Originally posted on 05/27/2014:
To understand the US indifference to soccer, all you have to do is examine the high school experience in America. Homecoming & cheerleaders is a socially a central part of just about every high school in the United States - and it revolves around football, 100% like the movies.
So what happens is, athletes who've spent their grammar school years playing soccer switch to football by junior high where all the hubbub is. It's totally cultural.
So football is perpetuated while soccer gets fizzes out. And this isn't going to change. More American kids have been playing youth soccer than baseball since the 1970s - and yet everybody stops (except the chicks ... and how is US ladies soccer, anyway?)