The recent success of the U.S. woman’s soccer team in the World Cup gave us all a reason to cheer with their thrilling run at the title.
This is the second summer in a row that the American sports audience has shown its growing national enthusiasm for the world’s most popular game: soccer.
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Now in America when you say football, you are referring to a sport that requires much padding due to the physical contact. But in the rest of the world football is a sport that is played primarily with the feet and requires much more skill then physical contact.
Though not as insane as last summer’s Men’s World Cup tournament, the growing excitement of the global game this summer could still be felt at bars, in newspapers and through kids enjoying their summer break. So why is this game that is huge globally not even considered a major American sport?
First off, the culture of world football is completely different from the American culture of sports from the beginning to the professional leagues. In the world of footballing, the finest players are sought out from the earliest ages all over the world. In some parts of the world, football is the only escape from extreme poverty, war and the only chance at a better life. Some of the world’s best footballers come from countries like Brazil, Ivory Coast and Mexico where some of the living conditions are among some of the worst in the world.
By contrast, in countries like England, Spain and France, where overall the living conditions are better, talented players from a young age are sent to the finest football academies to prepare them for a professional life of footballing. These academies often are attached to professional clubs. Even players from impoverished countries are sent to these European academies at young ages.
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In some cases, like with Lionel Messi, they will move your entire family into a better situation. Messi was spotted at an early age by an FC Barcelona football scout in his native Argentina. They so believed in his skill as a young soccer player that they offered to move his entire family to Spain in exchange for him joining the Barcelona youth academy. Messi has been with Barcelona ever since and is considered to be one of the best footballers in the world.
Landon Donovan‘s Los Angeles Galaxy doesn’t have a youth academy. And if they ever did, the American culture of sports wouldn’t permit them to pluck adolescent players from around the globe just to bring them to the U.S. for obvious reasons.
As a country, the U.S. has one soccer academy in Bradenton, Florida that operates similar to the foreign youth academies but it’s not tied to one club team. All of the foreign born kids who play in America’s IMG Soccer Academy are U.S. citizens. The ideology behind foreign youth soccer academies is based on finding elite young players who can help the club team’s winning tradition in the future. In America though, this academy is based on targeting the best U.S. players who can help the U.S. win a World Cup.
Another huge reason soccer isn’t considered a major American sport is money and arrogance. The American culture as a whole is popular in world culture, so it’s not difficult to understand why American sports are big internationally. The NBA and MLB have a huge number of international players.
Interestingly enough, The NFL doesn’t boast huge international roster outside of players of Latin and Pacific Islander descent. Those few players, who have international ties playing in the NFL, went to American universities.
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American football is the only ‘real’ football in the 50 states and the NFL is the premiere football league in America. The world looks at America as arrogant and ignorant for putting a different spin on an already beloved global game. Foreigners often refer to it as ‘American tackle football.’
When an American mentions football and ‘The Packers’ in the same sentence while sitting in a London pub, it can be a dangerous insult to a Brit. Even the Fox Network poked fun at the American ignorance of world football through a series of commercials in a campaign to increase American soccer viewership. Naturally, most international people are only interested in playing the only ‘real football’ they know, which involves goal kicks, not field goals.
The NFL, NBA and MLB pull in hundreds of millions of dollars every year in merchandise and ticket sales, advertising and television revenues. The owners of these teams share certain revenues with their leagues which in turn helps their leagues grow and are designed to try and keep everything fiscally fair among member teams.
In the world of World Football, this ideology doesn’t exist. The richest teams like Real Madrid, Manchester United and A.C. Milan exist in elite leagues that share no revenues outside of league television revenues with other teams in their elite league. Also U.S. pro sports leagues institute a ‘salary cap’ or luxury tax. A salary cap sets a limit to what all teams can spend on one player. A luxury tax penalizes a team a certain percentage for exceeding a salary cap.
The MLS, NFL and NBA all have hard cap rules. MLB allows its teams to exceed the cap but makes them pay the luxury tax for doing so. In World Football there’s no salary cap or tax. The richest person who can afford to own the team can pay top dollar with no limit for the world’s best footballers. Oil sheiks, billionaires and other team owners are allowed to spend freely in the world’s most prominent football leagues such as the English Premier League and Spain’s La Liga.
In American pro sports, the New York Yankees organization is the closest comparison to a European Football club in terms of spending power.
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Another thing to consider is the World Football transfer market. To understand how it works, imagine if Derek Jeter were to fall out with the Yankee front office and decided he wanted out right away. Let’s say the Yankees sent him on ‘3 month loan’ to Japan’s Yomiuri Giants. Upon Jeter’s return to the Yankees, let’s say the Dodgers came and signed him away to five year contract but two years in, the Dodgers decided to ‘put Jeter up’ for transfer again. This time, Jeters ops to play in Venezuela for Tigres de Aragua. That’s basically how it works in the footballing world with players and their teams. Jeter would be a superstar in the world of baseball, but his legacy wouldn’t belong to the Yankees.
American sports stars are our own and we share them with the world. World footballers belong to the world. One of the Premier League’s largest viewing audiences is Asia even though Asian players make up a small percentage of all players in that league. Some of Italy’s Serie A games are broadcast in war torn, poverty ravaged African countries where some of their league’s biggest superstars are from but advertising revenues are slim.
Still other factors contribute to the lackluster attention soccer gets in the U.S. A typical football season in international soccer starts in late July and can stretch into late May. That’s almost a year. Most American sports have a six month season. MLS is about seven months long.
Also the UEFA Champions League is a prestigious European soccer tournament that includes that finest footballers and some of the world’s most popular club teams every year. It is arguably the world’s most popular sporting tournament outside of the Olympics. But outside of a few American players on these teams there’s no presence of America at all.
The Champions League tournament has an excitement level comparable to the NBA or NFL playoffs.
By comparison, the CONCACAF tournament that American MLS club teams play in doesn’t even compare in excitement or attendance. Still, MLS continues to grow as does the women’s pro soccer league in America, the WUSA. Landon Donovan and Abby Wambach are the American poster children for the global game. Both U.S. pro soccer leagues have added more teams and international high profile players such as France’s Thierry Henry and Brazil’s Marta.
For the world though, football or soccer is more than a sport. Footballer Didier Drogba and his national team once got warring factions in his native Ivory Coast to lay down their weapons for peace because he was so revered as an international hero.
Would the U.S. congress stop bickering and work for a economical resolution if Derek Jeter or Bill Russell asked them to? Probably not.
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