The United States has historically struggled at the most popular sport worldwide. At this year’s FIFA World Cup the US Men’s National Team (USMNT) advanced to the round of 16, although they were easily beaten by the Netherlands.
However the beautiful game” is far more popular than it has ever been, among young Americans. States like California, Texas, Florida and New York are the leading states with over 18,000 youth soccer clubs. Add to that an additional 32,000 clubs in the remaining 46 states.
In late 2022 a poll was pulled in 40+ states, 8% of Americans answered that soccer is their favorite sport to watch. This may seem like a small percentage, but it is huge growth considering the interest for soccer in the US has grown 200%+ since 2002. There is no other sport that saw anywhere near this type of improvement in its popularity as soccer in the past two decades.
The favorite role that young athletes want to play is Striker, while the least favorite (by a landslide) is the Goalkeeper.
Americans now call soccer their favorite sport to watch as they do basketball or baseball. Soccer has officially overtook Nascar, NHL and golf the last few times the Washington Post polled the subject from 2000 to 2020.
American football: NCAA and the NFL is still the top sport to watch overall in all age groups. Over 35% of Americans have for years indicated that it is their top sport to view. 35/40 years ago, soccer was not popular at all for high schoolers to play. When you combined boys and girls playing the sport, only a little bit more than 200,000 students played the game (2 schools out of 10). For comparison, nearly a million boys played football. But… in 2000, over 600,000 boys and girls played soccer. In 2022, over 800,000 boys and girls in high school decided to take up competitive soccer. So in other terms, soccer has nearly 300% growth in the last forty years.
There is no other sport in America that has taken off as quickly over the last 40 years as soccer among high schoolers and competitive travel youth clubs.