I watched the opening game of The Copa America Centenario yesterday in a New York bar, packed to the brim with USMNT fans - the bar a delightful mix of reds, whites and blues. The game itself was something of a disaster, a desultory 0-2 loss, with few real chances. But forget about the game. I'm here to talk about the atmosphere. Here we are, in the throes of the NBA Finals, and the MLB season, and it being a Friday Night - the first one post-Memorial Day - and the bar was packed.
The bar was enlivened with song after song, chant after chant, over the two hours. The chants were not complex, a tad crude, but it was an amazing sight. Here we are in America, and we are add huddled shoulder-to-shoulder, singing and chanting our lungs out. The whole crowd was aged 18-30, all people that grew up in a country increasingly embracing the USMNT, embracing the sport.
The next weekend, UEFA Euro 2016 started in France. Other than the World Cup, this is the biggest tournament in international football, a celebration of soccer that is more consolidated with talent than even the World Cup - there are no minnows in this tournament. While the exposure of Euro 2016 may not be as large in the US this time around due to the parallel Copa America, but we can draw a line directly back to the experience that was Euro 2008 - a tournament that grew my interest as much as the outcome drew our countries interest. A lot has changed in eight years.
Eight years ago, the thought of me watching the USMNT play in a bar packed with screaming, delirious home-grown fans would have been absurd - and only partially because I was just 17 at the time. I was something of a soccer fan but Euro 2008 was my awakening. A mix of coincidences left me alone at home for most of that tournament, with few things else to do than watch the two games a day. Euro 2008 was also the awakening for Spain, for tiki-taka.
Spain was the best team from the start, and they won the tournament with ease, finally setting aside all the labels of chokers and talented wastes that had been such a part of their history. They played with a style of possession, short intricate passing, and brilliant finishing. They called it tiki-taka. That fall, Pep Guardiola would take over in Barcelona, with a lot of the same players that just won for Spain, adding in a 21-year old Lionel Messi, and they would take over the world.
Both Spain and Barcelona's simultaneous dynasties became old and tired by 2012-13 or so, but in that period, they combined to help lift the sports profile in the US. The fresh, intricate, exciting brand of play captivated the US like nothing else in soccer before. Liking the Blaugrana became trendy, became new. As much as anything the USMNT did themselves, the dual rise of tiki-taka at the international and club level helped rise the interest level in the US.
;We can see this in the way the sport was covered. In the 2006 World Cup in Germany, most of the ESPN coverage was hosted from the US - moving to Germany for only the semifinals and final. Same with Euro 2008 in Poland. By 2010, in the World Cup in South Africa, ESPN's coverage had moved right to Johannesburg. Interest raised so quickly, so sharply, after that water-shed tournament.
It is hard to remember now a world before soccer was this big in the US. During the 2014 World Cup, there were crowd shots of viewing parties lining the streets of places like Kansas City and Columbus and Denver. The sports rise through the various channels culminated in that tournament, where the US lost in the Round of 16 - but for the first time we looked at that as a disappointment.
It is hard to say if interest has peaked, or if it will just continue to rise. Certainly, the interest in the USMNT is still on an upward path, and the viewing numbers for the large tournaments will remain strong, but there is still a feeling that the MLS, or even larger club soccer is more a niche interest. As someone who liked to think I liked soccer before most, I'm fine with this, but then again it is really fun to see through an entire bar wrapped up in the ecstasy of international soccer, to be chanting and hollering and shouting. If that's where peak interest will be, I'll certainly take it.
