On Eve Of '14 World Cup, Growth Of USA Soccer Remains Uneven --28% are fans, down from 31% 20 yrs ago

By Rick Maese, Jun. 6, 2014, Washingtonpost.com

Tommy Smyth, the longtime ESPN analyst, remembers having to rack up big long-distance charges calling overseas to learn scores of soccer matches. Star player Brandi Chastain learned to kick a ball before the world’s top women players even had a World Cup tournament of their own. Bruce Arena, the veteran coach, recalls a time when maybe one soccer game a year appeared on American television. Today finding live soccer on TV requires a remote control and a thumb.

“I’m actually sick of it,” Arena jokes. “It’s too much.”

As the World Cup gets underway this week in Brazil, the world’s most popular game is years removed from being an American curiosity or even a niche sport. Twenty years after the United States hosted the tournament, fandom here has grown to levels large enough to sustain a men’s professional league, command lucrative television contracts and give millions of young boys and girls something to dream about.

But the state of soccer in the United States is still a complicated subject. The so-called sleeping giant has certainly stirred since the 1994 tournament catapulted the sport into American consciousness, but its strides have been uneven and at times sluggish.

In a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, 46 percent of Americans say they feel the sport will become more popular in the next decade, but there has been little change in the number who consider themselves fans of professional soccer over the past two decades. Some 28 percent identify themselves as fans today, compared with 31 percent on the eve of the 1994 World Cup.

Soccer participation has also seen changes in the past 20 years. More than 12.2 million Americans played soccer in 1994, a number that rose to nearly 13.8 million by 2004, according to research from the Sports & Fitness Industry Association. But since then, the number of players has slipped to 12.7 million. And while more adults are playing than ever before, the number of young players — among those age 6-12 and 13-17 — have fallen below their 1994 marks.

For fans, the sport is more accessible than ever, with 19 Major League Soccer teamsspread across North America and international matches available on cable television at all hours of the day. U.S. television viewers had access to all 380 matches of the English Premier League, and a record 31.5 million Americans tuned in to the most recent season at some point, according to Nielsen ratings.

Sunil Gulati, the president of the U.S. Soccer Federation, is quick to point out the long list of successes the sport has seen in the past 20 years, noting that with progress, the room for growth shrinks with time.

“I’m pretty sure if somebody said to me in ’93 or ’94, this is what it could look like 20 years, I would take where we are in a heartbeat,” said Gulati, who also serves on the executive committee of FIFA, the sport’s international governing body. “Now that doesn’t mean I’m satisfied with where we are — we still have long way to go — but you look at all that we’ve done and not a lot of countries did that much in 20 years.”

This month in Brazil, the U.S. national team will look to show the world how that progress translates to the pitch. Pele, the Brazilian legend who helped introduce soccer to a generation of Americans three decades ago, has seen the United States’ relationship with the sport slowly evolve over time and still predicts a brighter future.

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