The grandiose marketing phrases that came with the World Cup — “change soccer forever in the United States,” and “rocket fuel,” and so on — do us a disservice by setting the sport up for failure.
Growing a sport is not like winning an election. Everything doesn’t suddenly change within months.
Look back at the 1994 World Cup and you won’t see much impact on how soccer in America looked in 1995. However, listen to how many future members of the U.S. men’s national team, people in U.S. Soccer’s leadership and prominent American soccer coaches had their love of the sport profoundly impacted by that tournament. Trace the slow, halting and ultimately steady growth of MLS that stemmed from it, and it’s easy to draw a line from there to here.
So, a few things as we bask in the next-day glow of a six-week fever dream in which soccer genuinely did reach never-before-seen heights in the United States.
