Like this:

Do you remember when you were little and practically all of your friends were part of a little league soccer team?  If not, do you at least remember all of those minivans on the road with license plates that may have read something like “SOCRMOM”?  My mom told me a few weeks ago that she apparently put me on one of those teams, but I quit after the first practice because I was overwhelmed and cried the whole time, or was afraid of the ball, or something like that.  I don’t remember that event, but it is true that if I see a ball flying at my face, my natural reaction is to cover my head, scream, and run away as fast as I can.

Now I want you to imagine a boy, named Johnny.   Johnny starts playing soccer on a little league team when he was 6 or 7 and decides one day that he will grow up to be one of the greatest soccer players in the world!  Of course,  Johnny’s dad loves to watch Monday Night Football and has a Superbowl part every year and Johnny gets interested.  They don’t watch Major League Soccer, and besides, they don’t get ESPN3, just basic cable. Middle school rolls around and Johnny decides to be part of the football team.  Now he tries to emulate his favorites players like Payton Manning,  Tom Brady, or God forbid, Brett Favre.  By now soccer is just distant childhood memory for Johnny.  What happened?  Why couldn’t Johnny be like all those great American soccer heroes like Landon Donovan and…uhhh…who else? ::scratches head::

Why is soccer not popular in the US?  While the World Cup was going on I asked people why they didn’t enjoy watching soccer and the answer I got was that it was a low scoring game with a lot of nothing happening in between goals.  I’m not going to doddle on this issue since I don’t have stats to back it up, but I will address how the US should become more of a soccer country.  I think that in light of this World Cup, we are going in that direction…a little bit.

I recently viewed the MLS game between the New York Red Bulls and Chicago Fire.  The final score was a draw, 0-0.  At first thought, you might think, ‘how boring, nobody scored!’ And actually, it was a rough game.  New York made the most shots, but missed every time.  The commentators even mentioned that these players don’t need to make fancy moves, they just need to get the ball in.  So, there was a lot of sloppy playing going on, but the crowd watching the game was really into it.  This was at the Toyota stadium in Chicago, and there was a sea of red constantly chanting and routing for their home team.  The enthusiasm made me want to be there and the commentators said that people wanting to see the game had to be turned away.  Wow, what a great sign!

Yesterday there was a ‘friendly’ game that happened between the US and Brazil in New Jersey.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get to watch this event, but Brazil undoubtedly won 2-0.  Brazil outshot the US 20-7, ouch!  Okay, so we still have a lot of work to do, but maybe one day soccer will become a popular sporting event, and maybe we’ll even make it past the quarterfinals in the next World Cup, maybe…

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