No doubt Soccer’s popularity has increased lately in our country. Historians say the modern game entered the United States in the 1850s through New Orleans when Scottish, Irish and German immigrants brought the game with them. It was in New Orleans that some of the first organized games were played.
Nevertheless, through the years, the three favorite sports in our country have been Football, Basketball and Baseball. Experts place Soccer as third, placing Baseball fourth. If you ask us, as Caribbean immigrants, Baseball has always been #1.
If not, what happened over the years that Soccer was played in the United States but never had a hero, an historical figure, a player whose name has been used to name an incurable disease?
As for television, radio and cinema is concerned, in our opinion Soccer never existed until several years ago when National Hispanic stations began to add programming that included Soccer games conducted mostly south of the border making famous the word GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL, GOOOOOOOOOOOOOL, GOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!
As a sign of how popular the social media has become since the last World Cup in 2010, Twitter averaged 618,725 tweets per minute at the end of this year’s game, in which Germany beat Argentina by 1 – 0 in overtime.
Facebook said the final game of 2014 was the largest sporting event in its history – 88 million people interacted with the site more than 280 million times (with messages, likes and comments), eclipsing last year in the NFL Super Bowl USA.
We are pleased that at last Soccer is here to stay. Besides being a complete sport, it really gives us the opportunity to compete internationally.
