> Question for the Americans: Is soccer really on the brink of becoming a popular sport in your country?
No, but it's slowly trending upwards. Without looking it up, the top American spectator sports are American football, baseball, basketball, NASCAR racing, hockey, golf, and tennis.
The problem is that the best American athletes look to one of top three American sports - if you look at top NBA and NFL players, many of them seem well-suited to futbol, but it's not where the money/popularity/culture is at in the USA yet. As long as the fast and strong American athletes are looking to become running backs, wide receivers, and point guards instead of midfielders and strikers, the game won't reach the height of popularity. But it'll slowly grow in popularity if the U.S. keeps making decent showings internationally. Being a top 5 American sport by 2030 wouldn't surprise me.
After that, it'd really only take one charismatic, transcendental American player for the sport to really break through - if there was an American Pele, Maradona, George Best type player, it'd go a long ways, just like Tiger Woods did for golf, Joe Namath did for American football, Michael Jordan did for basketball, etc, etc. So I could see the game trending up in the rankings, and then it's all about if it gets the one dominant, charismatic force that people fall in love with who kids want to follow in the player's footsteps.
Most top NBA and NFL players are fucking huge, because those sports reward gigantism. Soccer doesn't, with the slight exception of the goalkeeper, because even when the height or size of a Peter Crouch or Per Mertesacker gives you an advantage, being able to run circles around Per Mertesacker or get your defense behind Peter Crouch somewhat mitigates it.
I'm thinking someone like Chris Paul or Rajon Rondo - same height and similar physical build to Cristiano Ronaldo, very fast and tough players with a good idea for spacing and good intuition and decisionmaking. Who knows how they'd take to the game, but I wouldn't be surprised if either could play futbol at the highest level.
No, but it's slowly trending upwards. Without looking it up, the top American spectator sports are American football, baseball, basketball, NASCAR racing, hockey, golf, and tennis.
The problem is that the best American athletes look to one of top three American sports - if you look at top NBA and NFL players, many of them seem well-suited to futbol, but it's not where the money/popularity/culture is at in the USA yet. As long as the fast and strong American athletes are looking to become running backs, wide receivers, and point guards instead of midfielders and strikers, the game won't reach the height of popularity. But it'll slowly grow in popularity if the U.S. keeps making decent showings internationally. Being a top 5 American sport by 2030 wouldn't surprise me.
After that, it'd really only take one charismatic, transcendental American player for the sport to really break through - if there was an American Pele, Maradona, George Best type player, it'd go a long ways, just like Tiger Woods did for golf, Joe Namath did for American football, Michael Jordan did for basketball, etc, etc. So I could see the game trending up in the rankings, and then it's all about if it gets the one dominant, charismatic force that people fall in love with who kids want to follow in the player's footsteps.