What might have been?
This I didn't know before...
*****
I'm quite a fan of soccer and I always enjoy the World Cup as it comes around every four years. I wouldn't mind one day living in or near a city with an MLS team and supporting it. I had known that the MLS is the successor to the defunct North American Soccer League, which crashed and burned in 1984. The vociferous critics of soccer in America say it crashed and burned because it simply isn't this country's sport. I don't think that has to be the case, and apparently it wasn't merely a failure of popularity in a free market of sports that caused the NASL's demise. Consider this from Parnesh Sharma's opinion piece at The Christian Science Monitor:
In its heyday in the late 1970s, the NASL was a serious presence on the US sports scene. The New York Cosmos, the league's flagship franchise, had little trouble filling Giants Stadium, especially when soccer legend Pele joined the team. The NFL, then not quite the juggernaut it is today, watched this development warily. Aided by a willing media, it began to vilify US soccer.
Today, however, the MLS is picking up steam, and multiple ownership is allowed by the NFL. More Americans follow the World Cup and sponsorship is up. Ignore the derision of the isolationists, and viva la real football!
*****
I'm quite a fan of soccer and I always enjoy the World Cup as it comes around every four years. I wouldn't mind one day living in or near a city with an MLS team and supporting it. I had known that the MLS is the successor to the defunct North American Soccer League, which crashed and burned in 1984. The vociferous critics of soccer in America say it crashed and burned because it simply isn't this country's sport. I don't think that has to be the case, and apparently it wasn't merely a failure of popularity in a free market of sports that caused the NASL's demise. Consider this from Parnesh Sharma's opinion piece at The Christian Science Monitor:
In its heyday in the late 1970s, the NASL was a serious presence on the US sports scene. The New York Cosmos, the league's flagship franchise, had little trouble filling Giants Stadium, especially when soccer legend Pele joined the team. The NFL, then not quite the juggernaut it is today, watched this development warily. Aided by a willing media, it began to vilify US soccer.
The media portrayed soccer players as foreign invaders, calling them "commie pansies." Soccer was derided as something for immigrants. Fearful of being perceived as un-American, many immigrants disavowed soccer – the pastime of their homelands – and embraced US sports.
In addition to applying pressure to newspapers, radio and television stations, and advertisers, the NFL also prohibited its owners from owning teams in other sports (an action directed chiefly against the NASL). The NASL sued, but the NFL won in court in 1982. The NASL folded in 1984.
*****Today, however, the MLS is picking up steam, and multiple ownership is allowed by the NFL. More Americans follow the World Cup and sponsorship is up. Ignore the derision of the isolationists, and viva la real football!
Labels: The Pleasures of Life
Post a Comment