Kolkata: There were 12 negatives but 18 positives in signing for New York Cosmos, Pele was told. Helping him get out of a financial mess and the USA being the world’s largest market were two of the latter. On June 11, 1975 at 21 Club, one of New York’s most famous addresses before it shuttered in 2020, Cosmos announced Pele as their own.
The media conference ended with Pele, speaking through a translator, saying he hoped to “make this game…as important a sport here as it is in the rest of the world.” Recounting his passage to USA in his autobiography, “My Life And The Beautiful Game”, Pele says by 1977, also the year he came to Kolkata with Cosmos to play Mohun Bagan, he felt “the success of soccer in United States is inevitable.”
Nearly 50 years later, 70,492 at a Los Angeles stadium watched USA do what they have never done in a World Cup: score four goals in one match. Folarin Balogun did a first in 96 years, getting more than one goal in a match since Bert Patenuade’s hattrick against – you couldn’t make this up – Paraguay.
Football’s not the No.1 sport in some countries, among them USA where it is eclipsed by gridiron football, baseball and basketball. In the Gold Cup final last year, there were more Mexicans in the stands against USA in Houston. And more than a fair sprinkling of Guatemalans in the semi-final in St Louis against the home team.
Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami competes for attention with thrice NBA winners Miami Heat, Miami Dolphins who have won the Super Bowl twice, and two-time baseball World Series champions Miami Marlins.
Yet, USA have featured in all but one World Cup finals since 1990. The squad of 1990 had one player, Christopher Sullivan who was with Gyori in Hungary, in the top tier in Europe. Four years later, the number was five. Mauricio Pochettino’s roster has 16 of the 26 playing in Europe’s top five. Five are in the Premier League and Christian Pulisic and Weston McKennie play for AC Milan and Juventus respectively in Serie A.
“No knock to them (the squad of 1994) but we have a lot of guys playing at higher levels, at big name clubs. We have a lot of confidence knowing that we play against some of the best players in the world, week in week out,” USA central defender Chris Richards said on Netflix’s “Rest Is Football” show.
But progress has been anything but smooth. The North American Soccer League – it had lured Pele, Franz Beckenbauer, Giorgio Chinaglia, George Best and Gerd Mueller, among others – folded up in 1984 and it wasn’t till 1996 that Major League Soccer (MLS) began.
That was two years after the first men’s World Cup that USA hosted. “For us, the 1994 World Cup was kind of…the birth of soccer in America, per se,” said Richards, 26.
MLS had its share of mis-steps: pausing the clock when play stopped and 35-yard shootouts (where a player had to beat the goalie by running that distance in less than five seconds) being but two. Both were stopped in 1999. In 2002, two clubs wound up and ownership of the remaining 10 was shared by three groups.
The turnaround began in 2006 when the Red Bull Group invested in the New York team. Canadian conglomerate Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (owners of Toronto FC) came in next and Adidas joined as sponsor. In 2007, rules were changed to allow clubs to sign three players beyond the salary cap, leading to David Beckham joining LA Galaxy.
A raft of big names followed and when Messi joined in 2023, Inter Miami co-owner Jorge Mas said: “This is our moment to change the football landscape in our country.” As per a study by Nielson, viewership in the MLS Leagues Cup shot up by 173% in 2023 when Messi debuted. Inter Miami winning the MLS Cup in 2024 led to a 97% spike in linear audience.
MLS now has 30 clubs, including three in Canada, Apple as media partner and a collective value of $23 billion, according to a Reuters report. It has added seven teams and nine stadia since USA became one of the three co-hosts in 2018, Don Garber, MLS commissioner since 1999, told Reuters.
Apart from investment in infrastructure, rules have been changed to encourage young talent. In the 2025 Club World Cup, Inter Miami, who began playing in 2020, fielded 20-year-old midfielder Benjamin Cremaschi (now loaned to Parma) against Paris-St Germain four years after he had joined the club’s academy.
The Nielsen study says USA has 62.5m football fans, the fourth largest in the world, 76% of them millennials and with more women following the men’s game than in Europe. Exactly what FIFA would want in what remains the world’s largest market.
Football’s popularity among children was why Pele had said he was confident of the sport’s future. An AP report on Saturday said many fans who came to see USA’s opening match had played in recreational leagues as children. Immigration from countries where it is the top sport has also helped, the report said. As will a deep run in the tournament.
