Saw this posted a few months ago, but I am finally getting around to reading it now. It’s an interesting piece by Slate on how soccer nearly became a popular American sport in the 1920s.
In the 1920s, soccer was big in America. Not big in the way that baseball was big (this was the era of Ruth and Gehrig) or college football was big (these were the days when Ivy League rivalries played out as violent eruptions in the mud), but at its height, the top American soccer league had tens of thousands of fans, featured some of the world’s best players, and looked set to challenge the fledgling NFL in the competition to supply the nation with a post-October pastime.
(via Instapaper)