Ah, fair enough. My mistake.
That's interesting, but also very, very strange. Almost everywhere else in the world, football is the game of the poor. You can literally play it with a rock, as my group of friends used to in primary school during the break times when we weren't allowed a ball. That's before you consider the parade of legends who have lifted themselves out of abject poverty through football, especially in South America and Africa.
Baffling to me how it's apparently some kind of middle class sport in America. I figured there'd at least be a strong culture of poorer latino kids taking up the game, but I guess they're more likely to opt for baseball?
Generally speaking, all of the one-ball sports are cheap to play until you start asking for coaches and refs and places to play. But they see a lot more football, basketball, and baseball on television.
Even to this day, with MLS, we have very little development of professional soccer. Our current second-division league is less than 15 years old. Think about that. The USL Championship started in 2011, but didn't get sanctioned as a second division by US Soccer until 2017. It's even worse for lower-division leagues. They rise and fall with the stock market, almost literally, as do the individual teams. But even the MLS academies are not very well developed. I've coached youth leagues in both Arkansas and Florida. The state organizations are not very well organized, and there's little to no money available for it. Maybe in some places, the MLS teams are spreading out some money, but it sure doesn't make it to the areas where I have been.
Part of it, too, is geographical. The state of Florida has a population of over 22 million and only two first division teams (Orlando City and Inter Miami) and two second division teams (Tampa Bay and Miami FC). By way of comparison, Scotland is a country of less than 6 million and has a premier league of 12 teams. By the numbers, Florida alone could have a first division that's superior to Scotland in both the number and quality of teams.
But all the money is in football, basketball, baseball, and hockey and their guaranteed-money tv contracts and franchise models. (And don't get me started on high school soccer. Here in Florida, I would call it a soccer-like sport. It's worse than any of the club stuff I've been associated with by degrees.)
I could go on, I could even say huge numbers of people actually do play and enjoy the sport here in the States. But I'd also tell you that we're outnumbered and outfunded by other sports.