Today’s thought comes from my editor-friend Bill and my Uncle Johnny. As they uttered the same thought to me within hours of and unbeknownst to each other, I took it as a sign from the sports gods that I should write about it. And the thought is this:

We have seen the future in America, and it is soccer.

This because Manchester United and Real Madrid – perhaps the two best-known “football” teams in the world – faced off this past Saturday, Aug. 2, in a match at Michigan Stadium that drew more than 100,000 fans.

This is a sport in which you can see the passion and excitement on the faces of the players, which communicates to the fans, Bill told me. Not like a certain other sport in which the players wear helmets and are bent over much of the time.

Still soccer has a long way to go to supplant that other football game. For one thing, as this article makes clear, Major League Soccer doesn’t have the $49 million that Real Madrid has to pay Cristiano Ronaldo, the No. 1 player in the world. The money’s not there – yet.

But it could be, someday sooner rather than later, particularly as America becomes a more multicultural nation.