Fútbol deja de ser “extranjero” en EE.UU.

fútbol deja – Desde la Copa del Mundo de 1994 en Chicago, cuando muchos estadounidenses apenas seguían el torneo, el fútbol ha crecido hasta convertirse en el tercer deporte más popular del país. Pero el entusiasmo avanza entre contradicciones: también persisten señales de

For years, the biggest surprise in my family wasn’t who played. It was who seemed not to care.

In 1994. on a day when Soldier Field became one of the hosts of the World Cup. I didn’t even know the tournament existed—or that Chicago was on the list. What I remember instead is a kind of blur of other things: the slow-motion tension of a white Ford Bronco tied to O.J. Simpson and Al Cowlings. and then the opening ceremony itself. 32 years ago. when Oprah Winfrey fell off the stage and Diana Ross missed a penalty during her performance of “I’m Coming Out.”.

The World Cup matches that followed—played on the field of the Bears and in eight other stadiums across the country—passed through a crowd that. at the time. often seemed indifferent or ignorant of what was happening. On June 17. 1994. with a record attendance of 3.59 million filling the stands. the momentum on the pitch didn’t seem to match the attention back home.

This time, I’m not as lost. Family and friends who love soccer pulled me in. And with a growing role for the sport in everyday American life, I’ve come to recognize the names that once meant little to me: Mia Hamm, Megan Rapinoe, Mohamed Salah, Lionel Messi, and others.

I’m not glued to a phone or a television either. Two of my nephews, though, will watch whenever they can—during the biggest international men’s soccer competition as it takes place in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

I’ve gone a long way from a time when I thought my cousin was praising the Argentine midfielder Diego Maradona—thinking he was talking about “The Material Girl. ” because that’s what “Material” sounded like to me. In my household, it was “football” long before it was soccer. And that difference matters.

Soccer before “football”

Soccer has been played in the United States in some form since the early 1800s—long before 1869, when a leather ball was kicked on a field in New Jersey in a game that has since evolved into American football.

Yet unlike the NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL, professional soccer has often been treated as a second-tier interest—described as a “foreign sport.” That framing was even used by the Sun-Times in an article that was otherwise glowing about the first and only live World Cup event held in Chicago in 1994.

A few years before that turning point, soccer ranked 67th behind the tug-of-tractors sweepstakes in a survey of the nation’s favorite spectator sports, according to broadcaster and author Roger Bennett.

Today the numbers tell a different story. Soccer has surpassed baseball and is now the third most popular sport in the U.S. behind American football and basketball. according to The Economist. A separate recent study released by Nielsen found the U.S. has the fourth-largest soccer fan base in the world, with 62.5 million followers. It also showed that most of those fans are young: 76% of soccer fans in the U.S. are millennials or members of Generation Z.

With that shift, there’s hope that one day soccer won’t be treated as “other”—a label that once made too many people wary of a sport associated with immigrant communities and loved beyond U.S. borders.

Still, the sport’s rising popularity doesn’t erase what’s happening off the field.

Discrimination under the Trump administration

Some Americans may have stopped hating the game. The current U.S. government, the author argues, doesn’t hate soccer—it hates players, depending on their country of origin.

Several World Cup participants, fans, and journalists from multiple countries, including Haiti, Iran, Senegal, and Côte d’Ivoire, faced tighter visa restrictions or were denied entry to the U.S. due to the Trump administration’s immigration policies and travel bans.

“It’s a form of segregation that doesn’t identify as such, but the proof is there,” said Julien Kouadio Adonis, president of the National Supporters’ Committee for Côte d’Ivoire, the group called the National Supporters for Elephants, in an interview with the BBC.

That contrast—soccer growing louder in American life while players and supporters still run into barriers at the border—sits at the center of the author’s unease.

“I’m joking,” the author says, because she fears that amnesia about the World Cup might be good for the country. She doesn’t want the actions of what she calls “ugly Americans” to push her away from what Pelé called “the beautiful game.”

She describes learning about soccer as a child from a father who. before he died. never mentioned playing any sports activity himself. He also didn’t talk much about soccer. except to correct other Americans for not calling the sport “fútbol”—the way most of the world does. In the family now. it’s Zain and Elyan—the children of her older sister—who educate relatives about the right terminology. the rules. and the proper norms around the sport.

Her younger sister and she even visited the FIFA Museum in Zurich, Switzerland, in 2023, and made sure to buy the boys soccer jerseys from the countries they visited.

When something goes wrong, family memory turns into story

There’s a moment from that same museum trip that shows how soccer fandom isn’t always orderly—just personal. The author says she can’t remember whether she and her family ever told Zain and Elyan that. once. they mistakenly bought a Ronaldinho Gaúcho jersey in Brazil to fulfill a request from their uncle—her brother—for a Cristiano Ronaldo jersey.

And she adds that it took a relative living 8,000 miles away to tell her what was happening in her own city three decades ago.

That admission is threaded through her entire recollection: the gap between what the World Cup demanded—attention, language, openness—and what she and many Americans offered at the time.

The competition she remembers from Soldier Field in 1994, the record crowd of 3.59 million, the opening ceremony details, the long odds of soccer’s earlier ranking at 67th, and the later surge in fans and national interest are all part of the same movement.

It’s a movement that is now large enough to matter—enough to teach a new generation how to say “fútbol.” But it also carries the friction of policies that can make the sport feel, for some people, less like a shared game and more like a line you can be blocked from crossing.

fútbol en Estados Unidos Copa del Mundo 1994 Chicago Soldier Field millennials Generación Z Nielsen discriminación políticas migratorias Trump visas Pelé