United States Becomes a Soccer Nation
July 1, 2014
Every four years, national all-star teams from 32 countries compete for soccer's World Cup trophy (© Alfredo Lopez, Jam Media/LatinContent/Getty Images).
It has been a long slog for lovers of “the beautiful game,” but the United States may finally have become a nation that knows and cares how its soccer team—which the rest of the world calls a football team—fares in the World Cup. The World Cup tournament is governed by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), and it was first held in 1930. Since then, every four years (except 1942 and 1946) a World Cup tournament has been held to determine the world’s soccer champion. This year’s World Cup games are in Brazil, and the U.S. team has played well there.
Soccer is the world’s most popular sport, but it has been slow to catch on in the United States, where baseball, basketball, and American football hold much greater sway. Salon magazine recently reported that when the U.S. team last played a World Cup game in Brazil in 1950, only one American reporter covered the game. For the next 40 years, the U.S. team did not even qualify for World Cup play; it only rejoined the tournament in 1990. FIFA granted the United States the right to host the 1994 World Cup with the agreement that the United States would form a professional soccer league—Major League Soccer (MLS).
Since the 1990′s, U.S. interest in soccer has been slowly building. In addition to World Cup interest, other factors increased soccer’s popularity. A growing population of Hispanic Americans who grew up with the game as their primary sport live in the United States. Further, millions of Americans played soccer as young children over the last four decades, and those Americans have grown up with an appreciation for the game.
In 2014, there are more than 100 American reporters and news teams covering the World Cup tournament. The initial three World Cup matches played by the United States in 2014 (against Ghana, Portugal, and Germany) averaged some 18 million television viewers each, more than the number of people who watched last year’s World Series final game or NBA finals.
Yesterday, the U.S. team, nicknamed the Yanks, faced Belgium’s Red Devils in the knockout round. The World Cup is organized first into a group stage, in which 32 teams, placed in groups of 4, play 3 games each. Teams are awarded points for their performance in this stage. From that stage, the 16 teams with the highest point totals enter the knockout round. In that phase, each game played determines who will continue in the tournament and who is knocked out of competition. Belgium beat the United States 2-1 in overtime in what many sportscasters considered to be the most exciting match of the tournament. Team USA is finished for this World Cup, but their fans are eagerly awaiting 2018′s tournament in Moscow.
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