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The biggest problem IMO the future of soccer faces is that poor children get little to no exposure to good coaching, so the best athletes in poor communities concentrate on baseball, basketball, and football, where the coaching is taxpayer supported. My community has a taxpayer supported community football and basketball program where the teams feed into the high school programs and the players get far better coaching in these sports.
Soccer is one of the cheapest sports. That is why it is so popular around the world. The poorest countries play soccer.
You dont need any equipment except the ball. You dont need pads, hoop, or specialized field. You just need flat land. You can play on sand, concrete, grass, hardwood floors. The size of field and number of players can fluctuate.
Exactly. Jumpers for goalposts - it's completely accessible. We didn't even have a ball in school (banned by the powers that be), we used a crushed drinks can.
Soccer is one of the cheapest sports. That is why it is so popular around the world. The poorest countries play soccer.
You dont need any equipment except the ball. You dont need pads, hoop, or specialized field. You just need flat land. You can play on sand, concrete, grass, hardwood floors. The size of field and number of players can fluctuate.
A goal can literally be anything.
Soccer is a cheap sport to play with your friends. At the same time, soccer is the most expensive sport in the world. Investment in soccer is directly seen on the field. Competing at a high level is not using your mate's jumper as a goal. Those 8 year olds are identified on those fields by people who make more in a week than a person in that town makes in a year. They come to academies where they are trained and educated to be players. for every 10 players taken in, less than 1 make it to the top level. The investment is off the charts. Sure it is cheap, but also, it is not.
Most of the reasons for soccer's failure to launch...
There is no "failure to launch" for soccer.
All you have to do is to drive by any city park during soccer season and you will see huge numbers of people playing soccer: kids from 6 to 16 in organized leagues, immigrant men, and so on.
Just because there aren't vast numbers of Americans sitting on their asses watching professional soccer on the goggle-box as a delivery device for advertising, DOES NOT mean soccer is some kind of failure or that it's unpopular.
You need to redefine your idea of "failure" or "success" for a sport or other leisure activity.
Exactly. Jumpers for goalposts - it's completely accessible. We didn't even have a ball in school (banned by the powers that be), we used a crushed drinks can.
In the Southwest, go around back of any manufacturing plant at lunch time and you'll see the Hispanic guys having a pickup game back by the loading docks. T shirts for goalposts.
Soccer is a cheap sport to play with your friends. At the same time, soccer is the most expensive sport in the world. Investment in soccer is directly seen on the field. Competing at a high level is not using your mate's jumper as a goal. Those 8 year olds are identified on those fields by people who make more in a week than a person in that town makes in a year. They come to academies where they are trained and educated to be players. for every 10 players taken in, less than 1 make it to the top level. The investment is off the charts. Sure it is cheap, but also, it is not.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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There is far more competition now for the youth activities. Here in the Redmond WA area we now have 3 separate youth Cricket clubs, which appeal to the many Indian families here. We also have 5-6 different youth Lacrosse organizations, and recently flag football leagues. I am seeing kids like our own grandsons dropping soccer or baseball in favor of other sports. The advantage to ultimate frisbee is that it's coed, and there is no big advantage to being a boy or girl, and a weaker player doesn't stand out as such.
For other sports, high quality coaching is available to poor kids. A talented poor basketball player will get recruited for AAU and not pay a cent. You can pick up football a little older and still be high level if you have physical gifts. No true for soccer. As simple as soccer seems, it requires incredible skill and understanding of the game. In other parts of the work, pro leagues subsidize youth development. Your average "Rec League" in a town has people coaching who barely understand offsides. Even travel teams are way to focused on conditioning and physicality. To get good coaching, you need to pay to play.
For other sports, high quality coaching is available to poor kids. A talented poor basketball player will get recruited for AAU and not pay a cent. You can pick up football a little older and still be high level if you have physical gifts. No true for soccer. As simple as soccer seems, it requires incredible skill and understanding of the game. In other parts of the work, pro leagues subsidize youth development. Your average "Rec League" in a town has people coaching who barely understand offsides. Even travel teams are way to focused on conditioning and physicality. To get good coaching, you need to pay to play.
This is the truth. I have a great deal of experience on the women's side and the lack of opportunities for advanced clubs is a real issue. It costs $5,000 per year, plus travel costs, for the top level travel clubs, with very long distance travel and tournaments. Local recreational leagues and many school teams are great for basic play and training, but the top level, which is what colleges care about more than high school, are too expensive for many poor players. Scholarships are rare or just a small fraction of the total cost. On the meds side there are more scholarships, but still not enough.
Soccer is the world's most popular sport, by far. In most countries, they know it as "football" rather than "soccer", as they don't use the imperial measuring system from which gridiron (American) football got its name. The World Cup is the world's holy grail of sporting events, even more popular than the Olympics. It's most popular in Europe, Africa, and Latin America, with a few exceptions, but not so much in Asia or North America (Canada and the US).
Since the mid-late 20th Century, the big four major sports leagues in the United States have always been the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB, so gridiron football, basketball, hockey, and baseball.
You'd be more likely to prefer one over the other if your city hosted one of those sports and not the other, but if you were lucky, your city hosted all four, and you had teams to root for in all four leagues, like how the Boston area has the Patriots, Celtics, Bruins, and Red Sox, how Denver has the Broncos, Nuggets, Avalanche, and Rockies, how Dallas has the Cowboys, Mavericks, Stars, and Rangers, you get the idea, so if your team had all four, you were more likely to care about all four.
All four of these sports franchises are well established and go back before the advent of television, the NBA has been around since 1946, the NFL since 1920, the NHL since 1917, and the MLB going way back to 1869, which is 150 years ago! Now, what about soccer? Enter the MLS, or Major League Soccer. This league is often touted as the "fifth major sports league", so bumping the big four into the big five major sports leagues for the US.
But can a certain demographic change that? Enter Generation Z, the demographic I define as being born since 2000 (with 1994-1999 borns having varying degrees of Z influence). One survey showed the MLS to be twice as popular amongst Gen Z as it was among older generations. It's ranked more popular among them than the NHL, and possibly even the MLB as well given the 3 point margin of error. One explanation as to why MLS is growing in popular among Gen Z is likely due to the fact that the cohort has a higher percentage of Latino Americans, whom are far more likely to support soccer than their White American counterparts as most of them come from countries like Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, etc. where soccer is a huge deal.
Do you think Gen Z will help make soccer and the MLS more mainstream in the American public, or do you believe it's a small growth that doesn't mean much in hindsight? As for me, I do believe the MLS has potential, but I do believe it needs to be re-marketed if it truly wants to be relevant.
One major suggestion is for MLS teams to stop using the "FC" tagline following their city, or using other tag-names like "Real" or "Sporting" , that kind of thing may work well in the UK, but in the US, it should stick to using actual mascots, like the teams in the other four major sports leagues do.
OP, given you are from the UK, why does this interest you. Not an attack, but I think it is weird how non-Americans feel that soccer has to be popular. I think soccer already is popular, but it simply lacks the history or complexity in strategy for it to take a hold in the US.
Also, the aggressive and patronizing attitude that we (Americans) have to like it because it is popular in other countries is of putting.
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