In Reply to: tackle football, bball, hockey, baseball... posted by ClockBlocker on July 21, 2026 at 14:14:06
One is: yeah. That's why soccer is on a huge uphill climb in this country, as it is in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (South Africa, though, as a big a deal they are in rugby, seem to have figured out a way to slot soccer in). There are much more attractive tracks for athletic kids to be channeled into.
And now the flip side, and this one comes with a few threads that kinda come together:
- Soccer is like basketball, more than any of the others, in terms of its actual entry requirements. For basketball, you need a surface that the ball can bounce off of, and you need the hoops. For soccer, it's nice to have regulation goalposts, but really, most of the world's neighborhood soccer marks the goals with a couple of bricks and it's game on.
What you need for soccer however is space. Not too much, but enough for a handful of kids to run around. I don't believe our urban environment has enough empty lots for that. You can throw a little court on a corner, but soccer needs more space than that, So our urbanization patterns work against that concept, which means cities need to take charge of the situation and build these mini spaces open to public where kids can play. (I'm not talking regulation size spaces, but places where kids can play in teams of 5 or 6 or whatever.)
So there's actually something cities can do in that regard. And this would be a way to bring the game down to the common people's level, the democratization angle, so to speak.
- Existing MLS clubs can also do something here. But for that "academy path" to open up, you need kids starting to dribble the ball from a much younger age, presumably in these neighborhood spaces. IOW, the academies would have to build on something, and currently that something can't be middle class families who want to have their kids do some physical activity so they're not playing video games all weekend. You need kids who feel invested in the game the same way kids presumably feel invested in basketball.
- Another factor here I think is the way NIL opened floodgates, which means the usual pipeline for sports excellence in the US has become a big business, which will eventually trickle down to younger and younger age groups with the severity of competition increasing. I have a hunch that some families will respond to that by turning to other sports.
One thing that I find really interesting is that a lot of US sports actually require a very specific body type, whether it is height, or bulk, or strength or speed. There are very few games out there that can easily be built on an ordinary body type. That's the soccer advantage. The disadvantage is parents who keep banking on the body type they hope their kids will develop after puberty, and the low level training needs tostart way before that point.
- I'm actually on a bit of a deathwatch (maybe?) with (american) football because of the brain injury angle. I don't know how long families will continue to make that trade off and think that their kids will be that one lucky soul who avoids CTE in the next 30 years? I don't know. All I know is that's an opening waiting to happen and whether it's rugby that can grow to occupy that space or soccer, I don't know.
So I think the other position I'm taking here, in contradiction to my earlier one (prompted by your point), is that youth sports are changing in the US and that it is entirely possible that soccer may find some breathing space in that crowded field over the next couple of decades. That's my hope at this point.
As to your specific points.
I'm not sure that the MLS is the 6th best league in the world. Brazil and Argentina have very vibrant leagues with intense rivalries and a good number of teams that serve as a farming system (so to speak) for those European leagues. I'd say something similar about the Mexican league. There are a bunch of second tier nations (as far as their national teams are concerned) that have healthy leagues that generate sh*tloads of revenues for its top teams, say Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium, etc. I found an article on this while I was trying to jot my memory on google: Ranking the Top 20 Domestic Soccer Leagues by Quality and Competition
I don't see MLS being a top tier league like the ones you mention anytime in my lifetime. But I also don't see that as a requirement for US soccer to become a great mid-range power, which should be the goal at this point (IMO). I insist that street soccer, or neighborhood pick up soccer is a much more important milestone than having a very strong professional league. I think the former will eventually lead to the latter.
One thing that's going for South America is Copa Liberatadores, which is kinda like Champion's League in conception but it seems more central to SA soccer. It includes a bunch of teams from South American nations competing against one another, initially in a round-robin fashion, but then goes into elimination rounds. That sh*t can be electric.
Dude, I don't know if there are any countries where there is a 5th option on the table for kids, with the 5th option being something other than a very minor sport, like Water Polo or something. I can tell you that for Turkish kids it's only Soccer, basketball, and volleyball that's part of a discussion. After that you get into sports that you probably can't be anything other than an amateur.
But then, this is a nation of what, 350 million? That's a lot of possibilities packed in that number that's not being tapped into.