Why USA never jumped the soccer bandwagon?

[binary solo]

You don't understand my point. My point is, if the USA was as soccer mad as, say, Brazil, it means it would have been the #1 sport in the USA for several decades already. It would have the sort of machinery around it that American Football does and it would be the completely dominant domestic professional competition. The USA is dominant at the Olympics too, so it's not just its big 3 sports in which is leads the world. The only country that out did the USA at the olympics was the USSR, and that doesn't exist any more. When it comes to sport, when the USA and its people get crazy about that sport it has both the population base and the financial base to kick everyone's arse most of the time. All other countries either lack the financial base or the population base to compete. It's just the way it is. If Soccer had developed in the USA along the same path and the same timeline as it developed in South America, the USA would totally dominate global soccer.

Even now, being so late to the soccer party, and still being a minor pro-sport there, they are likely to be almost permanent fixtures in the knockout stages of the FWC  from now on, which makes the in the top 16 countries in the world, and they will get into the quarter finals regularly. That's pretty much top tier already.

You obviously don't know much about football.

Sure having a large population and the financial support helps, but it doesn't guarantee anything at all. England are one of the most football mad countries in the world and have arguably the best league too yet always underperform when it comes to international football. Spain too, who have had success recently, still underperformed given their resources for many years. Plus money isn't everything when it comes to developing players, just look at how many great players have come from poor backgrounds in countries such as Brazil or many African countries. Then there is a great deal of luck involved in football as well, probably more so than any other sport.

Dominating a tournament and winning it nearly every year just doesn't happen in international football, not even at club level where clubs can buy whichever players they want.

Edit: Oh and the Olympics comparison is flawed since the Olympics is a multi-sport event so a bigger country is more likely to win more medals. But look at individual sports and you'll see that there are different countries good at each one. The US doesn't dominate every one of them, there are some medals that they regularly win and some that they have very little chance at.

Oh and what about ice hockey. US loves ice hockey based on the success of the NHL and the amount of American players. So if the US can kick everyones arse at any sport because they are the master race or whatever mumbojumbo you believe in then how come all the best players are Canadian?

I don't need to understand football, but that is a very condescending statement nonetheless, and I know enough about football that I can confidently say you're wrong about that anyway. A comprehensive understanding of a specific sport isn't necessary, an understanding of what makes a country great at a sport is necessary, and it is fairly universal in principle. There's nothing magical about becoming the best in a sport, it's very scientific and predictable, and all the predictive factors in being the best a soccer are in the USA's favour, IF it had the popular support that it does in Europe and South America.

England? England has one of the smaller population bases of the top tier countries, and so many of the top players in the EPL are not English. A lot of the players people think of as English are actually Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish or Irish, not that you will make that mistake of course. So the "native" player base for the British Isles (incl Ireland) gets split between 5 national teams.  And in the case of Brazil anbd Argentina a much much bigger population base, and an equally rabid fandom. It has a very good financial base, but it does not have a college sports programme like the USA. The USA has that infrastructure to manufacture top players in its top tier sports. Ice hockey is definitely second tier. It's only popular in a few states it doesn't have the universality of Football, Basketball and Baseball where these games are popular in all states. So the population base for ice hockey is smaller than you think.

USA is the globally dominant country in all team sports that have universal popular appeal across the country and it is top tier even in sports that have slightly less popular appeal. That means it is highly likely that the same would apply if soccer had the level of fandom as American Football does. 

People generally don't want to believe the USA will be the best at whatever it collectively puts its mind to, but fact of the matter is it's the country that is best placed to be the best in the world at whatever it collectively puts its mind to achieving. Especially if it doesn't require external factors to help them achieve it, and with sport they don;t need to rely on anyone but themselves to become the best. It's all hypothetical, but you can look at the other side of the fence to see what might have been: the Women's competition. The US women are the winningest female soccer team. I don't know if it is the top female team sport in the USA, but I'm guessig it is a more popular female sport than women's baseball or women's football, it's possibly behind women's basketball though. Volleyball? I dunno, but anyway, while not as well funded the basic US sporting infrastructure is there behind the female side of the sport and it's produced the results of the top team in the world.

I personally root for whatever team is playing against the USA, except when the USA is playing rugby against England or Aussie, but I'm a realist about what the world would look like if soccer was huge in the USA.