Aging & Wisdom Quote by Lamar Hunt

Hunt’s move here is a classic reframing: he takes a question soaked in American impatience - “Why hasn’t soccer succeeded?” - and treats it like a bad premise rather than a real inquiry. The opening, “I get asked this a lot,” signals fatigue with the pundit script. Then comes the pivot: soccer hasn’t failed; the scoreboard people are using is wrong.

The intent is persuasive and strategic, less a status update than a demand to change the criteria for “success.” Hunt relocates the debate from TV ratings and major-league cultural dominance to infrastructure: kids, fields, weekend leagues, the slow accretion of habits. That’s why the repetition of “already” matters. It’s a word doing PR work, insisting that the future has quietly arrived while the gatekeepers were watching other sports.

The subtext is also a gentle critique of American sports chauvinism. In the U.S., legitimacy often gets defined by immediate spectacle: packed stadiums, prime-time deals, star-making machines. Hunt argues that soccer’s real victory is upstream, in participation, not downstream in celebrity. Youth adoption is not a consolation prize; it’s the pipeline.

Contextually, this reads like a businessman-owner trying to widen the horizon. If you’re investing in a sport that grows by generation, you need the public to stop asking why it isn’t the NFL and start noticing it’s becoming the default childhood sport. Hunt’s confidence isn’t naivete; it’s a long game dressed up as an answer.