Alex Scott Titirangi, New Zealand Why did soccer die out in America after the 1930 World Cup? It seems amazing to me that the U.S. did so well and then the sport just seemed to die out until the 1970’s. Mike Woitalla: The players who took the United States to the semifinals of the first World Cup came from the American Soccer League, an East Coast league that was quite professional for its day. Players were given attractive jobs at the firms that sponsored the teams. Large crowds comprised of working-class immigrants cheered them on. However, the league began to weaken when it entered a conflict with the United States Football Association about mandatory participation in the Open Cup (the equivalent of the English FA Cup). The ASL operated as a pirate league for a while and was finally killed off in 1931 by the Great Depression. (The stock market crashed in 1929, followed by the closures or crippling of the factories that had sponsored teams and employed the spectators.) The success of the 1930 World Cup had almost no impact on mainstream America. Soccer then was the domain of immigrants, played and run by ôforeignersö who gave their clubs and leagues foreign names. ôThis was a time when America, beginning to assert its own nationality, was anxious to demonstrate that it was not a country built on other peopleÆs traditions,ö writes Paul Gardner in ôThe Simplest Game,ö Baseball, football and basketball — even if the first two evolved out of Britain and the latter was invented by a Canadian — were considered the American sports. Those sports would thrive. Soccer, for decades, remained the ôforeign sport.ö The picture has changed tremendously. The North American Soccer League of the 1970s — the league that brought Pele, Beckenbauer, George Best, Cruyff et al to the USA — sparked a phenomenal youth soccer boom. The American mainstream discovered the attributes of this enjoyable, exciting, healthy sport. The immigrants that arrive in the United States now face a much different scenario than, for example, Germans or Italians who would have been soccer enthusiasts in the 1930s and 40s. TodayÆs immigrants find that the sport of their heritage is one of the most widely played sports in the USA. Whereas the children of immigrants in the beginning of the century may have shunned soccer in their quest to Americanize, the offspring of todayÆs immigrants find that soccer is considered just as ôAmericanö as the other sports options. At the same time, theyÆre playing the sport that their parents understand and love.