Stories & Lifestyle: Soccer enthusiasm in the US

The sports known as football in the rest of the world is called "soccer" in the US. The word soccer is derived from the original term "association football" and the difference to American/Canadian football and Rugby is that player mainly use their feet. At first, soccer didn't attract many fans, because baseball, basketball and American football were just more popular. Today, however, according to FIFA statistics, there are more official soccer players in the US than in any other country in the world - nearly 18 million. No other sport is quite as cross-cultural. And it is not surprising that soccer is the fastest-growing team sport in the US.

The US Soccer Federation was established in 1913. After that, soccer was on its way. In the same year, the newly established federation joined FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association). The first official international championship was just one year later. It is the oldest championship of American soccer and one of the first worldwide. The US was one of the 13 nations that participated in the FIFA world cup in Montevideo (Uruguay) in 1930 and the team was considered champion of the cup. However, Argentina beat the US in the semi finals and they only made third place. After the world cups of 1934 and 1950, American soccer seemed to take a long break. Only 40 years later they managed to quailify for a world championship again.

And then there was the world cup in the US of 1994. Enthusiasm was growing. Toward the end of the 70s soccer had already been winning in popularity when the North American Soccer League (NASL) brought international stars like Pelé and Franz Beckenbauer to the US. In1996, a new league, the Major League Soccer (MLS), was founded in the US with professional teams in ten American cities. Five years later, a professional league for women, the Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA) entered their first season with eight teams. There are some profound differences between both leagues. While the MLS often loses its best players to foreign clubs and only few great stars want to play for the US, the opposite is true for the WUSA - it attracts the best female soccer players worldwide.