Just Win, Baby: Getting the United States Interested in Soccer

(Photo by Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)

In the same way that many fans of basketball summarily dismiss the WNBA, even though these women could whoop up in any pickup game against most men on the street, we know that what we are watching is a grade below excellence. That the players happen to be women becomes merely a carnival act.

Are they the best? No? Then why do I care?

This brings me to the FIFA Confederations Cup and the unlikely emergence of the United States as a contender.

You see, I went to the bar today to watch a soccer match. Let me say that again. I, someone who has never watched soccer, went out of my way to head to the bar to watch a game that my local cable company would not provide.

Why?

Well, there are a number of reasons.

First, though I'm not a hardcore fan of the sport, I do recognise it as perhaps the only true world-wide competition. Running is the other.

In my journeys, I've played soccer with a coconut among the bare-footed children of Africa, hit a raggedy ball around in the slums of Quito, and got in a random pickup game in the parks of Paris.

I may not follow the game, but I know it and have certainly seen it around the globe.

Second, like all American sports fans, I'm an elitist and have generally dismissed games that we haven't performed well in, from ping pong to cross-country skiing.

But somehow the landscape of American soccer now seems irrevocably changed.

Granted, we didn't win.

Granted, Brazil played circles around us in the second half and was denied a goal that was clearly in the net before being deflected out.

But damn it, we competed. We beat Spain and Egypt and nearly spoiled the mighty Brazilians.

And let me tell you folks, this is what it takes to get the United States interested in soccer. I know because it's got me by the collar for the moment.

The true test will be whether the U.S. team can make a legitimate run in the World Cup and whether they can consistently play well and show great effort, unlike in the early games of the Confederations Cup.

Winning sells in America.

And if the Confederations Cup is even a shadow of things to come, then maybe, just maybe, soccer has finally arrived in the home of the brave.

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