{"id":378835,"date":"2026-06-29T02:03:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T02:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/378835\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T02:03:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T02:03:15","slug":"world-cup-shows-how-much-mls-must-do-to-grow-soccer-in-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/378835\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup shows how much MLS must do to grow soccer in U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Remember when we were sure the World Cup<\/a> would suffer from all the issues that had everyone seeing red before the first ball was kicked?<\/p>\n

And remember when we were certain soccer could never catch on in this country?<\/p>\n

Despite controversies over visas and ticket prices and transportation, and in spite of consternation over expansion and new rules, the game has, as usual, proved too good to fail.<\/p>\n

And we, the American people, have become unusually engrossed in it.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been tuning in on TV in record numbers and, even at exorbitant prices, helping to sell out our 70,000-some-capacity stadiums. Before group play was even finished, this tournament \u2014 staged also in Mexico and Canada \u2014 already outdrew the 1994 World Cup<\/a>, which was hosted by the United States and set an attendance record of nearly 3.6 million.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been loving the healthy cultural exchange, and we\u2019re being reminded that cultural barriers of traditional sports fandom can be breached.<\/p>\n

So now, to keep our interest from drying out like a pitch on a hot summer day, the goal should be to keep the market saturated with soccer. That will take Major League Soccer tearing down all the walls.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s already turned the page on its calendar, adopting a summer-to-spring season format that will better blend with the global game.<\/p>\n

Now MLS<\/a> needs to make its games easier to watch, and to do its part to make the sport easier to play.<\/p>\n

\"Canada <\/p>\n

Canada goalkeeper Maxime Cr\u00e9peau, left, celebrates with teammate Jonathan David after a 1-0 win over South Africa at the World Cup on Sunday.<\/p>\n

(Kelvin Kuo \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

While the proverbial iron is hot, it needs a strike like Stephen Eust\u00e1quio\u2019s winning rocket in the 92nd minute of Canada\u2019s 1-0 victory against South Africa<\/a> on Sunday at SoFi Stadium.<\/p>\n

Eleven players on the two teams were MLS representatives \u2014 including Eust\u00e1quio, who spent the last six months in LAFC\u2019s midfield.<\/p>\n

Goalkeeper Maxime Cr\u00e9peau<\/a>, who played two seasons with LAFC and now plays for Orlando City, stopped the only shot he saw for his second clean sheet this World Cup, which saw the Canadians succeed in their first knockout stage appearance.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been no avoiding MLS players in this World Cup. The greatest of them is piling up goals for Argentina: Lionel Messi<\/a>, the Inter Miami superstar, is now the all-time World Cup goal-scorer (with 19).<\/p>\n

MLS has set an attendance record too, with 44 players participating. It ranks as the league with the second-most players apart from the top five European leagues. LAFC<\/a> had three current players in the mix.<\/p>\n

But wait. Record skip. Before you celebrate the MLS\u2019s contributions to this soccer spectacle, check with the VAR. Yep, without the 13 MLS players representing nations that rank 40th or lower in FIFA\u2019s world ranking, there actually would be fewer than the 37 MLS participants at the World Cup four years ago.<\/p>\n

A baby\u2019s first steps are for celebrating, but three decades after the league\u2019s formation, MLS is still searching for a giant leap. It\u2019s still having a mean time of trying to make \u201cfetch\u201d happen for real.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

It would help to make its games more readily available \u2014 not to the already converted, but to fans who didn\u2019t even know what they didn\u2019t know about soccer until the World Cup began in their backyards.<\/p>\n

MLS has already brought MLS from behind Apple\u2019s season pass paywall. And the league and streaming service also reportedly have agreed to a revised media rights deal that will end at the end of the 2028-29 season, three and a half years earlier than expected.<\/p>\n

But the hat trick would be to remove the need to subscribe to streaming service to watch MLS games altogether, and then get those matches onto the networks people know to tune into for their sports.<\/p>\n

Normalize watching American soccer.<\/p>\n

And stop gatekeeping. MLS\u2019s developmental programs are too restrictive and exclusive \u2014 they\u2019re not developing more soccer players, they\u2019re curtailing who can play.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s in the league\u2019s interests, and the sport\u2019s in this country, to encourage as many players to play as much as they can \u2014 including for their high school teams, which MLS Next bars.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve got people in the tent; the goal should be to make them want to stay.<\/p>\n

To make them want to join the world\u2019s circus, not to let it pack up and move on, out of sight and out of mind, until it swings back through years from now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Remember when we were sure the World Cup would suffer from all the issues that had everyone seeing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378836,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[12672,423,48,52,51,12407,10572,47,50,49,153240,11203,9442,153241,1083,7496,21670,96727,4561,5393,72],"class_list":["post-378835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-canada","tag-game","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-lafc","tag-league","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-major-goal","tag-mls","tag-player","tag-season-format","tag-soccer","tag-sport","tag-stadium","tag-stephen-eustaquio","tag-streaming-service","tag-world-cup","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}