The “Olympianization” of Soccer in the United States

Abstract

What the world calls “football,” far and away the globe's most popular sport, has led a marginal existence as soccer in the United States, where football denotes a different game that has remained an integral part of American sports culture since the late 19th century. In the past two decades, soccer in the United States has undergone a substantial metamorphosis that has altered its former marginality without, however, giving it cultural power anywhere near that still exerted by baseball, basketball, football, and even ice hockey. Soccer in America now exists in three universes that overlap yet still remain distinct from each other: the world of millions of soccer players who pursue the game on the field but have no interest to follow it beyond their active involvement, a small group of soccer aficionados whose main identification with the game rests precisely in following not playing it, and a newly developed segment that neither plays much soccer nor follows the sport yet has come to delight in the quadrennial event of the World Cup.