Reasons to expect World Cup fever break in U.S. after tournament ends

I saw a tweet Monday from longtime Seattle sports-talk radio host Dave Grosby that said, “I’ve watched more soccer games in the past two weeks than in the past 65 years of my life.”

You can’t help but think there have been similar bursts of enthusiasm throughout the U.S. over the course of this FIFA Men’s World Cup. In addition to the event being played on home soil, it has spawned some of the most suspenseful, improbable and exhilarating games in the sport’s history. How could you not get hooked?

The question, of course, is whether Americans will remain spellbound by soccer once the World Cup is over. And though soccer fanatics surely hope they will, it’s more likely this fever breaks once the tournament ends.

The first reason is the most obvious: Our sporting dance cards are full. With the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and college football, Americans have a nonstop diet of sports that regularly sell out venues year-round. It’s not that fans have signed exclusive contracts with these leagues — it’s that these sports satisfy a day-to-day hunger in a way other competitions do not.

Gymnastics, swimming and track and field have made names such as Simone Biles, Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt as recognizable as the world’s most famous athletes, but how many of us watch those events outside of the Olympics? It’s similar to tennis and golf — especially in the post-Tiger Woods era — where we reserve our attention for four tournaments a year, then mostly tune out. Simply put: it’s hard to break sports fans’ habits. Can this World Cup really be the one that does?

Second, soccer’s stars are spread across different leagues — and ours is barely in the top 10. Let’s say some fans watched the Olympic men’s basketball tournament and decided they were now major hoop heads. They would turn to the NBA. If other fans were mesmerized by a men’s gold-medal hockey match between the U.S. and Canada, they would turn to the NHL.

But what league do you turn to for soccer? You could make a case that the four best players in this World Cup have been Argentina’s Lionel Messi, France’s Kylian Mbappé, Norway’s Erling Haaland, and England’s Harry Kane. Messi plays in Major League Soccer, Mbappé in Spain’s La Liga, Haaland in the English Premier League and Kane in Germany’s Bundesliga. There is no single umbrella for the world’s best players over the course of a domestic season. I’m not sure Americans want to follow all of that — especially when the top competitions play in time zones that aren’t conducive to U.S. eyeballs.

As for MLS? Hey, we have the GOAT. But when just about every ranking puts that league outside of the top five in the world, it’s a tough sell for a country whose other major leagues all house the globe’s absolute best talent.

Lastly, soccer lacks the cultural roots in America that its biggest competitors enjoy. This is something I’ll take a deeper dive into for a column this weekend, but it’s true. Go to Europe, South America or Africa, and you’ll see kids playing in the street, using whatever they have on hand as goal posts. How often do you see that here? Parents might sign their kids up for youth soccer in droves, but that doesn’t mean it is part of the fabric of Americana the way baseball, football or basketball is.

None of this is meant to downplay the beautiful game or the spectacle that this World Cup has been. When you consider the incessant drama, the expanded field and the elite play of the sport’s biggest names, this could go down as the best men’s World Cup ever. It’s everything a soccer fan could have wished for — but it’s wishful thinking to believe this will carry over to everyday American fandom.

In the meantime, enjoy this. The world’s top four ranked teams — France, Argentina, Spain and England — are still alive in the quarterfinals. You also have countries such as Morocco (No. 6), Belgium (No. 8), and Switzerland (No. 14) playing for their first World Cup title — as are the Haaland-led Norwegians, who are ranked 19th.

It’s a delicious mix of heavyweight strength and Cinderella stories. But as long as we’re talking about glass slippers, we should point out that the clock will eventually strike midnight. Because the hardest part for soccer in America has never been getting people to watch — it’s getting them to come back.