“I’ve been at the World Cup abroad, and there were a ton of Americans there.”
So ten to twenty Americans there?
I played some baseball in college, boxed some, and was a big NFL and NBA fan, so an average American sports fan. I never played or knew anything about soccer when I was a kid. The first soccer game I ever saw was in the US and I didn't understand the game at all. I wasn't a fan, and I actually had a thing against soccer because of the whole ‘soccer mom’ liberalism at the time.
Then I actually learned about world football, initially in Italy (like Kobe Bryant did), saw a few professional world-class games, and started watching. It's not what you might think. World-class soccer players are outstanding athletes. There are no time outs in soccer, the only way a player can rest is to be subbed out - and they can't come back in after that, and players often run significantly more than a 10K per game. Even if you don't like soccer, you really should give them their due as athletes.