After a century of false starts, soccer has taken off in the U.S.
A lack of infrastructure and questions about the sport's Americanness held soccer back in the 20th century. But immigration, youth soccer, and technology have changed everything.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup — which includes six games in Philadelphia — has taken the U.S. by storm. The excitement generated by the tournament reflects how, in contemporary American society, soccer has become a feature of everyday life.
Parents drive their kids to and from soccer practices and fork out large sums of money for travel games. At the professional level, Major League Soccer (MLS) and the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) are thriving. The U.S. women’s national team has won a record five Olympic gold medals and four World Cup titles. Even European soccer has taken off with American fans: this year, the English Premier League (EPL) season opener between Chelsea and Manchester City drew close to 2 million viewers in the U.S.
The meteoric rise of soccer in the U.S., however, is a recent phenomenon. While Americans have played the game for centuries, it struggled to take off in the U.S. A number of factors drove soccer’s struggle to catch on, including ideas about masculinity and Americanness, a lack of infrastructure and the failure to build robust college soccer programs. Yet, in the 21st century, immigration, demographic shifts, technological changes and the rapid growth of youth soccer have transformed the landscape. Soccer has moved from a fringe and unpopular sport to become one of the most popular sports in America — even ahead of baseball according to one poll.
In 1869, Rutgers beat Princeton 6-4 in the first American collegiate soccer game. By the early 20th century, teams like Fall River Football Club had become established enough to play against European teams including the Glasgow Rangers and Sparta Prague.
Bethlehem Steel, based in Bethlehem Pa., was one of the most dominant teams in the early 20th century. It built what was widely regarded as the first soccer specific stadium in the U.S. and went on to win a record five U.S. Open Cups.
Although the game seemed to be taking root — especially after the formation of the American Soccer League (ASL) in 1921 — it was predominately an amateur sport, even as professional soccer took off in Europe.
The ASL hit rough shoals in its earliest days: only three of the initial clubs returned for a second season. Financial struggles were quite common in the league, and crowds were sparse.
In the early 20th century, the near absence of soccer on American college campuses entrenched its status as a fringe sport. Other sports like baseball and basketball were taking off on campuses at the time, a signal of what sports young people were interested in playing. The problem was compounded by the lack of a national administrative structure, which ensured that almost no organized soccer took place beyond high school.
Soccer also suffered from the lack of physical infrastructure. While sports like baseball and basketball developed at the professional level in the U.S. — including the construction of stadiums and arenas — soccer was forced to rely on baseball stadiums for games. For instance, Grand Avenue Baseball Ground in St. Louis, hosted four U.S Open Cups between 1929 and 1948 while also serving several Major League Baseball teams. Soccer in 20th century America simply wasn’t a robust enough business to justify the construction of multimillion-dollar stadiums.
These challenges and tribulations plaguing soccer had a significant impact on sport’s growth in the U.S.
At the college level, the game remained on the periphery of the American sports landscape. In 1939, only eight universities and colleges had men’s soccer teams and there were no interregional matches or postseason tournaments. It would take another 20 years before the National Collegiate Athletic Association sponsored a postseason soccer championship.
Meanwhile, American football remained dominant on college campuses. Commenting in a New York Times article on soccer, an official from an unnamed American university argued that it was a good sport and must be played “in addition to football but should not supplant the latter game.”
Soccer was stuck in neutral, even after two rival professional leagues, the National Professional Soccer League and the United Soccer Association, merged to form the North American Soccer League (NASL) in 1968.
In 1975, the arrival of Edson Arantes do Nascimento — better known as Pelé — was supposed to change everything. Following sustained lobbying from New York Cosmos General Manager Clive Toye and intervention by U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the superstar agreed to bring his talents to the U.S.
Hopes, however, for a soccer revolution never truly materialized. While Pelé drew huge crowds to his games, his proclamation that soccer had “finally arrived in the United States” proved to be only hype. A decade after his heralded arrival, the NASL actually collapsed due to ballooning costs — leaving the U.S. without any serious professional league for several years.
No one was quite sure precisely why the most popular global sport couldn’t break through in the U.S. Some observers wondered if the problem was that the sport simply wasn’t American.
The game ran afoul of American ideas of masculinity, which were primarily associated with aggression and capacity for violence, both of which were celebrated aspects of football. Dick Young, the former sports columnist for the New York Daily News once described soccer as “a game for commie pansies.”
While sports like baseball and basketball weren’t as violent as football, they had the built in infrastructure — stadiums, robust college programs, big money television deals — and cultural cachet from a century of being in the top tier of American sports. Soccer lacked these advantages, and its inability to overcome the deep seated stigmas about the game kept the sport on the margins of the American sports landscape throughout the late 20th century.
In the 21st century however, everything has shifted. The structural barriers holding soccer back began to erode, starting with youth leagues. Youth soccer grew in prominence, including the development of travel leagues. This growth, in turn, produced a pipeline of talent for professional soccer teams. Highly skilled American players like Christian Pulisic and Weston McKennie have become global superstars.
Major League Soccer, which launched in 1993 as part of the U.S. bid for the 1994 World Cup, was initially treated as a retirement league for star players with declining skills. Yet, the emergence of this homegrown talent pipeline created a pool of exciting young players for MLS teams.
Immigration has also bolstered soccer, both in terms of generating interest in the MLS and in expanding the talent pool. Reforms to immigration policy in 1965 created opportunities and demographic shifts that peaked in the early 2000s. Scholar Maurico Espinoza-Quesada argues that the majority of immigrants coming to the U.S. in the 21st century were primarily from “soccer-crazed countries in Latin America, Europe and Africa.”
Tapiwa Gumunyu, a Zimbabwean immigrant living in Ohio, has attended several Columbus Crew matches with his family. Such matches have become social events for the relatively small Zimbabwean community living between Ohio and Kentucky. Similar trends can also be observed among Latin American communities that have brought their global soccer zeal to different cities across the US.
MLS clubs have recognized the potential business opportunities offered by immigrant communities. The Seattle Sounders, for one, have tried to grow their fanbase by broadcasting their games in Spanish. Ric Jensen, a scholar of sport fandom and management, argues that MLS clubs regularly recruit “well-known Hispanic players to maximize sponsorship dollars” and expand their fanbase among Hispanics.
Looking at the U.S. men’s national team, it’s also hard to ignore the impact that immigrants and their descendants have had on the growth of soccer in America. The U.S. has benefited immensely from players who would otherwise play for different countries altogether. Folarin Balogun could have played for England and Nigeria. Haji Wright was eligible to play for Ghana but like Balogun, chose to play for the U.S.
The popularity of the game among immigrant communities has undoubtedly played a major role in elevating the MLS and injecting a generation of talented players and passionate fans into the local game.
The popularity of soccer in the U.S. has also extended to foreign leagues — and technology has played a role in this shift. The internet and social media have created an interconnected world that allows fans to engage in rivalries and subcultures across previously unprecedented distances. There is now a generation of Americans who passionately identify as die hard “Culers” (Barcelona fans) or “Gooners” (Arsenal fans) despite never having set foot in Spain or England.
One recent poll even suggested that soccer had surpassed baseball to become the third most popular sport in the U.S. Given how quickly soccer has grown, it seems possible that after decades of false starts, the sport may finally soon come to rival football and basketball atop the American sports landscape.
Abraham Seda is an assistant professor of history at Lafayette College. He is currently writing a book on boxing and colonialism in Rhodesia.
Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of The Inquirer.