Sullivan | World Cup shows soccer's growth to Lolla

Ken Lolla watches the World Cup with expert eyes and, of late, encouraged ears.

The University of Louisville men's soccer coach has been hearing more sophisticated sounds from American audiences as the tournament has progressed. He has heard people react to missed calls as well as made goals, to nuances an earlier generation might have missed.

He watched in public gatherings as the U.S. team lost to Germany and Belgium, and he emerged from those disappointments with newfound optimism, "impressed with how educated the crowd was."

"It wasn't just all about chances of goals or saves," Lolla said Wednesday afternoon. "I was very encouraged by that."

If the American soccer boom has arrived somewhat later than its early advocates predicted, there is no surer sign of the sport's progress than fans criticizing the coach and ripping the referees. Though there's a danger in reading too much into World Cup ratings, in confusing patriotism for passion, the game is clearly growing less foreign to its domestic audience.

Some of this, as Ann Coulter so snarkily suggested, is a function of immigration policy that has contributed to a sixfold rise in America's Hispanic population since 1970. Yet the spike in spectators is not nearly that narrow. Major League Soccer's Seattle Sounders announced an average attendance of 44,038 last season in a city whose 2010 census counted only 29,719 Latinos.

According to Nielsen's 2013 Year In Sports Media report, MLS fans skew younger and more tech-savvy than the general population. They are more likely to own smartphones, more likely to spend at least three hours per day on social networking sites and much more likely than their elders to associate Lionel with Messi than toy trains.

"I think it's a generational thing," said Karl Schmitt, executive director of the Louisville Sports Commission. "You have a second-generation group of people who played soccer, were involved in soccer and now their kids are playing it. I think there's a lot of grassroots support."

Schmitt's comment echoes similar sentiments expressed when Pele temporarily invigorated the North American Soccer League in the late 1970s, when the 1994 World Cup was awarded to the United States, and when Brandi Chastain whipped off her jersey upon clinching the Women's World Cup in 1999. This time, though, the interest feels different, deeper, more sustainable.

Yes, the U.S. team's elimination is sure to take a toll on the Nielsen numbers. But Friday's schedule includes a quarterfinal match between France and Germany — talk about your Group of Death — and the possibility of a championship final between Messi's Argentina and host Brazil is circle-the-date stuff.

Granted, soccer still has too little scoring and too much acting for some tastes — and it's hard to think of a "beautiful game" that includes Luis Suarez — but tastes change. Once upon a time, America's primary spectator sports were baseball, college football, boxing and horse racing. Today soccer is surging.

"A couple of the (World Cup) games I've been out of town, and some of them have been in fairly deep American football regions," said Wayne Estopinal, who owns Louisville City FC, the pro soccer team that begins play next spring. "You can go into a BW3 in the middle of the day and you've got 600 people in there, and more out on the patios. Their faces are painted, and this is in football country.

"Sunday's game, there were a couple thousand people at Fourth Street Live. When the video went out, there were a lot of irritated people. They weren't there for the cold beer. They were there for the game."

If the U.S. team's elimination was disappointing, it was not undeserved. Though Tim Howard's play in goal was heroic, his teammates' inability to generate offense was a flaw bound to prove fatal in knockout play.

"I still think it's very evident that we need to grow technically as a team," Lolla said. "Our ability to hold the ball and possess the ball and our ability to put pressure on teams by keeping it — that wore against us against Belgium."

Millions of Americans have reached that same conclusion.

Because they've been paying attention.

Tim Sullivan can be reached at (502) 582-4650, by email at tsullivan@courier-journal.com, and on Twitter @TimSullivan714.