Soccer Legend Lionel Messi is here in a match against New York RB in the MLS league. Photo courtesy of Ángel Colmenares EFE, Marca.com.

  While the United States and San Luis Obispo High School were catching up on soccer culture, the rest of the world has been fully immersed in the experience of the beautiful game forever. This doesn’t mean that the United States hasn’t been ignoring or disregarding the game.

  “Soccer in the US has a lot of potential, the country just has to put more time and effort into the squad and youngsters” said SLOHS Varsity soccer player and senior Sam Allen.                           

  The United States Soccer Association was originally founded in 1913 and the Domestic Major Soccer League was founded in 1993 after the United States won the bid for the 1994 World Cup. This allowed many U.S. soccer fans to soak themselves for the first time in the United States. 

  Recently, in July of 2023, the infamous Lionel Messi, often regarded as the greatest futbol/soccer player to have ever played, joined bottom tier Inter Miami in the United States Major League Soccer competition after a timely stay at Paris Saint-Germain alongside Kylian Mbappe, another world renown player- who helped France win the World Cup at the young age of 19, to play for a league that many international Futbol fans regard as a “retirement” league after many stars like Kaka, Wayne Rooney, David Beckham and Zlatan Ibrahamovic have gone there and played the ends of their careers in the past decades or so.

  Viewership has been and so has domestic support in the U.S, with 26-Million viewers tuning in to watch the 2022 World Cup, More than the NBA Finals (13 Million) and The World Series (12 Million) And Around SLOHS, many students can be seen wearing soccer jerseys, repping their favorite MLS, Premier League, La Liga, or international team kits in a stylish fashion further enforcing the idea that United States support is up. 

  “Living in America Soccer has never really been a primary sport that anybody was really paying attention to, But now with the exciting and more famous players coming over to play here, I think more people in america are going to start taking more interest into soccer in these next few years,” said freshman Santiago Baltadano.  

  While new fans become comfortable with this other kind of ‘Football’, experienced and older viewers who have watched this sport for years now are glad that many of their peers are watching the sport that they grew up with and have been playing for many years now.                                                                                                                                                         

 “They need to be building good players, rather than managers focusing on their wages,” said SLOHS soccer player Sam Allen.       

   In the midst of a changing sporting landscape, the unity found inside the world of soccer by seasoned enthusiasts and newcomers alike signals a promising future for this beautiful game. With shared passion throughout the country, the spirit of soccer continues to thrive throughout the US and the SLOHS campus. 

Sources: fortune.com, marca.com