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About
Soccer
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" Association football, commonly
referred to as soccer in the United States, has long been a popular
sport in the United States. It is the most popular recreational sport
for both boys and girls and has been so for more than 30 years. As a
spectator sport however, it is often overshadowed and not considered to
be among the "big four" major-league team sports.
Professional association football has been less popular in
the United States than most other parts of the world. Major League
Soccer, the United States' professional first-division league, is not,
in general, as well-attended as the major leagues of American football,
basketball and baseball. But a recent review of attendance shows that
Major League Soccer is enjoying higher per game attendance than
basketball and ice hockey.
Although MLS is also much younger than most other
countries' first divisions, and has 16 teams in 2010, it is already the
12th most-attended premier division in the entire world. In 2006 MLS
broke its all-time record for attendance at a regular-season match,
which saw 92,650 spectators fill the Los Angeles Coliseum on a Sunday
in August; although that claim is somewhat misattributed to the MLS
game as it was one of two games played that night, the second being a
match between two power-houses of the Spanish speaking world: Spain's
Barcelona and Mexico's Guadalajara. On August 1, 2009, a friendly
match between the Los Angeles Galaxy and Barcelona at the Rose Bowl,
drew a crowd of 93,137 fans. The last time a soccer match drew that
many people in the United States was during the 1994 FIFA World Cup.
Since 2007, with the arrival of international superstars
such as David Beckham and Thierry Henry, and the Mexican idol
Cuauhtémoc Blanco, attendance records for specific MLS teams and
stadiums continue to rise. Additionally, the United States and Mexico
national teams have been playing in front of crowds in excess of 60,000
in the U.S. in recent years. Television viewership of club and
international soccer in the U.S. is at an all-time high, with major
sports networks regularly covering games in some fashion and several
other channels dedicated mostly or entirely to the sport.
Until recently, American soccer was more of a
regional phenomenon than it is today. Soccer flourished in hotbeds such
as New Jersey, Texas, New York, Saint Louis, the Pacific Northwest,
Southern California, and in areas with large immigrant populations that
grew up with the game in their homelands. Nonetheless, soccer is now
gradually gaining popularity all over the country, partially due to
youth programs, the creation of Major League Soccer, and the recent
success of the United States' men's and women's national teams. "
From Wikipedia Link
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THe
history
of
Soccer
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"
It
is
often
claimed
that
the Oneida Football Club of Boston,
Massachusetts, founded in 1862 was the first club to play soccer
outside the United Kingdom. However, the club could not have been
playing soccer, as they were formed before The Football Association
formulated the rules in England; it is not known what rules the club
used, and it broke up within the space of a few years. According to
Encyclopædia Britannica, the club is often credited with
inventing the "Boston Game", which both allowed players to kick a round
ball along the ground, and to pick it up and run with it. The first
U.S. match known to have been inspired by FA rules was a game between
Princeton University and Rutgers University on November 6, 1869, which
was won by Rutgers 6-4. The FA rules were followed in the
Princeton-Rutgers contest: participants were only allowed to kick the
ball and each side had 25 players. Other colleges emulated this
development, but all of these were converted to rugby by the mid-1870s
and would soon become famous as early bastions of American football.
Early soccer leagues in the U.S. mostly used the name
"football," for example: the American Football Association (founded in
1884), the American Amateur Football Association (1893), the American
League of Professional Football (1894), the National Association Foot
Ball League (1895), and the Southern New England Football League
(1914). However, the word "soccer" was beginning to catch on, and the
Saint Louis Soccer League was a significant regional competition
between 1907 and 1939. What is now the United States Soccer Federation
was originally the United States Football Association, formed in 1913
by the merger of the American Football Association and the American
Amateur Football Association. The governing body of the sport in the
U.S. did not have the word soccer in its name until 1945, when it
became the United States Soccer Football Association. It did not drop
the word football from its name until 1974, when it became the United
States Soccer Federation, often going simply as U.S. Soccer.
Two more soccer leagues were started in 1967, the United
Soccer Association and the National Professional Soccer League. These
merged to form the North American Soccer League in 1968, which survived
until 1984. The NASL also ran an indoor league in the latter years.
Indoor soccer was a great success in the 1980s and 1990s, in part due
to the effort of the NASL. When the NASL (both outdoor and indoor)
folded, other leagues, including the Major Indoor Soccer League stepped
in to meet the demand. Twenty-five years hence, the latest version of
the MISL folded, and was replaced by the National Indoor Soccer League,
the Professional Arena Soccer League, and the Xtreme Soccer League. "
From Wikipedia Link
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