's way beyond just being a sport."

Wong, 48, an architectural designer whose parents emigrated from China to the Bay Area, fell hard for baseball and football, which he coaches in his spare time. "I'm sure soccer is fun to play, but watching it is tough," says Wong, who has two sons, one of whom plays soccer. "I don't see that there's the same level of intense strategy as we have in our sports."

And the list of criticisms spills on from there, with the chief accusations being the game doesn't have enough scoring and, at worst, is simply boring.

While some argue soccer has no future in this country, other indicators say the sport could be on the road to mainstream respectability. OK, make that a long, slow shuffle up an alley that eventually could lead to a fan base that would give hockey pause.

Evidence of soccer's forward march includes:

• There's a national professional league (Major League Soccer has 12 franchises) with sexy stars (Landon Donovan remains a heartthrob) and television coverage (it's primarily cable, but still). Most players get paid in the mid-five-figures, though stars such as D.C. United's teenage phenom, Freddy Adu, earn more than $500,000 a year.

"We're optimistic, because today the sport is attractive to a range of audiences, from youth soccer players and their parents to the hard-core European soccer fan who wants to see live games," MLS Commissioner Don Garber says. "It's not the NFL, but we're 10 years old, (and football has been played here for) over 100 years."

• The World Cup, which unfolds every four years, is drawing TV ratings that are an improvement over those for previous tournaments.

"Viewership is up 90% over the 2002 Cup," says ESPN senior vice president and research guru Artie Bulgrin, referring to the South Korea/Japan World Cup, which didn't play well here because the time difference meant most games were taped. ABC/ESPN recently bought the U.S. English-language rights to the Cup through 2014. "We sense this is a major growth sport," Bulgrin says. "It's the type of audience we want — young and affluent."

• Demographic forces are decidedly in favor of soccer's eventual success in the land of the forward pass and the knuckleball.

Soccer's growth "will mirror the increase in this nation's immigrant population," says Roland Lazenby, a sports historian at Virginia Tech. "American football may always dominate, but even this World Cup you're seeing bars and cafes filled with people of different ethnic backgrounds watching together. It's a small thing but significant."

Almost had a toehold in the '70s

If you're hearing snickers, those would be courtesy of soccer's detractors. Nothing gets them going more than talk of soccer's imminent success. For them, waiting for soccer's explosion here is no different than Waiting for Godot.

After all, 30 years ago the stage was set for soccer to woo Americans from their beloved pastimes. In the North American Soccer League's glory days, more than 20 teams played in cities across this land and Canada. The epicenter was New York, whose Cosmos claimed Pelé and Franz Beckenbauer in their lineup and, once in 1977, welcomed 77,000 fans for a home game at Giants Stadium.

But like disco, the soundtrack to its times, the NASL soon fizzled, followed by a giant silence.

"Soccer in America has had every chance. We reject soccer, that's fair to say," says sports pundit Frank Deford, who is happy to lay out the reasons soccer causes him to hold his nose. "There's not enough scoring, and ties make no sense."

This World Cup isn't helping the pro-soccer cause. Two elimination games have been decided on penalty kicks after zero goals in 120 minutes of play; the tournament has posted a 2.36 goals-per-game average, the lowest since 1990.

Deford isn't finished. "There's really a lack of proficiency in the game. God didn't intend for us to use our feet and our heads. Though what soccer players do with their feet and their heads is extraordinary, it is in the same way that spinning plates is extraordinary."

And don't get him started on soccer's offside rule, which prevents attacking players from standing any closer to the opposing goal than the other team's last defender.

"That's simply un-American," Deford says. "We're all about forward, forward, forward, in sports and in our society. From the 19th century onward, we have not taken to soccer. It's almost as if it's not in our DNA to like it."

The soccer-won't-make-it crowd likes to lean on past and current social forces to buttress its argument:

• Soccer has roots in Britain, which exported the game to its colonies some 150 years ago. Little surprise we just said no.

