From Minnow to Major: The Story of the Growth of U.S. Soccer

By Stephen Dent

No one knows for sure what the future holds for soccer in the United States, but most everyone agrees that things are looking up. The United States now has players in youth academies and clubs all over the world, and U.S. Youth soccer participation is as strong as ever. Major League Soccer continues to grow at a steady pace and spend reasonably in order to avoid disaster. The recent World Cup got higher ratings than previous tournaments and it seems like there was a watch party on every street for the U.S. games. Commentators and journalists are always asking when will soccer arrive in America or on the global stage and the answer is: It's already here.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Dent
• Release date: Jul 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310736490

Stephen Dent

Stephen Dent is a writer of fiction and nonfiction Ebooks. He is based in the United States and a huge soccer fan!

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From Minnow to Major

By Stephen Dent

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 by Stephen Dent

From Minnow to Major: The Story of the Growth of U.S. Soccer

The ASL's Beginning

There was a time, though very few people know of it, when the United States had one of the strongest and most financially stable and popular soccer leagues in the world. This is long before David Beckham and the Los Angeles Galaxy, long before Pele and the New York Cosmos. It was the American Soccer League, or ASL, of the 1920s. At the time, no country in the world could boast of quite as much wealth as the United States, which translated into free time and luxury spending. A number of manufacturing companies began paying soccer players to be on their teams, a practice that was relatively new, even in the lands where soccer was most popular—England, Scotland, and Ireland. In the 1930 World Cup, the first edition, the United States placed third, which speaks to the relative popularity of the game in the United States at the time. The United States beat Belgium handily before running over Paraguay. Bert Patenaude, an American, became the first player to score a hat-trick in a World Cup when he did so against Paraguay, though it would not be recognized as such for many years. A third place finish remains the United States' best-ever finish at the World Cup. It