Reddit Reddit reviews Soccer in a Football World: The Story of America's Forgotten Game (Sporting)

We found 9 Reddit comments about Soccer in a Football World: The Story of America's Forgotten Game (Sporting). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Soccer in a Football World: The Story of America's Forgotten Game (Sporting)
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9 Reddit comments about Soccer in a Football World: The Story of America's Forgotten Game (Sporting):

u/human1st · 21 pointsr/soccer

Umm no. Soccer isn't on major sports networks because the American public never had the chance to consistently establish roots in their local teams due to many failed and poorly run leagues dating back to the early 1900's. Read Soccer in a Football World if you're American it'll enlighten you on the history of the sport in our country.

u/spisska · 9 pointsr/MLS

The history is a lot deeper than you think. These two books are more or less companions by the same author, and the definitive history of the game in the US and Canada:

u/rnoboa · 9 pointsr/MLS

Except that if you actually look at the history of soccer in the United States, it's had precisely the opposite effect. The late, great David Wangerin wrote about it in his two books -- Soccer in a Football World and Distant Corners.

Distant Corners, particularly, is really brutally poignant about the harm that it did to the growth and development of American soccer; it basically put us in about a 70-year hole, from which we're only now emerging.

I don't think -- as I've written before -- that you can draw parallels between what took place in football, basketball, and hockey in the '60s and '70s and soccer today. The context for the rise of the AFL, ABA, and WHA was utterly different. Of those three leagues, only the AFL was truly successful, mostly because it was very well-financed and managed to compete on an equal footing with the NFL by the time of the merger. Neither the ABA nor the WHA were able to do that, with both leagues essentially capitulating to the circuits they were challenging.

So what was that context? In short, the reason you had those three competing leagues was that they were trying to meet perceived demand for those sports. This was especially true in the case of the AFL, much less so in the case of the WHA.

I happen to think that soccer is in a similar boat. Right now, NASL attendance and MLS attendance aren't even in the same ballpark, even if you throw in Chivas USA. For me to think otherwise, I'd have to see NASL teams consistently drawing 10,000+ people to their home games, week in and week out, and we're nowhere near that.

When we get there, then we can talk about MLS not meeting the demand that's out there. But not before.

u/DialSquareUS · 9 pointsr/MLS

Not a site, but this book covers some of the history:

Soccer in a Football World: The Story of America's Forgotten Game
by David Wangerin


http://www.amazon.com/Soccer-Football-World-Americas-Forgotten/dp/1592138853

u/njndirish · 8 pointsr/soccer

Soccer in a Football World: The Story of America's Forgotten Game

Recommended reading, many people forget that we've had the sport here for over a century.

u/keystone_union · 7 pointsr/MLS

The American Soccer History Archive has a lot of material: http://homepages.sover.net/~spectrum/

There is a historical overview of American soccer there that might be what you are looking for. There are also year-by-year reports, USMNT World Cup reviews, regional histories, historical player bios, etc. Great site overall.

Roger Allaway is an American soccer historian who regularly writes short but interesting history articles on his blog at bigsoccer: http://www.bigsoccer.com/soccer/roger-allaway/

Philly Soccer Page has a lot of good articles on US soccer history, including a series on the USMNT in the World Cup: http://www.phillysoccerpage.net/category/soccer-history/soccer-in-the-us/

"Soccer in a Football World: The Story of America's Forgotten Game" by David Wangerin is a very good book if you're willing to spend some cash (though Google Books probably has a preview): http://www.amazon.com/Soccer-Football-World-Americas-Forgotten/dp/1592138853

u/pvdfan · 1 pointr/baseball

You mentioned all sports so I have four on soccer in the US. Long-Range Goals: The Success Story of Major League Soccer tells the story of the first 14-15 years of MLS. Star-Spangled Soccer: The Selling, Marketing and Management of Soccer in the USA is a business based book, but covers the utter insanity of soccer in the US from the the announcement of the US getting the World Cup until the book was published. Soccer in a Football World is a must read for the entire history of the sport from it's boom in the 1920's until mid-2000s. Finally, we have The Beckham Experiment which covers the story of David Beckham coming to the US and what followed. If I had to pick one of the bunch, go with Soccer in a Football World.