Read the sentence right after the portion you quoted. 
List of teams that have made the into the 2nd round at least as many times as the US since '98:
Every time:
Brazil
Germany
Mexico
4X:
Holland
Argentina
England
3X:
France
Italy
Spain
Paraguay
Chile
USA
Getting to the 2nd round consistently may be harder than you think. I’m not suggesting that the US is as good as Spain or Italy etc, but, still, that’s pretty good company and a pretty good record.
The US team has a great advantage that some other national sides of a similar standard don’t have: a pretty easy qualification route to the WC finals. That allows a good consistency of experience at that level to be passed down from older to younger players. But on the other hand, easy qualification might work against them on a long-term view. If there was maybe a unified “Americas” qualifying, it might give the US team more scope to develop as they would be playing better sides competitively more often.
We’ll see how much public attention there is for next years Women’s World Cup.
While the United States is a weakling in men’s soccer, we’re the superpower in women’s soccer.
THE superpower?
A few squads would like to disagree ;). Especially Japan who won the last Women’s World Cup and Germany who won the 2 before that. Though we were in the final the last time around.
US hasn’t won a Woman’s WC since 1999. We’re more of A superpower among a few superpower squads.
I’m sticking with the superpower. The United States is clearly the top country in the Women’s World Cup and Germany is second best. And it’s not just a matter of the American team having a good streak back in the nineties - they’ve been in the top three for every Women’s World Cup.
Football, Basketball and Baseball are the big three; if you count college separately, five.
After that it gets tricky because there is regional variation and there’s no easy way to compare tour-based events vs. nationwide leagues. But depending on what metric you use, I’d reckon that MLS/EPL/USMNT interest ranks behind NHL, NASCAR and men’s golf and in the same ballpark with MMA, tennis (men’s and women’s) and women’s golf. It’s probably already passed boxing and horse racing.
Thus, my reckoning puts them in the 7-11 range. As the country continues its demographic shift, I can see it overtaking all but the big 3.
::shrug::
I’d argue that to be THE superpower, you need to at least have sole possession of most World Cup victories.
Probably? Boxing and horse racing are D-E-A-D. And Tennis is on life support. I think the ranking is clearly…
- Football
- Baseball
- Basketball
- Soccer / Hockey
- Golf
- NASCAR
- MMA
- Tennis
I’m basing this more or less on how ESPN treats each sport. If anyone knows the tastes of the American sportsfan, it’s ESPN.
From a ratings standpoint, soccer may already be No. 2 in this country. And that may even extend to regular season games if you include Euro league viewing. Attendance-wise it’s a different story, at least in total numbers. But even that’s mostly a result of fewer big league teams playing fewer games; the average attendance at a game is right up there with the other non-football biggies.
Of course you are right there, but it doesn’t mean what you think it does. For an example, I live in Macon, Georgia. I did not sit back and watch the NCAA mens basketball tournament thinking “If Mercer University doesn’t get past the second round, I bet nobody calls in to sports radio claiming Hoffman is an idiot”. You think you have a point about people rooting for a team that in all eyes is not going to win the championship, but you really don’t.
I don’t watch a ton of ESPN, but its my impression they cover golf more than soccer. And I don’t buy that ESPN is necessarily a good metric. Their viewership is, deliberately, younger and even more male than the average sports fan, and also heavily skewed towards the sports they have the contracts to air live. A fiftyish golf nut is more likely to watch the golf channel than ESPN.
It all depends on what metrics you use … MLS beats NHL in per-game attendance, but NASCAR beats both. If you say total attendance at all games is what counts, the order is reversed. You could also look at TV revenue, or ratings or sponsorships, or Internet activity to assess popularity.
Red wiggler wants to look at once every four year ratings, but by that logic gymnastics and figure skating are major events.
The larger point, which t I think we agree on, is it they do have room to grow. They’ve nowhere near maxed out the potential.
Fixed it for you 
Ha! No matter how much I love games, the idea of watching a DOTA 2 or LoL tournament just holds no appeal for me.
I agree, and I also suspect that soccer is fast approaching #4 status, if it’s not already there overall.
IMO, what would get soccer a much larger position in the US sporting pantheon would be real TV contracts during the summer. I can’t imagine that televised baseball is really that much of a ratings monster, and I for one, would rather watch a soccer game than a baseball game on TV. But MLS games are typically not publicized well, and are on some low-rent UHF affiliate, and I never know when they’re on, but you can’t flip through the channels on a Saturday afternoon in July and not see several baseball games being played.
Well, you’ll soon see a lot more on ESPN with the new deal (or Univision, if you prefer - though Univision already shows a game of the week on Sunday afternoons).
And televised baseball can indeed be a ratings monster, depending on which locale. NYC, LA, Chicago, etc. local broadcasters will pay quite some coin for those rights (The Dodgers just got a ridiculously lucrative deal).
Indeed. The Phillies got $25 BILLION over 25 years. The Phillies.
Yeah, but do people really sit around on Saturday afternoons before the All-Star Break and watch televised baseball? That seems like the activity that the term “couch potato” was invented about. Boring, and with 180 some-odd games in the season, not that important of a contest; not enough to waste hours sitting around watching.
I can sit down and watch 2-3 innings, but much more than that, and I start getting restless.
At any rate, the argument that soccer is too boring for Americans would be ruptured if it’s confirmed that people really do watch televised baseball.
Gee, do you think maybe Comcast checked that before shelling out $25 billion? Yes, it gets very good ratings, especially relative to its expenses. Tens of thousands of people will pay good money to attend soccer freindlies – games that are literally meaningless in any kind of standings or record. Is their time wasted?
Many Americans find soccer boring because they don’t understand it, and people tend to be bored by things they don’t understand. Thankfully, it seems like many of them are learning, and declining to adopt the “I don’t like it, so it must suck” line of thought that so many of those with less imagination do.
Just so you know, it’s against the rules to change the text in a quote, so don’t do it.