The Hill News

The U.S. is serious about its bid to host a World Cup in the future, President Obama said Wednesday.

While baseball an American football take a front seat, the president said, soccer is a "late entry" to U.S. sports fandom and would only be boosted by a World Cup here.

"[W]hat you saw with the U.S. team was huge enthusiasm of the sort that I haven’t seen about soccer before.  And the younger generation is much more focused on soccer than the older generation," Obama said in an interview with the South African Broadcasting Corporation. "I mean, my daughters, they play soccer, they paid attention to who was doing what in the World Cup. And so I think what you’re going to continue to see is a growing enthusiasm and I think people are very serious about the World Cup being hosted here in the United States."

It's not the first time Obama has lobbied for the U.S. to host a major international sporting event. He traveled to Copenhagen last ! year to help press the case for his hometown of Chicago's bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, a trip which backfired after the Windy City was bounced in the first round of voting.

This year's World Cup has led a group of 26 senators to write FIFA, soccer's global governing body, to urge them to consider the U.S. as a destination for a future World Cup. The U.S. hosted the World Cup in 1994 in stadiums throughout the country.

Obama still bowed, though, to American pastimes like baseball and football.

"It’s absolutely true that they call baseball the national pastime here in the United States; that basketball is obviously a homegrown invention; and we dominate American football," he said. "Those a! re all sports that developed here and that the United States i! s obsess ed with."