But you could say that about a lot of American sports too
Hell, your quote about bonding with your father came right out of City Slickers, except that they were talking about baseball.
One thing I will give soccer (notably the World Cup) is that while here in the US, we may have cities hating each other because of sports (Boston-NY, LA-San Fransisco, Detroit-Chicago), but the WC gets whole nations to hate each other all over again (e.g. England vs. France vs. Germany vs. Italy, etc.)