The U.S. has historically struggled with the most popular sport on earth. Even at this year’s World Cup the US Men’s National Soccer Team advanced to the round of 16 and was then beaten by Holland.

It is to note however that soccer is far more popular than it has ever been, mostly among young Americans. States like California, North Carolina, Arizona, Texas, Florida and New York are the leading states with over 28,000 youth soccer clubs combined. Add to that an additional 30,000+ clubs in the remaining states.

In late 2021 an independent poll was laid out in 40 states, almost 10% of Americans answered that soccer is their favorite sport, while an additional 18% claimed they do watch it on TV. This may seem like a small percentage, but in reality it isn’t considering the interest for soccer in the US has doubled in growth since 20 years ago. There is no other sport that saw this type of improvement in popularity over this time.

The favorite role that young athletes want to play is Striker or winger, while the least favorite position (by a landslide) is that of the Goalkeepers.

American football: NCAA and the NFL is still the top sport that keeps Americans glued to the TV screen and that’s in all age groups. A third of Americans have for decades indicated that it is their top sport

20 years ago soccer was not popular for high schoolers to play. Even when you combined boys and girls playing the sport, not even 200,000 students played the game. With 80% of high schools not even having a soccer program. For comparison, nearly a million boys played football. But… in 2000, just 200,000 boys and girls played high school soccer. In 2022, over 800,000 boys and girls decided to take up competitive soccer at a high school level. So in other words, simply doing the math, soccer has nearly had a 300% growth in the last 23 years.

There is no other sport in America that has taken off as quickly over the last 40 years as soccer, not just among high schoolers but mostly among competitive travel youth clubs.