Shanghai Star. 2002-06-27

US soccer fans (from right to left) Steve Wincza, Marie Knight, Jan Santucci and Mick McGuire show their disappointment while watching the US soccer team losing to Germany 1-0 in the second round World Cup finals match in Arlington, Virginia, June 21.

"The longtime cultural ties to team sports like baseball and football and basketball take up a great chunk of our emotional and mental time. They are in our blood the way soccer is for most of the rest of the world ... We would need a sports transfusion to change"Ira Berkow,New York Times columnist

WASHINGTON - After a shining moment in the spotlight spurred by World Cup success, US soccer is likely to quickly return to being a sport enjoyed by millions of children and ignored by most adults.

Despite playing well, the United States lost to Germany by the only goal scored in the teams' World Cup quarterfinals match on Friday and was eliminated from the tournament. But the team's performance showed that earlier victories over Portugal and Mexico were no fluke and confirmed that US soccer has made huge strides in recent years.

"Beating Mexico ... woke up the media here in this country, it woke up the general sports fan and showed them that we can accomplish great things against the best in the world," said Dan Garber, commissioner of Major League Soccer, the sport's US professional league.

In the past 20 years, youth participation in soccer has exploded, its growth far outstripping America's national pastimes of baseball and American football. It is second behind basketball in the number of kids playing the game, according to figures compiled by the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association.

In 2000, almost 14 million children under the age of 18 played soccer, half of them playing 25 times or more a year. Fifty-nine per cent were boys and 41 per cent girls.

From 1989 to 1999, youth soccer participation grew by 73 per cent, compared to 7 per cent for basketball and 5 per cent for baseball.

But that growth did not translate into attendance at professional matches or television viewing.

Soccer remains a minority or niche sport, much like gymnastics or swimming, that can catch the nation's attention once every four years when the Olympics are on, but then revert to its niche.

Some commentators believe soccer is fundamentally foreign to the American psyche and will never catch on. Some argue there is something un-American about a sport where there is so little scoring and players cannot use their hands.

"While soccer has become popular with some moms and a ton of tots, it seems to lose spectator interest when the children reach adulthood," wrote New York Times columnist Ira Berkow.

"The longtime cultural ties to team sports like baseball and football and basketball take up a great chunk of our emotional and mental time. They are in our blood the way soccer is for most of the rest of the world ... We would need a sports transfusion to change," he wrote.

US Soccer Federation public relations manager Brian Schenault said soccer was fighting for a place in the most saturated sports market in the world.

"Soccer is just trying to carve out its niche and it's difficult against sports with decades of history and tradition in the United States behind them," he said.

UnAmerican game

A few US columnists are positively hostile to the sport. The Washington Post's Marc Fisher raised eyebrows with a recent column in which he denounced soccer as "Osama bin-Laden's favourite game." He called the sport "athletic drudgery that causes much of the rest of the globe to overthrow governments, tear apart concrete stadiums and impale themselves on the wire fences deemed necessary to pen them in."

Tom Hart, director of coaching education at US Youth Soccer, which has 3.1 million players affiliated, said the game was making slow but steady strides despite such hostility.

"When I grew up in Arkansas in the 1970s, there were only five soccer teams in the entire state. We are still a young sport in this country and it took decades for (American) football to reach the position it is in now," he said.

"I can tell you that high school football coaches are getting frightened when some of the best athletes stay in soccer rather than (play) football," he said.

One of the biggest disappointments has been the struggle of Major League Soccer to establish a major presence in the nation's sporting scene.

Founded in 1996 two years after the United States hosted the World Cup, the league's average attendance this season stands at just over 15,500, with fans often looking lost in football stadium built to hold 70,000. It had to eliminate two of its 12 original teams this year - in Miami and Tampa - and is still losing money.

By contrast, there are 30 Major League baseball teams, 29 basketball franchises, 31 football teams and 30 hockey teams.

The United States is a world power in women's soccer, having won the 1991 and 1999 World Cups. Last year, a professional league began with eight teams, drawing average attendance ranging from 14,000 for the Washington Freedom to just over 5,000 for the Carolina Courage

Around 1.98 million people watched the US victory over Mexico on television, despite the fact that it aired at 2:30am on the East Coast and 11:30pm in the West.

But most watched the game on the Spanish-language Univision channel, suggesting many of the die-hard soccer viewers were Hispanics, many of whom were supporting Mexico. In Los Angeles, almost half the Hispanic households tuned in.

Surprisingly, US soccer has failed to win the affections of the country's fast-growing Hispanic community, perhaps its most promising avenue for growth.

At the youth level, it is predominantly a white, middle class sport, associated with "soccer moms" driving kids around in sports utility vehicles.

"We have Hispanic players but we do need to reach out and do a better job to make sure they feel welcomed and included," said Larry Bachorik, a longtime youth coach in Maryland.

(Agencies via Xinhua)