It’s easy to conflate the United States Soccer Federation, a non-profit organization that oversees organized soccer and is responsible for maintaining national teams that compete in sanctioned international tournaments, with the more abstract idea of American Soccer. But just as the US government doesn’t represent the totality of life in America, there’s a lot that happens in American soccer that the USSF isn’t involved in.
The fact that the president of US Soccer can only do so much to fix the many, many, many problems with the sport in this country will inevitably lead to disappointment in Carlos Cordeiro, regardless of what he does manage to accomplish. But the upside is that those problems can still be addressed. While passion and engagement aren’t necessarily good things in and of themselves, the fact that so many fans got involved in the conversation around the election of a sports industry functionary shows that there’s real power and determination among American soccer fans. If that energy can be channeled into effective organizing and labor—if fans across the country can be moved to follow-through on their ideas for the future of the country, identify the areas where they can make a difference, and get to work—then American soccer will have a bright future.