World Cup a 1-month ad in US for 'beautiful game'

CHICAGO (AP) — From California to the Carolinas, from soccer aficionados to those who can just about pick David Beckham out in a tabloid photo, the World Cup is generating some serious buzz in the United States.

Americans have bought more tickets than people from any country besides host South Africa — despite the lengthy and expensive trip. ESPN and ABC are planning the kind of broadcast bonanza normally reserved for a Super Bowl. Players are edging supermodels off magazine covers.

Soccer isn't in the same league as the NFL, NBA or Major League Baseball, not yet. But its time is coming. Slowly, but surely. It's an evolution, not a revolution, and people who run the sport in the United States are ready for that, with the 2010 World Cup another milestone along the way.

"It's definitely moving in the right direction for, I think, multiple reasons," former U.S. goalkeeper Kasey Keller said. "We've made some great strides ... and I'm really excited to see what's going to happen in the next 20 to 30 years. That's where the gauge really starts to be measured."

For the better part of the last four decades, soccer fans have been insisting it's only a matter of time before the entire country falls for the game the way the rest of the world has. To which the skeptics and critics have always responded, "When?"

Grade schoolers have been playing soccer by the millions, and that hasn't turned the United States into a soccer nation. There are D-list celebrities who get more attention than Major League Soccer stars. The Americans have played in the last five World Cups after going 40 years between appearances, and the best they've done is the quarterfinals.

But writing off soccer isn't that easy, not when the sport has a complicated landscape.

Fans of the U.S. national team aren't necessarily MLS fans. Some second- and third-generation Americans remain passionate supporters of Mexico, Poland or wherever their families came from. Those who will get up early each weekend for games in the various European leagues or shell out $100 for a Lionel Messi jersey might be indifferent to anything the game has to offer stateside.

Only when you take them all together is soccer's growing reach — and its massive potential — clear.

"We've still got a long way to go to have the following, the enthusiasm, the relevance that you might have in England or Germany or Brazil," U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati said. "We're in progress but we're not there yet. Having it woven into society, that's a long-term challenge."