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After World Cup Loss Soccer's Popularity in USA Suffers
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After World Cup Loss Soccer's Popularity in USA Suffers |
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PUBCLUB COLLEGE It's back to football, American style, after a brief flirtation with soccer.
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World Cup 2010
Well, it's back to American football. The USA's interest and fasincation with soccer lasted about two days. And now that Team USA has been eliminated from the 2010 World Cup, it's sports business as usual in this country. And that means soccer, while first in the hearts and minds of Americans for a brief moment, returns to its spot as a secondary (if that) sport in this country. A recreational activity for youths until football, baseball and basketball take over their sports lives. Moms in mini-vans. Soccer was not exactly close to becoming a national pastime, but it had a great chance to gain a lot of recognition. Create some elbow room in a crowded sports landscape. But just as all of America was watching, the national team loses. To Ghana. Ghana!? Brazil, okay. Germany, fine. But Ghana? That's like Alabama's football team dropping a game to Louisana-Monroe. The Lakers losing to the Clippers. It's hard to believe that a country of some 250 million people can't seem to produce a dozen gifted soccer players. Or at least three who can play defense at the start of a game. That the players we have, after the previous game's heroics, would come out as flat as the Florida coast. That manner in which the game was lost – the team sleepwalking through the first half as if were a 45-minute warm-up period - gave the sports of soccer a huge popularity kick in the shins.
But oh well, it's not our sport anyway. It's back to the basics for Americans, to the sports we know best, the ones where it's okay to use hands. We could say the old American cliche, "wait 'til next year." Except, of course, the World Cup is every four years. That will be the next time most of America tunes into the sport. Oh well. The college football season starts the end of August.
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