[BeadCounter]

The first time soccer (or, as it was called then, “socker”) was seriously put forward as an American trend was in 1905, when President Teddy Roosevelt strayed quite far from his Rough Rider roots by asserting people needn’t die playing American football.

Imagine that.

USA actually has a long history in playing soccer; the early colonists played soccer, USA was actually a SEMIFINALIST in the FIRST WORLD CUP in 1930.

Despite people often bringing up English and other countries' hooliganism, there were soccer riots in America decades ago.

USA played our first match as team USA back in 1885 vs. Canada, our first real sanctioned match against Sweden in 1916.

[newfreep]

Sorry, but in 2014 soccer continues to be boring with only a small, fringe audience in US.

Referencing Roosevelt is quite pathetic to support such a boring sport. Dude, that was almost 100 years ago.

I do admit soccer hooligans and drunks keep it on the same level as “professional” wrestling.

[BeadCounter]

The women’s USA team has been very popular for years, now the men’s team’s popularity has really picked up.

The Olympics, that’s been global for years, so I certainly don’t buy that the media is trying to get us going global. The World Cup has existed for years, just like the Olympics, countries may join in the competition or they can choose not to.

Ethnic groups from Europe comprised a lot of the soccer that was played in the USA decades ago, hence the US Open Cup has been won by teams that often refer to ethnic groups, Hungarians, Yugoslavians and so on.

Answers for this are rather drawn out but all the data supports it.