The American investors who are investing abroad should invest here." So said Sepp Blatter last summer when the Fifa president visited the United States and saw the game being played by hundreds of boys and girls in Chicago parks.
This, of course, is the received view of the game in the States. That "soccer" boasts high participation among youngsters – around 18 million of them play – before the established "big three" of American football, baseball and basketball lure them away.
There is a perception in the media, on these shores and Stateside, that soccer will never really take hold in Stars-and-Stripes sporting culture.
There has been plenty of sneering since David Beckham's hyped-up move to LA Galaxy two years ago, but much of it ignores the fact that there has been an upward shift in football's popularity and profile, so much so that Beckham himself is likely to stay in the States for a while yet and invest his own money in the game .
According to Tim Leiweke, the chief executive of AEG, the company who own the Galaxy, the former England captain has had a tangible effect. "One thing about David's success is that it's going to help us – we need others like him to come now," he says. "You're going to hear positive news coming out of the league about increasing a team's ability to bring a designated player," he adds of the rule that allows the 14 MLS franchises to have one footballer who breaks the league's salary cap.
Clubs can also trade for a second "overpaid" designated player, and now they are about to change the rules to allow for a third. Leiweke says: "After the World Cup you're going to see a lot of significant players [moving to the MLS] and David deserves credit for making the jump to the US and saying the water's warm. You're seeing significant rule changes in Major League Soccer today, because of the success of David Beckham."
Tonight in Seattle (at 1.30am UK time), Beckham's Galaxy meet Real Salt Lake for the MLS Cup to decide the championship. "There are always going to be some critics," says Beckham of his move to Los Angeles, "but being successful with the team this year has changed a few people's minds, I'm sure."
Despite his move to Milan for a second loan spell in January – during which he will leave behind his wife and children in the US – Beckham will be back after the World Cup and playing for the Galaxy until the end of 2011. He is also able, under the terms of his contract, to invest in an MLS franchise as soon as his playing career is over.
A glance at the various stakeholders involved in tonight's game offers an insight as to why Beckham will be happy to put his own money into the MLS, which expands to 16 teams next year and 18 in Beckham's final season.
The Qwest Stadium is home to Seattle Sounders, newcomers this season who are owned by the Hollywood producer Joe Roth, a former chairman of Twentieth Century Fox and Walt Disney. For on-field glitter the Sounders signed Freddie Ljungberg, who already had a profile in America thanks to his billboard campaign to advertise Calvin Klein underwear a few years ago.
The former Arsenal midfielder has been impressive enough to lead the Sounders, whose average crowd of 30,000 is nearly 10,000 greater than that of any of the other 13 franchises, to this year's US Open Cup. Ljungberg was also selected for the All-Star team.
AEG, meanwhile, are the world's largest owner of sports teams, events and entertainment venues. These include the Staples Center in Los Angeles, which recently hosted the Michael Jackson memorial event, and they also administer London's O2 Arena.
Soccer is also attracting big crowds. The league average is down 2% year on year at just over 16,000, but that is bigger average than the Scottish Premier League, among others, can manage – and tonight's MLS Cup final will draw more than 40,000. Numbers are expected to go up next season when New York Red Bulls move into a new stadium.
Most importantly, the domestic media appear to have noticed. Blatter's comment was taken from a Wall Street Journal story in July, headlined: "Are Americans Becoming Soccer Fans?" It featured the strap-line: "Parochialism Persists, But Ticket Sales, TV Ratings and US Team Heroics Show Progress."
The paper cleared its front page – surely a first – for a story that was timed to coincide with the US national team reaching the Confederations Cup final in South Africa. That encounter with Brazil drew a domestic audience of four million, who saw Bob Bradley's team lead the five-times World Cup winners 2-0 at the break, before losing 3-2.
Perhaps the most intriguing indicator of the progress of stateside soccer is how the focus is not now solely on Beckham. In 2007 he signed a contract for $125m (£75m), though much of it was for endorsements. This put him in a pay league of his own and, as their great hope for growth, he was the star attraction of the MLS. But Beckham, despite the Galaxy's success, was not selected last week for this season's All-Star team, which is voted for by players, fans, coaches, team owners and journalists.
Although Beckham is certainly a factor in the sport's continued evolution, especially if he becomes an investor, thoughts are beginning to turn towards the need for a home-grown superstar.Beckham's second spell at Milan and probable involvement at the World Cup will keep him out for a large chunk of the 2010 MLS season. Yet Don Garber, the MLS commissioner since 1998, does not sound overly concerned. "I'm looking forward to Beckham coming back after the World Cup," he says, preferring a shrug to a moan over the league's stellar figure missing virtually the whole of next season.
