A few days more, and the loss continues to sting. Time heals all wounds, but these wounds will remain open as long as the World Cup continues without the United States as part of it. I certainly can't turn away from the tournament now, not with the greatest drama yet to unfold.
The hangover is debilitating, though. MLS has started up again, and while I peeked in on the opening of PPL Park via ESPN2 yesterday, I had trouble properly appreciating what I was seeing. It was a glorious day for Union fans and MLS as yet another new facility gave the game in America a proper home, and yet I could do nothing but watch dispassionately. The World Cup has stolen my soul.
Oh, I know I'll get it back. Sometime soon, I'll find myself excited again for the domestic league, for watching the silly season exert itself on American interests, and for churning out thousand word essays on the state of this or the problem with that. Something, perhaps just the aforementioned time, will rejuvenate me.
This little dilemma, if it is in fact anything of the kind, has me wondering about anyone not as invested in the sport here as I happen to be. If I'm suffering from burnout, what must half-hearted fans who jumped on the soccer bandwagon with both feet a week or two ago be thinking? Is there any way to conceive of massive numbers of new fans finding solace in the lesser lights of MLS? When put up against the World Cup and the comfortable sports-inspired patriotic fervor of the U.S. National Team, the Philadelphia Union versus the Seattle Sounders will naturally let us down.
So while I love seeing things like the massive TV ratings for U.S.A.-Ghana, and it heartens me to see so many Americans take even a small interest in the game, I know it's all ephemeral. Not because the game can't, or shouldn't, pull people in, but because their palates have been spoiled.
As I wrote for Four Four Two during the heady days post-Algeria (short-lived as it was), soccer gains coverts organically. The big event is actually the worst way to sell the game because appreciating beyond the conclusion of the event requires a commitment to something significantly less attractive. English Premier League followers who reject MLS are prime examples of this phenomenon.
As I write this, MLS has marketing experts desperately searching for ways to leverage the World Cup fad into a positive for the league. I don't envy them their task. Transforming national team excitement into local club interest is not a straight line from "A" to "B", no matter what logic seems to say.
I won't fret if MLS doesn't see some wonderful uptick in attendance and television ratings. I won't process it as a failure on the part of the league or a sign that soccer will never "catch on" here. Instead I'll see it for what it is; another indication that Americans love big events, that millions of minds are at least open to the game, and that slowly but surely the sport will continue to increase in visibility and popularity. The "turning point" is a unicorn. Even a deeper run for our boys wouldn't have changed that from an MLS perspective.
Nothing about the league's mandate has changed because a few million more people watched the world's greatest event for a few weeks in June.
Soccer will continue to grow as a spectator sport in the United States. How quickly that happens has little to do with the World Cup.
