ESPN Digital Jul 24, 2022 Lecture: 3 min.
While the origins of soccer are discussed in the country, today the United States has one of the largest professional leagues in the world, Major League Soccer, and the fifth most popular sport, after American football, basketball, baseball and ice hockey. MLS has the third-highest average attendance of any sport in the United States, behind the NFL and MLB, and the seventh-highest professional soccer league in viewership.
It is not well known if soccer arrived in the country in the 1860s, at Ellis Island or New Orleans, the truth is that the first team, Oneida FC, was founded in Boston in 1862. In 1884, the American Football Association was the first. the rules of the game and the first tournament was created, the season played, in 1884, the American Professional Football League, a year later, the National Football Association appeared, valid until 1921.
By 1911, the appearance of the Association of Amateur Football Associations generated a division to determine the governing body of the sport in the country. This led to the official foundation of the North American Confederation, later confirmed by FIFA.
The oldest tournament in the country is the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup, formerly the National Challenge Cup; after 1920, the game began to be known as the American Soccer League and the American League was created, which lasted until 1933. Above, in 1930, the national team participated in its first World Cup, in Uruguay, where it came in third place.
In 1966 the World Cup in England was encouraged by the study of sports sponsors and businessmen in the country, which in 1967 held two competitions, although only one was certified by FIFA, the Association of North American Societies. At the end of that year, the North American Soccer League celebrated with the North American League, to celebrate its first professional season in 1968. The league began with a series of problems, especially of an economic nature, but the good reception that the New York Cosmos and Theat. the incorporation of the European stars in 1975 gave the league until 1980, in which again a bad decline caused financial problems that led to the dissolution of the entity in 1985. The last time it played was 1984.
For these years, four decades have passed since the last appearance of the United States of America in the World Cup, but the national team managed to qualify again, this time, for the 1990 World Cup in Italy, the same year that the Western Conference and the third edition of the American Soccer League go together He became a member of the American Professional Association, which lasted until 1996.
A good effort by the United States before FIFA made it take the country’s headquarters to organize the 1994 World Cup, a successful competition in which the nation reached 16 and with this promise the United States was also fulfilled. to guarantee that the creation of a top quality professional league. Major League Soccer then celebrated its first season in 1996; Four years later, the first professional women’s soccer league was founded after the women’s team won the 1999 World Cup, held in the United States. Between 2011 and 2013, a break was opened for women’s competition and the National Women’s League appeared, a league that is in force today.
The United States men’s team has placed one of the largest in the Concacaf region with Canada and Mexico, but nothing has happened that is already close to hosting the new World Cup, which will be in 2026. established jointly with the two countries in the partner zone.
