soccer becoming – From Soldier Field’s 1994 World Cup spectacle to today’s booming youth fandom, soccer has steadily crossed into mainstream American life—while stricter visa policies under the Trump administration have shown how national friction can still follow the game.
When the World Cup came to Chicago in 1994. it didn’t land like a homecoming for most Americans—it landed like something happening across an ocean. The opening festivities at Soldier Field unfolded while the country’s attention was snagged elsewhere: O.J. Simpson and Al Cowlings later became the headline of a police chase that. at the time. drew eyes away from the ceremony. Still. on the field. the night belonged to pop and pageantry—Oprah Winfrey fell through the stage and Diana Ross missed a staged penalty kick as she sang “I’m Coming Out.”.
The games that followed on the Bears’ home turf and across eight other stadiums nationwide didn’t register as sports news to everyone who should have been watching. The tournament’s debut on June 17. 1994—between Germany and Bolivia—came after those festivities. and a record 3.59 million people filled the stands.
For one American family. the memory starts with a different kind of connection: an uncle from India sent a note in English written in the margins of an Urdu-penned aerogram addressed to the author’s mother. That message was the first time the family took the World Cup seriously. and it came in the same era when local die-hard sports fans in the author’s life back in 1994 didn’t show much interest.
Now, the distance feels smaller. Conversations about the sport are no longer rare. and soccer’s stars have become familiar names in everyday American life—Mia Hamm. Megan Rapinoe. Mohamed Salah. Lionel Messi and other players celebrated as “GOATs.” Even if the author isn’t glued to phone and television. the change is visible in the people around them: two nephews keep watching whenever the largest international men’s competition plays out in the United States. Canada and Mexico.
It also helps that soccer’s story in the U.S. is older than many people realize. The sport has been played in some form in the U.S. since the early 1800s—well before 1869, when a pigskin was kicked down a field in New Jersey in a game that evolved into American football.
But the leap into mainstream status has been uneven. Professional soccer often got treated as secondary—a “foreign sport”—including in coverage from the Sun-Times describing Chicago’s first and only live World Cup extravaganza.
Years later, the numbers tell a different story. In a survey on the nation’s favorite spectator sports. soccer ranked 67th. behind tractor pulling. broadcaster and author Roger Bennett has claimed. Today. per The Economist. soccer has moved past baseball and is now the third most popular sport in the U.S. behind football and basketball.
Nielsen’s study goes further for those trying to understand why the sport is spreading the way it is. It found the U.S. has the fourth-largest soccer fanbase in the world, with 62.5 million supporters. Those fans skew young—76% are millennials or Gen Z—and that matters to the author’s sense of what comes next. There’s hope that. eventually. soccer won’t be “othered” by people put off by a sport embraced by immigrants and beloved beyond American borders.
Yet that hope lives beside a harder reality. The sport may be finding more followers, but the political climate can still reach the pitch.
Under the Trump administration’s stringent immigration policies and travel bans. numerous World Cup participants. fans and journalists from several countries—including Haiti. Iran. Senegal and Ivory Coast—faced tighter visa restrictions or were denied entry into the U.S. altogether. Julien Kouadio Adonis. president of the Ivory Coast’s fan association group. the National Committee for the Support of the Elephants. told the BBC: “It’s a form of segregation that doesn’t dare speak its name. but the proof is there.”.
That tension echoes the author’s own experience of learning what soccer is—and what it isn’t allowed to be. The author says they don’t want to let the actions of some “ugly Americans” turn them away from what Pelé coined as “the beautiful game.” Their father. the author recalls. played soccer as a child but never mentioned taking part in any athletic activity otherwise. He didn’t talk much about soccer until chastising fellow Americans for not referring to it as “football. ” as most of the global population does.
The next generation has taken over the instruction. Zain and Elyan. the author’s older sister’s sons. are now schooling the rest of the family about proper soccer-related terminology. rules and etiquette. In 2023. when the author joined them at the FIFA Museum in Zurich. Switzerland. the family bought jerseys from each country visited.
The author admits there’s a small complication in the memories: they’re not sure if they ever told Zain and Elyan about an earlier mistake—when they mistakenly grabbed a Ronaldinho Gaúcho shirt in Brazil to fulfill the brother’s request for a Cristiano Ronaldo jersey.
Even so, the arc feels clear. It took a relative living 8. 000 miles away to tell the author what was happening in their own city three decades ago—at a time when Chicago’s selection as a host city was announced by Mayor Richard M. Daley in the spring of 1992, surrounded by Farragut High School boys’ soccer team. The World Cup’s arrival at Soldier Field in 1994 still stands as a turning point in the author’s life.
But the sport’s current momentum—its third-place status behind football and basketball. its 62.5 million supporters. and its young fanbase—also brings new stakes. Soccer may no longer be treated as “foreign” for everyone. Still, the way visas are handled and who gets entry shows that the borders around the game haven’t vanished. People can fall in love with the ball and still feel the world’s lines draw tight around the people who come with it.
soccer United States World Cup 1994 Chicago Soldier Field Richard M. Daley visa restrictions Trump administration Haiti Iran Senegal Ivory Coast Julien Kouadio Adonis fans millennials Gen Z Mia Hamm Megan Rapinoe Mohamed Salah Lionel Messi