Soccer in America has a century long history in the US Open Cup, contested since 1914, with many of its prolific winners being immigrant clubs with names like Brooklyn Celtic, New York HaKoah, Brooklyn Hispano, and other names denominating Greek, Ukrainian, etc. In other words, all nations where soccer is king. Given the time period of European immigrant influx, you would expect that a lot of those immigrants would bring their game over here and that it would catch on, yet the state of soccer in America today is in many ways a niche interest still in its infancy vis-a-vis sports like baseball, basketball, American football, etc. So why did the Beautiful Game not catch on here? What factors limited its growth until the past few decades?
In large part because those populations with the time, inclination, and money to propel sport popularity in a sustained way were already latched onto either Gridiron Football or Baseball.
In particular Gridiron Football had spawned from the same primordial soup of local English ball games that had begun to coalesce at Boys Schools and Universities which were then emulated in the US at Colleges in the Northeast. The schools' interest in playing each other led to the eventual adoption of uniform rules in the 1870's at the same time Soccer Codes and Associations were getting serious. And while the games were remarkably similar at the time there were differences, and Harvard getting a taste for more Rugby style rules after playing a few games with McGill in Canada really set the two Football Codes on separate tracks. So you had schools at all levels but mainly driven and controlled at the college level spreading the sport from the Ivy League, to West Point, the Carlisle Indian School, and nationwide.
Meanwhile Baseball had already staked out a strong claim on the sporting audience by the last decades of the 1800's. It could be the working man's game, the well to do Gentleman's game, or the poor immigrants game with just a ball, stick, and empty field. And could offer itself as the less violent, and more sedately paced option vs football. While Basketball was also spreading like wildfire thanks to Dr. Naismith's connections in the YMCA and Collegiate Sports.
That is not to say for sure that Association Football didnt have players, or interest. The long history of American Soccer, and immigrant populations from early adopting nations speak to that. But a different branch of the same tree had already taken root and flourished in Gridiron Football, and with Baseball, Basketball, and the rest the American sports menu was not some fertile ground for the taking but a market where sports would need to compete for a share. Doubly so if those with money to spend on the sport were already set on a different one.
To say nothing of other social constraints and factors like pressure to adopt more visibly American tastes to assimilate, or other sports offering much appeal to newly arrived immigrant communities just the same as soccer.