Football in the United States
In general football is the 5th most popular sport in the united states behind basketball, baseball, American football and ice hockey. Over the last few years it became more and more popular and if this trend continues, football will maybe overcome the other sports.
History
Immigrants from England, Scotland and Germany introduced football in the late 19th century, after a while the sport became more popular, but the so called “soccer war” 1913 between the USFA (=United States Football Association) and AFA (=American Football Association) led to a fall of the sport but in the 1960s the re-emergence began: a new professional league, the NASL (=North American Soccer League) was introduced 1968. More and more people wanted to watch the league, especially because of the new star players like Pele, Beckenbauer and George Best.
However the high salaries of the players forced financial problems and that’s way the league was suspended in 1984.
The two professional leagues:
The highest one, the MLS (Major League Soccer), which exists of 23 teams in 2 conferences, 3 teams from Canada
And the other one, the USL (United Soccer League) with 33 teams also in 2 conferences, 5 teams from Canada
The MLS
It was founded in 1997 and is different to most of the European leagues, because it has 2 conferences, the Western and Eastern conference. Every team has 34 matches in the regular season. After the regular season the best 6 teams of each conference qualifies for the Playoffs.
The 2 top sides of each conference are automatically qualified for the conference’s semi-final round. The other 4 teams have to play a single knockout game to advance to the semi-finals. At the end the winner of each conference’s finale plays the MLS Cup Final. The winner of it is qualified for the CONCACAF Champions League
Teams have a certain amount of money to spend for the contracts of there players. Like this the league wants that every side has the same changes. However every side can have a maximum of 3 star players, the so called Designated Players, which they can pay as much as they want.
That’s way a lot of famous European football players go to the MLS. David Beckham was the one, who started the trend 2007 with is transfer to LA Galaxy and many footballers followed him like: Gerrard, Lampard, Kaka, Pirlo, Henry to mention some of them. At the time there are playing: David Villa, former Barcelona player, Carlos Vela, Giovanni Dos Santos, also former Barcelona and Zlatan Ibrahimovic who has signed recently this winter for LA Galaxy and has released a new boom in the United States
Designated Players
In 2007 the league expanded beyond the United States' borders into Canada with the Toronto FC expansion teams. Major League Soccer took steps to further raise the level of play by adopting the Designated Player Rule, which helped bring international stars into the league.
The departures of Clint Dempsey and Jozy Altidore, coupled with the return of former U.S. national team stars Claudio Reyna and Brian McBride, highlighted the exchange of top prospects to Europe for experienced veterans to MLS.
The national team of the united states
It was constituted in 1855 and is ranked on the 24th place of the World Fifa Ranking. Although the United States are such a big country they have not been that successful at World Cup’s. The best result was a 3rd place 1930, so a long time ago. Altogether they had 10 appearances at World Cup’s.
Tank you for your attention!