One of the fastest growing sports in the United States, both in terms of participation and spectatorship, largely owing to its appeal among women and girls who have been shut out of other professional team sports. Such appeal was manifest at the 1999 Women’s World Cup Final, played between the United States and China at the Rose Bowl in front of 90,000 plus spectators—the largest-ever audience for a women’s sporting event. The images of Briana Scurry making the crucial penalty save, and Brandi Chastain pulling off her shirt after slotting home the final penalty will be remembered in the minds of many American girls for as long as English boys remember events at Wembley in 1966.

Soccer in the United States developed slowly due to the strength of American football in colleges and the strength of baseball among working-class Americans. Immigrants from countries associated with Association Football—Germany Italy and Ireland, for example—left their homelands before soccer was firmly established and so readily adopted a game that was being promoted as the “American game.” Soccer’s popularity increased at the end of the 1960s with coverage of the 1966 World Cup because of a continued identification among many Americans with England. In 1967 the North American Soccer League was established, using the formula of attracting big names from European and South American soccer. Only the New York Cosmos thrived under this system, signing Pele, George Best and Franz Beckenbauer, and the league suffered due to the lack of talent and the limited availability of native-born players with whom crowds could identify By the end of the 1970s the league was all but moribund.

The situation in the 1990s has been very different. Soccer now has very strong roots in communities around the country It ranks as the fastest-growing team sport in terms of levels of participation, dwarfing little-league baseball, with between 4 and 6 million children participating in organized leagues. Soccer has also established very strong roots in colleges, particularly among women players, whose sporting facilities have improved in response to Title IX.

The international soccer federation (FIFA) tried to enter the lucrative American market for many years, but this remained difficult until the emergence of cable television, as the major networks catered to exceedingly profitable football, basketball and baseball leagues. The rise of ESPN, the cable sports channel, provided a new outlet for small sporting markets and growing markets like that for soccer.

The World Cup in 1994, held in the United States, set attendance records for the competition and helped cement the position of soccer in the United States. Large crowds witnessed a respectable American national team led by Alexi Lalas, Eric Wynalda and John Harkin, stars from the fledgling major-league soccer. This league has avoided the pitfalls of the NASL, and, by limiting each team to four foreign players, has given the league a more American flavor and ensured considerable corporate sponsorship.

Continued success for soccer in the United States is likely to depend on the blending of two traditions, similar to that occurring earlier in the rise of basketball. One is the suburban sporting tradition, undergoing a shift as parents turn away from basketball, associated with the inner city and football, seen by many as being too violent for their children. The strength of soccer in suburban communities is seen in the political significance attached to the “soccer mom” as a constituency in recent political elections.

The other tradition is that of the new immigrants coming into the country New arrivals following the easing of immigration quotas in the 1960s have left places where soccer is firmly established as the leading spectator sport. Instead of identifying with baseball, which has been losing its hold as the American game, many of these immigrants enter communities where ethnic soccer teams and leagues are commonplace.

And the success of the game has been amply demonstrated by the Women’s World Cup of 1999, which, building on the USA’s leading position in the women’s game, has produced record-breaking crowds and widespread attention from bastions of male dominance. The Gatorade commercial pitting Mia Hamm, the superstar of the women’s game, against Micheal Jordan highlights the newfound commercial appeal of the game and its players.