By now, the names Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have become house-hold in the US.  The duo, widely considered to be the greatest soccer players in the world, represent the forefront of the world’s most popular sport and what millions of little children dream of becoming some day.  Their respective star power has allowed them to become some of the most marketable athletes on the globe, for their supporters stretch across continents and oceans alike.

While footballers like Messi and Ronaldo have reached an impeccable pinnacle of stardom, how many of you reading this article have ever heard of Marouane Fellaini?  How about Edinson Cavani, Franck Ribery or Alex Song?  Odds are that these names sound foreign and completely obscure in regards to classic American sports, and, truthfully, they are.  But what I’d like to do, using these players as phenomenal examples, is to try to sell you the entertaining, heart-wrenching, agonizingly intense and glorious sport that is soccer around the world.

The four aforementioned unrecognizable players are actually superstars all across the clustered continent of Europe, and have become as commonplace and recognizable in many Asian, African, European and South American countries as LeBron James and Peyton Manning have ever been in the States. International (and primarily European) club soccer is an incredibly expansive and global network of players competing against each other daily.  In America, the most cherished sports are in one league, with somewhere around 30 teams playing against each other across thousands of miles.  Now, consider the popularity of these leagues and teams, and envision it multiplied by tenfold, stretching across several countries that could all fit inside Texas.  The beauty of European soccer in particular is that, metaphorically, instead of one Major League Baseball (MLB), almost 20 MLBs all compete both within their own leagues and abroad in competitive matches and free agency battles alike.

None of the four celebrated athletes I’ve been talking about are from the same country, nor do they play in against each other in the same domestic league.  Fellaini is a Belgian competing in England, Cavani trekked from Uruguay to play professionally in Italy, Ribery is a Frenchman who practices his trade in Germany and Song hails from Cameroon yet plays daily in Spain.  This kind of diversity is wholly nonexistent in any American sport, and the international athletes that come to play in American leagues (primarily baseball, with players like Ichiro Suzuki and Daisuke Matsuzaka) create a national phenomenon as Americans sit captivated and watch the stars adjust to life and sport in a new land.  Unfortunately, these type of occurrences truly only happen once in a blue moon, whereas in transfer periods across Europe players are bought and sold across any country any number of times.  The winners of last year’s Union of European Football Association (UEFA) Champions League (a competition pitting the top teams from across the different domestic European leagues against each other in a cutthroat, uber-dramatic battle for glory), Chelsea FC of London, featured a starting XI with one player from the Czech Republic, one from Portugal, one from Brazil, four from England, two from the Ivory Coast, one from Nigeria and one from Spain. Their opponents, German champions FC Bayern, started eight Germans but included a Ukrainian, a Dutchman and a Frenchman (Ribery).

Soccer in Europe is truly an incredible spectacle to watch from an unbiased perspective (like most Americans are in relation to European games).  It is a melting pot of various styles, languages, cultures, skill sets and talents, all blended together exquisitely to make for incredible experiences.  My dad grew up in Germany and I was born there as well, so his love for “football” was inherently passed down to me.  We have pictures of my extended German family all screaming and celebrating as the German national soccer team plays, and whenever international tournaments like the European Cup and the World Cup roll around every four years the Meyrer household gets shut down as we spend mornings, afternoons and evenings in front of the TV enjoying the experience of fandom.

Uniquely, America is one of the few countries in the world (and one of the only industrialized democracies) to not consider soccer to its most popular sport.  Easily the most well-versed form of athletic competition in all other continents, Americans have begun to gradually embrace the national team as it competes.  Stars like Tim Howard and Clint Dempsey have honed their games playing in Europe, and when they return to lead their home nation to hopeful international glory Americans are shown the effect soccer can have on a unified fan base.  When the USA defeated Algeria in a group stage match on a last minute Landon Donovan goal in the most recent 2010 World Cup, everyone from ESPN to Jimmy Kimmel covered and featured it.  The incredible feeling of euphoric national pride and raucous “USA!” chants feel freaking good, and soccer is really the only sport where those feelings can be perpetually reciprocated due to the broad, multinational scale its played on.

To my and many others’ delight, Major League Soccer (MLS) is slowly gaining popularity and airtime, thanks no less to major icons like David Beckham and Thierry Henry taking their talents to Los Angeles and New York, respectively.  MLS commissioner Don Garber last month stated that he wants the MLS to be one of the top global leagues by 2022, and if Americans can see some of the beautiful aspects of the game outlined in this article and jump on board, I don’t see why Garber’s lofty goal can’t become a reality.

For now, I simply encourage my readers to try out websites like espnfc.com and read incredible pieces by great writers like John Brewin, Michael Cox, Richard Jolly and Gabrielle Marcotti.  MLS is oft covered by television stations like ESPN Deportes and ESPN2, and a lot of excellent international club coverage can be found on Fox Soccer stations and espn3.com.  The beautiful game has not yet tapped into its full potential in the USA, but increased popularity from media outlets like those mentioned above will hopefully illuminate why “football” is so cherished and vitally important to so many civilizations and cultures around the world, and how relevant and important it can become to Americans.