OT: 26 tickets to USMNT

Interesting. I feel like my USMNT fandom provides me a rooting interest in the games overseas. I haven't been able to latch on to an individual club - when a US player moves on, my interest in the club drops. I usually enjoy watching the club games more than the US team - just a much, much higher level of soccer than CONCACAF and almost all their friendlies. It's likely a strange way to follow the sport, but it makes it fun too with all the US players overseas now. 

With that said, I generally root for the success of the player, and don't really think about how it will help their position on the US team.

I don't think it's that crazy that there are a large number of American soccer fans that are primarily (or even solely) fans of the USMNT (and/or USWNT). Think about how many people follow the Olympics, but then pay absolutely no attention to most of those sports for the next four years. Rinse and repeat. I think it's a similar dynamic. The national team provides a compelling motivation to support it (go USA), and that's coupled with professional soccer being way down the list of priorities in this country.

For example, MLS is certainly behind the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL in popularity in the US, almost certainly behind the PGA and NASCAR, quite possibly behind tennis, etc. And that's just pro sports. When you factor in college sports, college football and basketball are also absolutely ahead of MLS, and there are probably places where college baseball or hockey are more popular than MLS as well. So realistically you're looking at MLS being, at best, the ninth or tenth most popular league in the country. That's squarely niche territory, nowhere near mainstream. 

As for international soccer, it's an odd fit. Most often team affiliation is geographic--where you're from, or used to be from, etc. College, albeit largely geographic as well, adds the major exception to that for people that went to, or are affiliated with, the college, even if not otherwise from that area. So those are the two main drivers of fandom, and I'd imagine they explain the vast, vast majority of all fans. Even a number of other instances derive from these, such as inherited fandom (e.g. I'm a fan because my parents were fans, very likely either because of geography or college affiliation), or pro fandom that stems from college fandom (I was a Patriots fan, and am now a Tampa Bay fan, because I'm a Tom Brady fan, because I'm a Michigan fan, likely because of one of the above). Etc. There just aren't that many actual fans that chose a team without having any of the above affiliations with it. Which describes international soccer in most cases. How are people in large numbers supposed to attach themselves to a team thousands of miles away that they otherwise have no connection to?

I feel like that creates a perfect storm for national team fandom that doesn't have a corresponding interest in pro soccer. (Plus there are also people like me out there who just aren't huge fans of pro sports. Yes I have pro sport rooting interests, but I'm 100% a fair-weather pro sports fan. College sports are where my passion lies, with national sports (e.g. USMNT and Olympics) coming in second. But I wouldn't necessarily say I'm representative of a large group).