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All my life, soccer has been touted as the next big thing in American sports. This goes back to the 1970s when Pele was evidently the best in the world at running up and down a large field with tube socks chasing a dimpled white ball.

"Just you wait" said the soccer aficionados at the time, "Soon soccer will be so big in the U.S.A. that you will forget all about NFL football and MLB baseball."

Indeed, "youth soccer" programs sprung up all across the United States in a concerted effort to make it happen. A whole new term was coined for harried housewives in mini-vans ("soccer moms") and at least three generations of 6-10 year old kids learned the joy of standing around in large fields, picking the underwear out of their butts, while several energetic kids who actually took this sport seriously ran circles around them. Nobody ever kept score. Everybody went for ice cream after practice. And everybody got a trophy.

If every adult American who ever played soccer as a child was to clean out their attic and simultaneously put their soccer trophies up for sale on Ebay, the entire Internet would come to a stop due to crashed servers.

Alas, all the would-be American "Peles" got bored with the game and moved on to other recreational activities by the time they reached puberty. Such as Nintendo, texting, YouTube, etc.

I can't explain why soccer never catches on in the U.S. but it's not like we never tried.