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1. Although soccer has a long history as a sport, it hasn’t taken hold in the United States to the extent that it has in other countries.
   1. Soccer has been around in one form or another for thousands of years.
      1. The president of FIFA, which is the international governing body for soccer, was quoted in David Goldblatt’s 2008 book, The Ball is Round, as saying, “Football is as old as the world…People have always played some form of football, from its very basic form of kicking a ball around to the game it is today.”
      2. Basil Kane, author of the book Soccer for American Spectators, reiterates this fact when he states, “Nearly every society at one time or another claimed its own form of kicking game.”
   2. Despite this history, the United States hasn’t caught “soccer fever” for several different reasons.
      1. Sports fans in the United States already have lots of options when it comes to playing and watching sports.
         1. Our own “national sports” such as football, basketball, and baseball take up much of our time and attention, which may prevent people from engaging in an additional sport.
         2. Statistics unmistakably show that soccer viewership is low as indicated by the much-respected Pew Research group, which reported in 2006 that only 4 percent of adult US Americans they surveyed said that soccer was their favorite sport to watch.
            1. Comparatively, 34 percent of those surveyed said that football was their favorite sport to watch.
            2. In fact, soccer just barely beat out ice skating, with 3 percent of the adults surveyed indicating that as their favorite sport to watch.
      2. The attitudes and expectations of sports fans in the United States also prevent soccer’s expansion into the national sports consciousness.
         1. One reason Americans don’t enjoy soccer as much as other sports is due to our shortened attention span, which has been created by the increasingly fast pace of our more revered sports like football and basketball.
            1. According to the 2009 article from BleacherReport.com, “An American Tragedy: Two Reasons Why We Don’t Like Soccer,” the average length of a play in the NFL is six seconds, and there is a scoring chance in the NBA every twenty-four seconds.
            2. This stands in stark comparison to soccer matches, which are played in two forty-five-minute periods with only periodic breaks in play.
         2. Our lack of attention span isn’t the only obstacle that limits our appreciation for soccer; we are also set in our expectations.
            1. The BleacherReport article also points out that unlike with football, basketball, and baseball—all sports in which the United States has most if not all the best teams in the world—we know that the best soccer teams in the world aren’t based in the United States.
            2. We also expect that sports will offer the same chances to compare player stats and obsess over data that we get from other sports, but as Chad Nielsen of ESPN.com states, “There is no quantitative method to compare players from different leagues and continents.”
            3. Last, as legendary sports writer Frank Deford wrote in a 2012 article on Sports Illustrated’s website, Americans don’t like ties in sports, and 30 percent of all soccer games end tied, as a draw, deadlocked, or nil-nil.

Transition: Although soccer has many problems that it would need to overcome to be more popular in the United States, I think there are actions we can take now to change our beliefs and attitudes about soccer in order to give it a better chance.

1. Soccer is the most popular sport in the world, and there have to be some good reasons that account for this status.
   1. As US Americans, we can start to enjoy soccer more if we better understand why the rest of the world loves it so much.
      1. As was mentioned earlier, Chad Nielsen of ESPN.com notes that American sports fans can’t have the same stats obsession with soccer that they do with baseball or football, but fans all over the world obsess about their favorite teams and players.
         1. Fans argue every day, in bars and cafés from Baghdad to Bogotá, about statistics for goals and assists, but as Nielsen points out, with the game of soccer, such stats still fail to account for varieties of style and competition.
         2. So even though the statistics may be different, bonding over or arguing about a favorite team or player creates communities of fans that are just as involved and invested as even the most loyal team fans in the United States.
      2. Additionally, Americans can start to realize that some of the things we might initially find off putting about the sport of soccer are actually some of its strengths.
         1. The fact that soccer statistics aren’t poured over and used to make predictions makes the game more interesting.
         2. The fact that the segments of play in soccer are longer and the scoring lower allows for the game to have a longer arc, meaning that anticipation can build and that a game might be won or lost by only one goal after a long and even-matched game.
   2. We can also begin to enjoy soccer more if we view it as an additional form of entertainment.
      1. As Americans who like to be entertained, we can seek out soccer games in many different places.
         1. There is most likely a minor or even a major league soccer stadium team within driving distance of where you live.
         2. You can also go to soccer games at your local high school, college, or university.
      2. We can also join the rest of the world in following some of the major soccer celebrities—David Beckham is just the tip of the iceberg.
   3. Getting involved in soccer can also help make our society more fit and healthy.
      1. Soccer can easily be the most athletic sport available to Americans.
      2. In just one game, the popular soccer player Gennaro Gattuso was calculated to have run about 6.2 miles, says Carl Bialik, a numbers expert who writes for The Wall Street Journal.
      3. With the growing trend of obesity in America, getting involved in soccer promotes more running and athletic ability than baseball, for instance, could ever provide.
         1. A press release on FIFA’s official website notes that one hour of soccer three times a week has been shown in research to provide significant physical benefits.
         2. If that’s not convincing enough, the website ScienceDaily.com reports that theScandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports published a whole special issue titled Football for Health that contained fourteen articles supporting the health benefits of soccer.
   4. Last, soccer has been praised for its ability to transcend language, culture, class, and country.
      1. The nongovernmental organization Soccer for Peace seeks to use the worldwide popularity of soccer as a peacemaking strategy to bridge the divides of race, religion, and socioeconomic class.
      2. According to their official website, the organization just celebrated its ten-year anniversary in 2012.
         1. Over those ten years the organization has focused on using soccer to bring together people of different religious faiths, particularly people who are Jewish and Muslim.
         2. In 2012, three first-year college students, one Christian, one Jew, and one Muslim, dribbled soccer balls for 450 miles across the state of North Carolina to help raise money for Soccer for Peace.
   5. A press release on the World Association of Nongovernmental Organizations’s official website states that from the dusty refugee camps of Lebanon to the upscale new neighborhoods in Buenos Aires, “soccer turns heads, stops conversations, causes breath to catch, and stirs hearts like virtually no other activity.”