As Joan Oliver, the Barcelona chief executive who believes the MLS will be able to compete with the leagues in Brazil and Argentina within a decade, says: "You need a Lance Armstrong of soccer to show the American market that they are able to be No 1."
Currently, the closest is Beckham's team-mate Landon Donovan, the US national team's all-time leading scorer with 42 goals in 120 appearances. But his double failure at Bayer Leverkusen and Bayern Munich – he has made only 13 appearances in more than four seasons, across two spells, in Germany – indicates the 27-year-old lacks the quality to elevate him to the level of a global superstar.
Garber, meanwhile, despite saying 2009 "will forever be known as one of the key moments in the history of soccer in America", is keen to emphasise his long-term vision. "We've worked hard over the last 14 years to achieve stability and to ensure that we would remain in business and have a viable operation," he says, hinting at the previous failure of the North American Soccer League, which, despite importing such world football stars as Pelé, Bobby Moore and Franz Beckenbauer, folded in 1984.
The MLS, he says, will be "far more relevant" on a national and especially on a local level, "with a better execution on how we market our teams and a deeper relationship with the local soccer community". He adds: "If I had to say, what's the one thing we could achieve over the next decade, it would be that most of the people who care about the game care about MLS."
Milan Mandaric, who before being chairman of Portsmouth and now Leicester City owned the NASL's San Jose Earthquakes, is more sceptical. "When we started in 1973 we thought we'd take over American professional sports in five years, but it was false. Americans do have a tendency to buy tradition but you cannot do that with football. We tried very hard, bringing Beckenbauer, Moore and George Best.
"There are some signs now with the MLS. And they always say: 'One day it will be in America,' but I just hope they learned from what happened before when we tried to buy in players. No disrespect to David Beckham, but there's no chance one player is going to make a big impact."
More difficult to challenge is the national team's impressive record. Sunil Gulati, the US Soccer Federation's president, says of the Confederations Cup final appearance: "We didn't just turn up in South Africa. It's a long-term plan with various success along the way. We have qualified for six straight World Cups, and our youth teams at under-17 and under-20 are perennial qualifiers."
How much does the national team's success depend on a strong MLS? "It's related to it but there is certainly not a direct one-to-one correlation," he says. "We, like many other national teams around the world, have a lot of players playing outside the country. MLS is still only 14 years in. Its not the Premier League, Serie A, the Bundesliga or La Liga. But I think the strides the MLS has made are pretty extraordinary.
"Whether it's players like Tim Howard who have played in our league and gone to Europe, those who've gone directly from a youth set-up like Jonathan Spector [West Ham] or those in our league like Landon Donovan, certainly the league has helped our overall development."
Jay DeMerit's route to becoming a first-choice central defender for his country, having made his US debut in 2007, came after he had arrived at Watford three years earlier, following his beginnings with Chicago Fire of the amateur USL Premier Development League (three tiers below the MLS) and subsequent move to non-League football in England with Southall. "The experience I got here [England] before really helped me once I got called up," he says.
America has a population of 300 million, so even if soccer is not among the three most popular sports it can still thrive, a point Gulati makes. "It's not the same sort of cultural phenomenon that it is in Brazil or England yet. And it may never be," he says. "But it's a very large country. That gives us some advantages and there are some signs of soccer becoming a bigger part of the culture.
"Outside of South Africa, No 1 ticket buyer in the world for the World Cup? United States. Bigger than England and Germany combined. No1 rights payment for the World Cup? United States. More registered players than anywhere in the world? United States. We don't get ratings or rights payments for our league or national team that Man United or the Premier League get. But it will take some time and I think it will make some progress."
Next behind America's big three is ice hockey. How important is it for soccer to overtake that sport? "Seattle is a good example," Leiweke says. "You could argue right now that the Sounders are more popular than the NBA, NHL and maybe even major league baseball, and they're quickly gaining traction on the [American] football team. It is amazing the level of support here.
"That said, we have a long way to go as a league. So instead of saying we want to be bigger than hockey, what we said when AEG got involved was: 'This is the world's most popular sport, we just have to start acting like it in the United States.'"
Gulati sounds equally bullish. "The benchmark is, is soccer a viable business as a sport in the US? The answer is clearly yes. Is it growing? Clearly yes. I don't think there are many countries in the world that wouldn't marvel at our growth rate in the last 25 years, both on the field, and hosting international events. We've hosted soccer in the 1984 and 1996 Olympics, the '94 World Cup and women's World Cups [1999 and 2003]."
Gulati, who is head of the US 2018-2022 World Cup bid, is confident about the future. "I view this as a 50-year project, starting in 1984 when we hosted an extraordinary successful Olympic Games with huge crowds – 100,000 for the final – which showed the world the interest.
"We're now in the second half. What's possible in the next 25 years, how we could grow the game and how big it could become and be good for the game internationally, is almost unimaginable."