The USA / Ghana game was the very first time I ever watched soccer on T.V.
For being the most popular sport on the planet....I have no idea why...
I’m glad we won....I would never have described the game as “Dramatic”...
Ok, you may have to sit down before you read the following. We (the USA) suck. We steadily are getting better. If you are looking for excitement, best look elsewhere for another decade.
My first guess is that it can be played by kids anywhere and is free. All they need is an old beat up soccer ball
On one of my trips to Honduras I watched a group of kids who were the children of the campusinos (field workers) playing soccer barefooted out in the boonies on a beat up field overgrown with weeds and stones..........That was the only playtime available for them.
Here in the states you seldom see kids gathered together playing pick up soccer or pick up baseball by themselves. Everything has to be organized......
I'm retired and play lots of senior softball (age 55+). Mon and Wed mornings are league days and Fri and Sundays are pickup days where anywhere from 20 to 35 guys show up and we pick up sides and play.
And we all reminince about growing up as kids and spending all day every day of the summer at the playground playing pickup ball. Maybe 4 kids, maybe more, it didn't matter, we always had a way to improvise a game with our bats balls and gloves........
You never see that anymore with today's kids. They're all on organized teams with organized practices, and all vying to get picked up by a "travel" team separate from the little league team.......
The managers of these "travel" teams are all crazy, they expect to get into tournaments every weekend and they expect the parents of these kids to cooperate. The monetary outlay on these kids by their parents is astronomical when you consider the traveling, the gas, the food, and in many cases lodging..........
With all the above going on, I can't really call baseball a "kids" game anymore.....
Virtually every team had full uniforms and every kid had a matching gear bag. The gear bags have rollers and cost in the neighborhood of $100 - $125..........
When we played little league the manager gave us a cotton t-shirt that we had to give back at the end of the season......LOL!