By VictorM:

While some continue to decry soccer's ability to make it in the Unites States as a successful professional sport, others look for the realities that may make the doubters wrong:

As people scoff and say that soccer simply doesn't fit the United States, the country transforms to fit soccer. The Census Bureau says that 25 percent of the population will be Hispanic by 2050. In 35 of the 50 largest cities in the country, non-Hispanic whites are or will soon be the minority. Americans debate border control and guest worker programs, and the immigrants keep coming.

Like Italian immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Hispanic immigrants often lived close to each other. The Italians, too, faced a language barrier and lived in poor conditions in "Little Italy" neighborhoods. The Italians, as well as the Irish, faced discrimination. They ate "strange" food and had "weird" customs. They worked the most humble jobs. They were stereotyped as Mafia members or alcoholics, respectively, and Americans hurled nicknames like "wop" and "mick" - just as they fire "spic" or "wet-back" at Mexican-Americans today.

And after awhile, they and much of their culture became seamlessly ingrained in American life.

The questions is, if those Italian immigrants loved the game of soccer -- and they did -- why did soccer not succeed then, and why should it succeed now?

My belief is that back then, Italians and other immigrants were running away from tyrants and oppression. They sought to have their children Americanize to distance themselves from the oppressors at home and from those who considered them second class citizens here. And so soccer, which for a time was as popular as football, gave way to the sports practiced by Anglo-Saxons at the cool colleges and universities. And so Joe DiMaggio became a baseball player instead of a soccer player.

The current wave of immigrants, while seeking a better live here, aren't running away as those in post world wars did; they are trying to assert themselves as first class American citizens without giving up who they are. And that includes not shying away from their love for the beautiful game.

If only they could support Major League Soccer in greater numbers...