World Cup Soccer 2010: Football in America
The USA football team had never been a serious contender for any sort of glory at World Cup finals. All that changed recently with a very strong American team holding England to a draw and tonight in an amazingly well fought match, they even held Slovenia to a 2-2 draw. The team that was once a joke has risen from the ashes to become a serious player on the world stage. This evolution has been a steady one that has taken years to come to fruition and now America is ready to conquer the football world.
Football, or soccer as it is called in America, was never one of the three big sports in the country. A young talented sports star would only think about going to basketball, baseball or American football. Now they have a fourth option; soccer. The real renaissance of the game started in the 1960's. “In 1960, Bill Cox, a major promoter saw the potential for Soccer to join the bandwagon, and envisioned a truly top-level professional soccer league, and set out to create one”. This led to the creation of the first soccer league in America which just continued to grow and grow.
The next major stage in the country's soccer development came with the development of the MLS league (Major League Soccer) in 1996. “Although it was clear soccer had a long way to go, the league drew much better than expected, quality of play was above predictions and fan response was enthusiastic, and financial losses were less than expected”. This league helped cement a place for soccer amongst the big three sports in the country.
After the introduction of this new league, the stars started to flow. Among the biggest names in US soccer was a young talented footballer named Landon Donovan. "Landon continues to be the dominant force in US Soccer, boasting 120 caps and 42 international goals and being named the Honda Player of the Decade,". He seems to be the driving force on the US team and he has this ability to motivate and uplift his whole team as was evident in the match they just played against Slovenia. Being two goals down, an amazing shot by him gave America their first goal, which they then turned into two with another brilliant strike by Michael Bradley. Donovan's goal brought a renewed level of confidence into the team.
With American soccer at such a recent high, the team performed brilliantly and caused a few upsets in the 2002 World Cup in Japan/Korea. They managed to reach the quarterfinals of that tournament. "After their embarrassing performance in 1998, the United States bounced back in 2002 to reach the quarterfinals. In their opening game the Americans shocked everyone by defeating Portugal,". Soccer had arrived in a big way for the US.
The reason why the rise of soccer has been so prominent is due to a number of reasons. One of the biggest ones seems to be that the Americans invest in sports and they invested heavily in the game to train and introduce a new generation of players to the game of soccer. It also helped that they had a few great players that could become icons for the next generation. The rise of Donovan has given a new icon to millions of kids in America to take up the sport. “According to FIFA's figures, [America is] the country with the second-most people who kick a ball at least once a year - about 24 million, behind China's 26 million. Kids play soccer -- more than play most traditional US sports”. The fact that soccer is popular amongst children in America is a fact that will allow them to have a crop of ready and talented players in a few years to lead a new team to victory.
More countries should follow the example of the US and see how soccer evolved in the country for them to be able to produce a very talented and spirited team. We may yet see unheard of countries qualifying for the next World Cup; the likes of Iraq, Afghanistan, Malaysia and Greenland are not far off. All they have to do is lead a soccer revolution just like the US did.
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