![]() The Netherlands have played some of the most beautiful soccer the game has seen and some of the most influential players, coaches and tactics have come from the lowlands. Throw in a giant population soccer haters and the weird way Americans call the sport soccer (stupid Americans), and you get a fanbase that deals with constant misery. has a strong core of soccer fans who get frustrated every four years when the rest of the country gets interested in the World Cup only to forget about it a week later. Those sports typically claim the top athletes. Baseball is the national pastime and basketball one of the few worldwide sports America can claim to definitively be the best at. What makes life particularly tough for soccer fans in America is the constant struggle they deal with in the American sports world.Īmerican football dominates the culture, whether it’s high school, college or the NFL. It will take reaching the semifinals of the World Cup to be considered among the world’s elite, despite the ever-growing love for the sport in the country. The team is undoubtedly in a much better position than it was 30 years ago, before it went nine cycles without a World Cup appearance following a shock 1-0 win over England in the 1950 World Cup (above). Nowadays, the Americans are a shoe-in to qualify for the World Cup and they regularly win the Gold Cup, but after ending a four-decade run without a World Cup, the USMNT has yet to reach a true breakthrough. That does wonders for morale, as America is learning now. It doesn’t help that parts of the country hate one another vehemently. Add in just one European Championship before the back-to-back titles from 2008-12, and Spain’s fans expect more from a country that has produced some of the world’s best, from Alfredo Di Stefano to Andres Iniesta. The ease with which Spain qualifies for World Cups (77 wins to 11 losses in 111 qualifiers) begs for a better record in the World Cup. Of course, La Roja followed that triumph by finishing 23rd in the 2014 Cup, including an ignominious 5-1 defeat to the Netherlands to open their title defense. Spain ranks sixth with 13 World Cup appearances but has only made two semifinal appearances, finishing fourth in 1950 and winning it all in 2010. In 1982, despite hosting the World Cup (above), they couldn't finish better than 12th. Prior to this recent success, Spain went six decades between appearances in the World Cup semifinals and fans were generally starved of success in the interim. Ten years ago Spain might have been near the top of this list, but after dominating international football from 2008-2012, La Furia Roja get bumped to #10.
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