South Bronx, NY: One game to watch early today was the World Cup USA Soccer team Vs. The Netherlands. You don’t have to be a “soccer fan” to enjoy a good competitive sports game was the comment I heard a lot from several of my friends when I asked them if they had been watching some of the World Cup games. Todays, game was being aired at 9AM a bit too early for people to be in restaurants, or bars throughout the USA watching the game. However, to my surprise I was receiving text messages from friends that were watching and commenting on some of the plays. I was able to turn on the game late and my wife and I were able to watch the second half as we did our daily stretching and some house chores.
We were not surprised to see that the USA was losing 2 – 0 as we had already learned that the Netherlands was a very good team and they had been in the World Cup finals and finished as runners-up on three occasions, losing the final in 1974, 1978 and 2010. We also knew that they had not lost a soccer match in the last eighteen games. Since we are always rooting for underdogs, we were playing closer attention to this game and cheered as loud as a Yankee, Mets walk off homerun, or a Giants game winning touchdown when the USA team scored a goal making the score more competitive 2 – 1. It appeared the USA team could possibly pull off a tie, or even a surprising win as there was still enough time. Unfortunately, the very disciplined Dutch team scored another goal making to make it 3 – 1 with little time remaining.
The USA tried several times to score a goal, but the Dutch team had a solid defense, and the USA team was out of time to lose 3 – 1.
However, one thing was won and that was the hearts of many USA fans that might not have considered themselves soccer fans. Like my wife and I who got to see some of the games and enjoyed watching a game that we knew very little of. The fact the USA team was the youngest team playing in this world tournament sits well for the next World Cup in 2026 when this young USA team will host the games here in Canada and Mexico.
According to the Nielsen ratings there were approximately 11.7 million viewers watching the last USA game Vs. Iran which they won 1 – 0 to make it to the round of 16. Though the USA is yet considered a soccer country, it is slowly heading there as the latest poll showed that 31% of USA fans consider themselves soccer fans. I believe the majority of those polled were Latino fans which means that that number will continue to grow as Latinos are the fastest growing population of the U.S. population.
