Soccer is not a quintessentially American sport. Just as Brazil is forever the country of tomorrow, soccer is always the American sport of the the future. It is always coming but never quite arrives, or at least not to the extent that its most-fervent advocates would wish. Wearied British or European readers may be bracing for American anti-soccer invective. This is not that: soccer is a glorious game that deserves to be a major American sport, and though it will never eclipse football or baseball, it is possible to envision it as a second tier American sports.

Britain and America have been joined by fate and inheritance for generations now

Britain and America have been joined by fate and inheritance for generations now

Major League Soccer in the United States delivers a quality game (although hampered by an exclusivity deal with Apple TV that throttles its potential viewership). Liga MX also has a strong foothold in America that will only grow. The more indigenous soccer becomes, the more widely available it is, the better it will do. You’ll know it has arrived when a Major League Soccer franchise carries with it the civic identity of some beat-down place – think the Eagles for working-class Philadelphia or the White Sox for South-Side Chicago – and that fan base erupts in joy at a championship or defeat of a hated rival. 

Still, American soccer is not there yet. And American involvement in the ongoing FIFA World Cup is over, after the somnolent American team lost to Belgium. But there remains an American interest in the final games and eventual championship. That interest, surprising as it may seem to some in the month of the 250th anniversary of American independence, is in supporting England. England commands American support on the basis of favors done, sentiments shared, and the nature of sport. 

The favor done was executed in extraordinary fashion on Sunday, when England defeated the Mexican national team in its home arena, the famous Estadio Azteca, where its losses are so rare as to be measured in decades. That Mexican team was genuinely excellent and played with energy and fortitude, only to fail before an English last stand.

The Mexican fans, meanwhile, are widely reviled as among the most base and vicious even in Latin America. (There is a reason that many Latin American diplomatic-corps personnel took to social media to declare their support for England before the game.) Some of us on the American side remember well the Olympic qualifying game of February 10, 2004, in Estadio Jalisco, in which the Mexican........

© The Spectator