"America was all about being independent from Great Britain, so soccer's inability to stick here really is a product of historical forces," says Randy Roberts, a historian at Purdue University. "It's also worth noting that the sports that gain popularity in any culture tend to have great appeal with the lower classes. That's true with soccer in the rest of the world and with sports like basketball here."

• So long as soccer here remains the casual sport of middle-class suburbanites and their elementary school offspring, it won't penetrate our popular culture.

"Soccer in America seems to be all about making kids and parents feel good, a place where it's OK to be so-so, as long as you're having fun," architect and part-time football coach Wong says.

"Sports are a mirror of life, which can help kids realize where they fit in. Will you be the guy who can throw that game-winning touchdown pass or not? Soccer doesn't seem to promote that."

• Our finest athletes don't gravitate toward the sport, eliminating the possibility of us ever seeing a Michael Jordan of soccer emerge from our shores. "Kids in this country may grow up playing soccer, but most seem to stop playing it fairly early in life because they lose interest," Deford says. "In the end, that proves that it's a game that's not to the taste of our top athletes."

MLS' Garber disputes this, pointing to U.S. national team member Eddie Johnson, a fleet-footed African-American who initially played football and basketball at his Florida high school. "Don't tell me he's not a great athlete," Garber says. "And he chose soccer."

As for soccer being inherently boring as compared to American staples such as baseball and football, Donovan, a Southern California native who plays for the Los Angeles Galaxy, says such talk "comes from an older generation of Americans, people who didn't grow up with it and find it hard to accept that it will be a big sport."

The political theory

Some argue that the case against soccer smacks of politics.

"There's a strain of conservatism that I think is often tied to this anti-soccer lobby," says Franklin Foer, author of How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization. "It's not about (whether soccer is in our) DNA. It is about our history. Saying soccer will never be big here assumes American culture is static."

But all such parsing from pundits tends to belabor the obvious (soccer will never be as big as football and it is not commercial-TV-friendly) and ignore the indisputable (there must be reasons folks in the farthest reaches of the planet are enamored of this game).

One powerful appeal of soccer is that victories on the pitch — especially national-team triumphs that resonate well beyond World Cup stadiums — amount to brief but shining moments in the sun for countries that, in geopolitical terms, don't enjoy such stature. Brazil is soccer's king, having won the World Cup five times; the country doesn't have commensurate clout at the United Nations.

On a player level, success hinges less on specific size requirements — almost a given in basketball and football — and more on determination and desire. Argentina's retired hero, Diego Maradona, stood only 5-5, an elusive sprite with tree-trunk legs. One of today's top strikers, the Czech Republic's Jan Koller, towers over defenders at 6-7.

And maybe most significant of all, the pace of a soccer game speaks to cultures whose own dramatic histories span centuries if not millennia. Games are less pointed battles (pitcher vs. batter) and more two-act operas where getting up mid-dribble for a beer would be as unthinkable as going for a glass of wine mid-aria.

"Soccer is a great passion play for much of the world," says Paddy Agnew, a Rome-based correspondent for the Irish Times who is covering the World Cup in Germany. "The people I talk to are glad the world's only superpower isn't much better than it is. If they won this, too, that'd be the end. What could the rest of the world aspire to?"

Agnew says the reasons the USA isn't as soccer-mad as the rest of the world "are purely cultural, and there's nothing wrong with that."

Just as our tykes gravitate toward baseball, football and basketball, kids in Ireland are keen about Gaelic football and hurling, which has "as much to do with declaring our independence from England as anything else," he says. "Your sports are your identity."

So, will soccer one day be part of our national identity? There are armies lined up behind each answer. But if odds had to be made, they would favor a "Yes," with an asterisk noting "time to be determined."

After all, this country is at its core inclusive, crazy about sports and eager to win. So soccer may well find a home here, perhaps with some homegrown tweaks.

"There's no question soccer will grow in this country. Remember, nothing spurs us on more than losing," says Virginia Tech historian Lazenby, alluding to the USA's early exit from this World Cup.

"Of course, we could wind up starting our own brand of soccer here to account for some of the game's issues," he says. "How about soccer with no goalies? Now that would be something."