Soccer and U.S. politics

During the 2010 World Cup, right-wing talk show host, Glenn Beck, told viewers, “It doesn’t matter how you try to sell it to us . . . we don’t want the World Cup, we don’t like the World Cup, we don’t like soccer, we want nothing to do with it.” Conservative radio host Mark Belling claimed that liberals are “force feeding [soccer] down our throats.” Dan Gainor of the conservative think tank, Media Research Center, offered that “Soccer is designed as a poor man or poor woman’s sport . . . the left is pushing it in schools across the country” (Hertzberg 2010). Such rhetoric is nothing new. In 1986, on the floor of Congress, Congressman Jack Kemp opposed an American bid to host theWorld Cup, saying, “a distinction should be made that football is democratic, capitalism, whereas soccer is a European socialist [sport]” (Foer 2004).

While anti-soccer rhetoric is fairly common in the mass media, it seems clear that soccer is growing in popularity in some sectors of the American population. Soccer has long been the most popular youth participatory sport in the country with over 3.3 million children, ages 5–19, currently playing soccer in organized leagues alone (US Youth Soccer 2011). Thirty years after the first boom of American youth soccer, professional soccer is thriving as well. The national professional men’s league, Major League Soccer (MLS), has grown to 18 teams, with over half of the teams playing in soccer specific stadiums. Televised coverage of matches from the world’s top domestic leagues in England, Spain, and Italy as well as international games have expanded dramatically
in the past few years on prominent sports outlets such as ESPN and Fox Soccer Channel. And Americans are watching more soccer than ever. ESPN and ABC averaged 80 percent higher ratings per match for 2010 World Cup than in the 2006 World Cup.