Hate to trash your soccer summer, but . . .

Despite the recent euphoria from soccer’s boosters, bloggers, executives and others, how much progress has the sport really made in the public imagination in this ballyhooed “Summer of Soccer?”

Not much, according to Jonathan Zopf of the Gainesville Times, who speaks to soccer aficionadoes local and beyond in painting a gloomier picture than what’s been touted elsewhere.

Indeed, to most Americans, soccer remains “a beautiful bore,” and National Soccer Hall of Fame historian Roger Allaway sums it up thusly:

“People talk about ‘have we turned the corner.’ In my mind, there is no corner; it’s a curve and we keep going further around it.”

Zopf examines the American player development system — youth associations organized unlike anywhere else in the world — as a source of the problem, and this is not a new suggestion.

Neither is the problem of getting Americans to watch their own domestic leagues when the most glamorous club teams and national teams are criss-crossing our shores. Says Woodstock soccer fan Travis Dexter:

“I don’t even watch the MLS and I live in this country. I’d rather watch the overseas clubs. Soccer is never going to grow where we watch the MLS.”

There are other critics of the “Summer of Soccer” meme as well.

And here’s a sobering fact about the Rose Bowl throng of 93,137 that watched Barcelona defeat the Los Angeles Galaxy 2-1 in a friendly on Friday night: Not only is it the biggest soccer crowd in America since the 1994 World Cup, it also had more far more people watching than the other six MLS weekend games combined.

Would a greater eye toward style help?