Soccer Boom Not Expected in U.S. after World Cup Run

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, June 22, 2002

Soccer Boom Not Expected in U.S. after World Cup Run

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Despite an unexpected nation- wide big screens from stadiums for the quarter-final match between the United States and Germany, soccer is likely to remain as a niche sport for the kids instead of adults in the United States after its great moments in the 2002 World Cup.

By losing to Germany 1-0, the Americans did prove that their 3- 2 win over Portugal and 2-0 victory over Mexico were no fluke and justified their huge strides achieved in the past years, especially the six-year-old of the Major League Soccer (MLS) with home players scoring five of seven goals in the World Cup.

However, lastest polls showed that only 12 percent are "very" interested in soccer, against 45 percent "not at all". The 2002 World Cup, where the U.S. team achieved its biggest in modern soccer history, only won over another 3 percent of fans for the sport which majority of its peoeple don't understand, including president Gerorge W. Bush.

"I'm sorry for so many smart editors at reputable newspapers who should have known better, bought wholesale into the notion that soccer has arrived because of the U.S. team's historic run in the World Cup," said Los Angeles Times columnist Alan Abrahamson.

"That's nonsense. Soccer is not, will not become, and will never be the incredible sporting, cultural, even political influence it is in virtually every other nation on the planet," Abrahamson said.

In the past 20 years, soccer becomes the second biggest sport behind basketball for kids in the United States. Almost 14 million under the age of 18 played soccer in 2000, and the number grew by 73 percent from 1989 to 1999, according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association.

Yet, "as the kids get older, 10 or 11 years old, there develops immense pressure to turn away from soccer to pursue baseball, basketball and football ... the pressure comes not from adult role models but from peers. Those boys who stay in soccer are called derisively 'soccer monkeys'," said Abrahamson.

"Then comes high school. I will say this bluntly, and this may well be the crux of the problem, the real reason soccer has no chance here: unlike the rest of the world, being a high school boys' varsity, soccer player in the U.S. is not the way to get girls."

Many say the Americans like the winners. The U.S. Women has won the World Cup twice in 1991 and 1999. But the women's professional WUSA soccer league reported average attendance dropped to 7,237 this year from 8,104 in its first year. In a sharp contrast, the Wildcats, a 34-game football losing streak, even drew an average 24,370 fans per game in 1981.

"While soccer has become popular with some moms and a ton of tots, it seems to lose spectator interest when the children reach adulthood," wrote New York Times columnist Ira Berkow.

And Washington Post's columnist Marc Fisher even denounced soccer as "Osama bin-Laden's favorite game", calling the sport " athletic drudgery that causes much of the rest of the globe to overthrow governments, tear apart concrete stadiums and impale themselves on the wire fences deemed necessary to pen them in."

After staging the 1994 World Cup, the Americans founded the MLS two years later, but had to eliminate two of its 12 founding teams this year with an average attendance of 15,500 this season.

By contrast, there are 30 Major League baseball teams, 29 basketball franchises, 31 football teams and 30 hockey teams in the United States.

"Soccer will never be a U.S. TV hit," said columnist Michael Hiestand of USA Today, not because it has too many foreigners, not enough U.S. success and too little scoring, but because of TV itself that "can't package and can't predict".

Soccer "can't be sliced and diced into Olympic-like vignettes. They require viewers to actually like soccer." At the World Cup, teams are only guaranteed three first-round games, so U.S. networks won't put any big financial and promotional push behind the Cup, he said.

And that's the reason why Disney-owned ABC and ESPN (two U.S. TV channels) wouldn't pay anything for the 2002 World Cup after paying 28 million dollars for the 1998 Cup. And MLS owners, despite of their losing money over the years, had to step in with 40 million dollars for 2002 and 2006 World Cups TV package.

Also surprisingly, the U.S. soccer still failed to allure its fast-growing Hispanic community, namely those die-hard soccer fans, with many of whom supporting Mexico.

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