The whole article is junk. The reason that most Americans don’t find soccer important is just a quirk of history.
The reason the rest of us find it ‘important’ is not because we live in mud huts and kick rolled up socks around on a dusty backstreet somewhere in the third world as the article implies, because a lot of us don’t. Rather we just like the game and want our team to win (or just do well).
Yep.
A century or more ago when American colleges were deciding which sports to play in the fall, there were three choices: There was "Association Football" called soccer. There was rugby which was developed from soccer, and There was the Harvard Game (or American football) which was developed from rugby.
It was in fact just a quirk of history, that what we call football was chosen.