GOOOOOOAAAAALLLLLLLL!

There are two kinds of Americans: those who don’t like soccer and those who play it.

Soccer, or “football” if you have your own passport, has been trying to break through in the U.S. for decades. Despite building soccer fields in every single town in America, creating hundreds of leagues and youth programs, and handing out approximately 11 billion orange slices, soccer still lags behind most other sports in popularity. It’s the most popular game in the world, but not here.

Soccer’s TV numbers are increasing, but how long will it take to become a top-tier pro sport? The NFL gives you raw violence and excitement in 7-10 second bursts. NBA games give you a score that climbs like it’s chasing a bonus. Major League Baseball gives you timeless innings and statistics so detailed that you can learn what a player had for breakfast in 2007. 

Soccer gives you…a lot of running around, low scoring, and frequent 0-0 finals that feel like someone forgot to finish the PowerPoint presentation. At the end, no one claps, and they just walk out.

“It’s like hockey,” someone once told me. Sure. The only way soccer is like hockey is if you removed the ice, sticks, and 99.3% of the violence. 

The clock doesn’t help. It counts up, not down, like it’s daring you to keep watching. Then, just when you think you’ve reached the end, the referee adds extra time based on what appears to be intuition and sensibilities. In America, we prefer our game time to be exact. If a game ends at zero, it ends at zero. There’s comfort in that. Closure. A clean break. Soccer says, “Let’s explore our feelings for a few more minutes.”

But the real sticking point, the one Americans can’t quite square, is the drama. Soccer players react to the slightest contact with the emotional range of a daytime soap opera. It’s hysterically bad acting. Soccer players flop more than LeBron James. 

And yet, every four years, something magical happens—the World Cup. We wear the colors. We wear scarves in climates that don’t require scarves. We shout “GOAL” like we’ve been saying it our whole lives. 

For a brief, shining moment, we understand just enough about soccer to be dangerous.

Americans may never fully understand soccer, but we’re pros at showing up, making noise, and acting like we’re supposed to be there all along. 

In business, we call this confidence. In soccer, apparently, that’s enough to get you through extra time. 

If Team USA makes a deep run this year, on our home turf, then Soccer may have a future here after all.