Soccer considered as a legacy of European colonialism

Akim Reinhardt, The Good, the Bad, and the Soccer, 3 Quarks Daily, July 19, 2026.

The fourth and fifth paragraphs:

Want proof that European colonialism is the real reason for, or at least the original factor in, soccer’s global popularity? Look at the nations that were not under European control during the late 19th or early 20th centuries, and you’ll mostly find countries where soccer is not the top spectator sport. The United States broke away from Great Britain long before the rise of soccer, and it has a bevy of its own sports that are far more popular (baseball, basketball, American football, and on a good day hockey). Canada, New Zealand, and Australia never rebelled, but rather faded away in time for their most popular sports to be, respectively: hockey, rugby, and cricket (summer) and Australian rules football (winter). Finland, up at the edge of the world, prefers hockey. Mongolia, at the center of the world, prefers wrestling. Ireland, forever looking to do whatever the English do not, very much prefers hurling and Gaelic football. China was never culturally colonized, and basketball is its most popular spectator team sport, with various individual sports also attracting huge fan bases. The United States is itself a massive colonial power, and wherever it held sway, soccer likewise takes a backseat: basketball in the Philippines; baseball and sumo in Japan; baseball in South Korea, Taiwan, and chunks of Latin America (Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Panama, and even Venezuela to some degree). India and Pakistan are odd, and extremely populace [sic], outliers. Ruled by Great Britain until after World War II, the English upperclass seems to have had an undue influence there, and cricket, not soccer, is by far the most popular spectator sport in both nations, which collectively account for over a fifth of Earth’s humans.

Add it all up, and we find that soccer is not actually the world’s game, but more accurately about half the world’s game. It’s tops across Europe, Africa, and most of Latin America, but secondary (at best) in the most populated parts of Asia, Oceania, and North America.

There’s much more to the article.