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Yahoo! My Yahoo! Mail More Yahoo! Services Account Options New User? Sign Up Sign In Help Yahoo! Search web search Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Asia Pacific World Are Americans (finally) embracing the beautiful game? AFP - Saturday, June 26 Send IM Story Print WASHINGTON (AFP) - – As they prepare to watch the United States compete in the next round of the planet's biggest sporting event, Americans are asking: has the country finally embraced soccer? Some see the US performance at the World Cup as a new make-or-break moment for soccer in the United States and its competence in the beautiful game. Don Garber, commissioner of Major League Soccer, said a "great wave of passion" was sweeping the United States as the team raced into the second round, carried by Landon Donovan's now-famous goal against Algeria. "I think he raised the hopes and dreams of our entire country, leading up to this game on Saturday," Garber said Friday on ESPN. But many experts and observers argue that soccer had been steadily gaining a fan base long before Donovan scored the stoppage time goal that secured a 1-0 victory over Algeria and a place in the round of 16. "It was a big day for football in the US," said Martin Vasquez, a Mexican-American who played in the inaugural Major League Soccer season in 1996, and who now is head coach for MLS team Chivas USA. "The coverage that the US national team has got here has been incredible," he told AFP. An average of 11.1 million Americans watched English and Spanish broadcasts of the first-round matches -- 68 percent more than in 2006 -- including 17.1 million who tuned in for United States-England, according to the Nielsen television ratings firm. By comparison the NBA basketball finals earlier this month averaged 18.1 million, Nielson said. Experts say coverage of the tournament by US sports broadcast giant ESPN has gone from amateurish in 2006 to top-rate this year. "They are treating this like the Olympics," said soccer blogger Max Bergmann. Americans are used to seeing their teams and athletes win big, so a stale performance such as the one that saw USA crash out in the opening round in 2006 could have soured Americans on the sport. But Bergmann, who blogs for Association Football, thinks the game is flourishing as a result of a "demographic reality" decades in the making. More US kids play soccer than any other sport -- including American football, baseball and basketball -- thanks to youth leagues that took off in the 1980s, he pointed out in a phone call Thursday from South Africa, where he is blogging about the World Cup. "The older generation that grew up without any interaction with soccer, they are moving offstage, and younger kids are now into it," Bergmann said. Interest took off in earnest in the 1970s, when US soccer officials began luring global superstars like Pele and Johan Cruyff to the ultimately doomed North American Soccer League. Prior to Donovan's thriller, the last big memory was Paul Caligiuri's miracle strike in November 1989, which gave the United States a victory over Trinidad & Tobago to make its first World Cup in 40 years. Four years later, the United States were the hosts. Faraway as it seems, that 1994 tournament proved vital for America's soccer standing. It sold more than 3.5 million tickets, a record which still stands, and precipitated a professional rebirth with the launch of MLS in 1996. The 10-team league has grown to 16 today, and despite the worst recession in decades, MLS will expand to 20 teams by 2012. It claims stars like Donovan and his LA Galaxy teammate David Beckham, and France's Thierry Henri is rumored to be making a move to MLS next season. University of Maryland coach Sasho Cirovski said there has been a steady rise in American talent over the past decade, largely as a result of a comprehensive, patient approach by the US Soccer Federation. "It's just gratifying that all the hard work at the grass level, from youth soccer to college to pros, it's all paid off," he said. Former president Bill Clinton -- who as honorary chairman of the bid committee to bring the tournament back to US soil sat next to FIFA chief Sepp Blatter during the US-Algeria match -- said world football powers like Brazil and Germany would now have to take notice of the US squad. And President Barack Obama in a congratulatory phone call told the US World Cup heroes Thursday that the West Wing of the White House had erupted in cheers when Donovan scored the dramatic goal. His spokesman Robert Gibbs said that Obama wished the US squad luck in their round-of-16 knockout clash with Ghana on Saturday, and told them that "the country was cheering them on." But not all Americans are warming to the world's game. "It doesn't matter how you try to sell it to us, it doesn't matter how many celebrities you get, it doesn't matter how many bars open early," conservative talkshow host Glenn Beck declared on a radio program before the Cup kicked off. "We don't want the World Cup, we don't like the World Cup, we don't like soccer, we want nothing to do with it," he said. 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