Fox Uses Donald Trump To Promote USA-Mexico Soccer Match – Huffington Post

Beyond that, the ad belies Fox’s misunderstanding of  the American soccer-watching public.

American soccer fans skew younger and more liberal than society writ large, and the broader American soccer community is a complex mixture of fans who support an array of national teams, including and especially Mexico’s. El Tri, by some measures, might be the most popular national soccer side in the United States. It regularly draws bigger crowds than the USMNT for matches played Stateside and has its own TV deal with ESPN and Univision, where it pulls in viewership numbers that are miles ahead of any non-USMNT side.

It is almost certain, too, that when this match kicks off Saturday night in Los Angeles, green-clad El Tri fans will outnumber USMNT supporters. All of this is largely due to immigration, which, it should be noted, has also helped fill out the USMNT’s roster.

The ad stands in stark contrast to the views of Michael Bradley, the American captain and midfield linchpin who discussed America’s patchwork soccer fabric in an interview this week.

“Certainly when you talk about the United States in a bigger way, one of the beautiful things about our country is the ability for people from all over the world to come here and live and work and in some ways make new lives for themselves,” Bradley said this week. “And that’s something that I’m personally very proud of. So when it means in a footballing sense that every now and then we play with a few less fans, then we deal with it.”

Fox could have taken that view, or stuck to the plenty-compelling soccer storylines that exist within the match. But its attempt to be funny pulled American soccer in the opposite direction, tying USMNT fans who have a healthy view of this rivalry to Trump’s views instead.