Why the U.S. Men Will Never Win the World Cup

September 30, 2019
Ranting Soccer Dad podcast host Dure delivers a clever look at the history and current state of American soccer. Dure covers the historical debates as to why soccer did not become one of the Big Three professional sports, beginning with the fact that the American Soccer League, established in the 1920s, “only covered the Philadelphia-to-Boston corridor.” Despite the recent success of the U.S. women’s national soccer team, Dure believes that the odds are against the men’s team achieving similar success. For example, unlike the rest of the world, where soccer is wildly popular, in America, it takes a backseat to football, baseball, and basketball, which translates into less emotional and practical investment in the men’s team. Dure notes that this was not inevitable, as the “U.S. sports landscape of the nineteenth century was wide open,” and soccer had been played in America before 1900. While Dure may be correct in certain arguments—that excessive litigiousness is a major contributor to the failures of men’s professional soccer in the U.S., for example—the granular detail he provides (e.g. Fraser v. Major League Soccer, the 2000 antitrust lawsuit filed by eight players) will make casual fans’ eyes glaze over. Serious soccer fans are most likely to enjoy this ruminative complement to Bruce Arena’s recent What’s Wrong with U.S.?

September 15, 2019
Dure has two decades of experience writing about soccer for premier publications, and he's also been a soccer coach and referee. His premise is that men's soccer in the U.S. has been in disarray for more than 100 years, during which more than 36 soccer leagues have failed. More important, the author attacks the travesty that he believes is today's youth soccer in America, especially the prevalence of "travel teams," which are incredibly expensive for parents; it's like being in a rock band for a team of under-16-year-old boys. Then there's the soccer cottage industry of never-ending lawsuits, from the recent FIFA scandals through smaller squabbles over naming rights and labor issues. Dure also rambles through a history of U.S men's international mediocrity from 1862. It's not pretty. Somehow, in spite of all he documents, Dure holds some hope for the future, but it's going to be a long, winding road with no quick fixes. American soccer fans won't be able to stop reading this painful expos�, but at least American women's soccer offers balm. An exhaustively researched look at more than a century of well-meaning disorganization.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)