Soccer is Un-American

Why is soccer so unpopular in the U.S.?  Unless things have drastically changed, most kids grow up playing soccer in grade school, and many through high school.  At least, that’s how it was when I was a kid.  Everyone knows a Soccer Mom -- they’re a suburban staple.  But on the professional level, there’s a general lack of interest in this particular part of North America.

I’d put money on the fact that the main reason for this is the complete lack of commercial time-outs.  The clock just keeps running.  Sure, you have your half-time… but you want to spend a good portion of that listening to a bunch of guys analyzing the game up to that point, and predicting what strategies each team will take going into the second half.  The lack of “breaks” make soccer a sport that networks don’t want to go near.  It seems like people have been trying to make soccer popular in the U.S. for as long as I can remember, with no success.

So we have the World Cup, and we can care about soccer for a month out of every four years.

Now, here’s Landon Donovan’s goal to beat Algeria and advance to knockout.