Soccer: US game flourishes but still needs growth

The United States is no longer tops in international baseball or basketball, distinctions it held for years, yet the country has gained increasing prominence on the world soccer stage.

A surprise run to the quarterfinals of the 2002 World Cup brought unprecedented exposure and respect to a sport which had never made an impact.

Even beating England in the 1950 World Cup was considered nothing but an historical footnote.

Now, positioned fifth in the world rankings, the US joins a handful of nations heading to a fifth consecutive finals next week.

Although still considered in its infancy, Major League Soccer (MLS) has produced international-calibre players and a number of soccer-specific stadiums are under construction.

The 12-team domestic league, which began in 1996, targets future expansion.

Positives outweigh the negatives, yet soccer hardly registers on the radar of the sports-saturated nation, despite the increasingly diverse ethnic population.

Attendance figures are regularly overstated, media coverage is minimal and soccer has a fraction of the television audience, compared with the National Football League, Major League Baseball and Nascar motor racing, while collegiate football and basketball also dwarf it.

So while qualifying for World Cups is no longer an issue -- until 1990, the US had gone 40 years without an appearance -- promoting growth, on and off the field, remains crucial.

"US soccer is in great shape," said United States Soccer Federation (USSF) boss Sunil Gulati, who was named president in March after Robert Contigulia stepped down after two four-year terms.

Contigulia took office following the debacle of the Americans' last-place finish at France '98. He inherited a federation in financial disarray with no plans to get on course.

Through reorganisation of staff and resources, including hiring coach Bruce Arena, the federation became more streamlined and business-savvy, and its finances are now in good shape.

"He's passionate and committed to bringing it to the next level," Contigulia said of Gulati.

"His experience and involvement in all aspects of the game are vital to its success."

The USSF now has more than US$30 million ($47.96 million) in its coffers and several deep-pocketed sponsors for the national team and MLS, but interest wanes unless it is in the World Cup.

"One thing that we're concerned about is how we grow the game," Gulati said.

"We have millions of people participating in the game, but how do we turn them into spectators?"

An estimated four million children and 400,000 adults play in amateur leagues in the US, but that has not translated to ticket sales.

"We're trying to retain players and grow our base," Gulati said.

"That's important as to how our teams do on the field, especially at the professional level.

"We have large Hispanic and African-American communities," he said.

"We don't have to sell Hispanics on the sport, but the federation should have far better representation of its members."

Gulati has been intimately involved with soccer's inner workings for years.

He served as USSF's executive vice president in 2000-06 and deputy commissioner of MLS in 1996-99. He was a member of the US World Cup bid committee in 1986-88 and integral to helping bring the most successful finals in history to the US.

Gulati, who teaches economics at New York's Columbia University, sits on several Fifa and Concacaf committees and is president of Kraft Soccer Properties, owners of the New England Revolution of MLS.

He would not comment on the possibility that the US would bid on the 2014 or 2018 World Cup, but Gulati stressed the importance of hosting events.

"We want to host events for strategic reasons," he said.

"It can be any number of events. Hosting a men's or women's World Cup. We want to do events because they make sense commercially."

The US market has not gone unnoticed and Gulati is optimistic about the future for MLS and the national team.

Last November, Fifa sold the North American World Cup broadcast rights to ABC, ESPN and Univision who paid US$425m for the English and Spanish language rights from 2007-2014.

In March, Austrian energy drink company Red Bull purchased the MLS MetroStars from Los Angeles-based AEG -- which still owns four MLS teams -- in a deal worth nearly US$100m.

Prior to that, English champions Chelsea and AEG announced a marketing alliance.

"No one's asking as to whether or not it (MLS) is still around," he said.

"To think that Fifa has signed the largest TV deal in the world with two US companies, that people are building soccer-specific stadiums and spending hundreds of millions of dollars on soccer in the US, that's encouraging."

- REUTERS