Soccer in America is in a strangely paradoxical position. It is the world's most popular sport, yet it has never managed to gain much of a spectator footing in the United States. It may be virtually ignored on television as a spectator sport, but it has become one of the biggest participatory forms of leisure activity in America by the late 1990s. Nonetheless, many Americans are still ignorant not only of the rules of the world's biggest game, but also of their country's own soccer history.

The origins of soccer in America are obscure. Folklore suggests that the Pilgrim Fathers discovered the American Indians playing a form of the game along the Massachusetts coastline. British immigrants, however, imported the game that developed into association football (soccer) around the world in the nineteenth century, into America in the seventeenth century; there is documentation of the game as early as...