USA wonder goal against Germany

[Moon Knight]

I am sure that there is a book/doctoral thesis in investigating why America has so far failed to embrace the most popular sport in the world. Nationalism? A hangover from isolationism?

That's what I believe it is, I also believe that's why sports like American "Football" and Baseball was invented as well. It's also why they insisted on spelling certain English words wrongly too. Being a former colony, they probably didn't want to continue being perceived as such despite independance so they discontinued carrying on with some English traditions, and that includes sports. They wanted their own identity and became fearful that accepting or even liking anything English would be a way of letting imperialism and their old masters win. And many continue this line of thought hence their failure of accepting the world's most popular (and best, I feel) sport properly. If they invested in it, both culturally and financially, their national team would probably get better than England's itself in time. They're already better than Wales, Scotland and both Irish teams.

The attributing nationalism as the reason why America has done anything different from Europe or anybody else never fails to drive me nuts. I personally feel nationalism is the root cause behind so many are bothered by this in Europe. Why else be annoyed because we spelled a few word differently? American English formed because it intermingled with countless other languages, causing it to form another dialect which is no different then why Latin American Spanish is slightly different than Castilian Spanish. If not nationalism, why else would Brits be so annoyed with such a small thing that happened most likely naturally over generations?

I think that is a root cause to lots of these complaints, which is a valid discussion to have. Americans just picked other sports, we are a rich nation that developed other sports that just happened to take off; which is common when you have a diverse selection. Hell, basketball was just invented because some gym teacher needed an indoor sport to keep his students active on a rainy day and American Football was actually similar to sports played in Europe before the Europeans got here. Even Baseball which is similar to cricket and rounders which parts are still present in the game today, some even suggest you can find hints to it going far back as the 1300's in France. When you have multiple sports around it is only natural new ways of playing them will come up. To further point this out, Baseball was actually losing to cricket in popularity for years here.