There's been a lot of talk about soccer the past two years or so. "The best team you've never heard of" is in the semifinals of the Women's World Cup in China while just recently more attention was given to a Brit since the war of 1812, not to mention every time you turn on the TV you seem to hear a new commercial advertising that "soccer's time has come."
But whether or not soccer's time has come is yet to be seen. What we do know is soccer's time will be coming, and for those within the United States Soccer Federation, whether they are fans, players, refs, coaches or representatives, the time has already arrived. It has arrived because of the brilliant and unrelenting progress made in the USSF's youth soccer programs.
Championships at the state and national level as well as countless Olympic Developmental Programs and other camps have spawned a new brand of U.S. soccer, which is catching up with the rest of the world.
It could be a good reason why our women have consistently been at the top. While boys and men's soccer is certainly behind the curve in the United States, the development of women's soccer is somewhat recent. Even at the start of growth of women's soccer, the USSF already had a system in place which developed and supported women, youth and beyond. This gave the U.S. the edge as other nations had to catch up to the U.S. in this relatively new version of soccer.
The men can't quite say that, but the same system that has delivered World Cup championships and Gold Medals for the women is in place for the men — it just needs some development.
At this point the USSF has created a young fan base, which can survive as an entity outside ESPN or the mainstream public.
Nevertheless ESPN is right on board. New advertisements and coverage of the world's game are unprecedented on mainstream cable. However as we credit ESPN and other networks, we must be wary of their consequences. Failure on the back page of the sports section is one thing, failure as a nation of skeptics watch could cause drastic damage to the future popularity of the game in America.
Has ESPN marketed a sport to a mainstream public not ready to receive it, or more importantly, have they marketed a sport not ready for the everyday American to appreciate? Is ESPN marketing soccer or are they telling people to like it? The build-up might be too much. The state of the MLS is successful but extraordinarily unstable and the U.S. men's team had a disastrous World Cup in Germany last year.
The mistake is simply that ESPN is trying to give the game away rather than let people find it. Giving it away might be fine if U.S. soccer were secure enough to support it, but at this point the Federation is just beginning its hunt for true competitiveness, within the MLS and abroad. If U.S. soccer disappoints in either of these fields, fan loss would be profound.
Those within soccer know it is a game of patience, and that eventually it will happen, the question is how much catching up do we need? The MLS has not reached the quality of the EPL or other European leagues. Ask any soccer fan and they'll tell you to watch The Gunners (of Arsenal) over The Fire (of Chicago). That's what makes this David Beckham stunt so dangerous.
Beckham must live up to the incalculable expectations put on him by his salary and the media. The ultimate idea is that Beckham can help make the MLS more competitive, improving the North American brand of football. More like him would be great, but the pressure put on Beckham, one player many people got to know from a cute movie, is simply unreal. Fans will be demanding personal performance as well as team success, and it's possible that the MLS has put much of their future into the success of David Beckham, the British footballer turned American soccer poster child.
In reality this isn't the way for the MLS, and they know that. Success for the MLS will come from within the beautifully coordinated system that the USSF has, as well as from contributions from all North American countries (and of course Europe to a smaller extent). Once the MLS does reach a point of expanded competitiveness, it would be natural to assume the U.S. men's team is in a similar position. The strides made by the MLS in terms of overall play are exciting because it could possibly foreshadow a men's team certainly capable of glory.
That's what new fans to soccer need to understand. We are behind but have almost caught up. It will take some time, but we are nearly there. The best of our best can play with their best, but we need more of them. If the U.S. men's national team, which consists of a partial MLS all-star team, are to go anywhere, than that MLS team had better be able to go somewhere as well.
It wasn't Beckham that sold out those stadiums; it was the will of players across the nation who got soccer to this point and it is them who will get it where it need to go.
Reach the reporter at: joshua.spivack@asu.edu.
