How apartheid, European racism and Pelé helped cultivate a culture of diversity in US soccer that endures into Messi-era MLS

Patrick ‘Ace’ Ntsoelengoe in action for the Toronto Blizzard. Tony Bock/Toronto Star via Getty Images by John M Sloop, Vanderbilt University North America’s most diverse professional league kicks off on Feb. 21, 2024, as Major League Soccer returns after a winter break. The league, commonly known as the MLS, has long prided itself as a standard-bearer for racial and national diversity: Last season saw players from 81 countries across six continents compete for teams. Members of racial minorities make up 63% of players and 36% of head coaches, according to the latest diversity scorecard from the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport. As a soccer scholar and author of the book “Soccer’s Neoliberal Pitch,” I know that this diversity is in part by design and has deep roots. Indeed, the MLS had, as a model of diversity, an earlier attempt to get Americans to embrace the “beautiful game”: the North American Soccer League, or NASL. The fall and rise of the NASL Most often remembered for bringing Pelé to the U.S., the NASL was arguably the first serious attempt to develop a truly professional “major” soccer league in the country. It ran from 1968 to...