As he reviewed the Summer of Soccer in this country, Real Salt Lake midfielder Kyle Beckerman smiled approvingly.

"Really big summer, with all the international clubs coming over," Beckerman said. "It seemed like every time you looked, there was another game on TV. For a soccer fan, it was a really fun summer. For the non-soccer fan, you were going to see it. It was going to be in your face."

Whether it is attractive or just unavoidable, there's more of that to come. Beckerman will join the U.S. Men's National Team against El Salvador in a World Cup qualifier Saturday, the second major event staged at Sandy's Rio Tinto Stadium this summer, following Major League Soccer's All-Star Game in late July.

Because the facility holds barely more than 20,000 fans, Saturday's game will not rival anything played in football stadiums around the country this summer, when soccer produced some staggering numbers -- including attendance of 93,137 at the Rose Bowl for an exhibition between FC Barcelona and the Los Angeles Galaxy of MLS and 79,156 for the U.S. team's Gold Cup game against Mexico at Giants Stadium in New Jersey.

The American audience for the big-time touring clubs and national teams is impressive. This where interest in soccer is something of a foreign concept to the rest of us. It would be like discovering that basketball is huge, even though the NBA is not especially popular.

Regardless, soccer people will take it.

"It's been extraordinary ... what's been happening on domestic soil," said U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati.

Maybe everybody was just coming to see FC Barcelona, Real Madrid and the others, but they were paired with MLS teams that rose above the level of the Washington Generals, in Gulati's analogy.

"It's not a question of watching the Harlem Globetrotters," Gulati said in a recent teleconference. "Our teams are getting more respect. ... It's an important question of how we can tap into what is clearly an audience for very high-level international games, the same way the World Cup is."

In other words, there's soccer, and then there's MLS. While the quality of MLS play is said to be improving, the lesson here is that judging soccer interest by MLS attendance is misleading. Obviously, there's an appetite for the sport, as will be evidenced again Saturday.

In 2005, a World Cup qualifier between the Americans and Costa Rica drew 4x,xxx at Rice-Eccles Stadium, creating an atmosphere that led Landon Donovan to say, "I really hope we come back here."

So here they come into a smaller venue, but a similarly charged atmosphere is anticipated.

"Nobody would really expect it, coming from out of Utah," Beckerman said. "For whatever reason, soccer took hold in Utah. I would expect nothing less for that game."

Yes, for soccer.

"It's frustrating when people ask you, 'When is soccer going to make it?' given what's gone on," Gulati said. "In many ways, we've made it, but it's still the 'first half' to me. ... We're not constant water-cooler talk, we're not filling up our games in MLS stadiums, the U.S. national team doesn't have the same following as the Argentine or English national teams.

"But I don't think there are many countries around the world, frankly, that over the last 20 years have had the same progress," Gulati said. "And if we can have that over the next 20, then I think we'll be where we want to be, which is among the world's elite in terms of interest."

The issue is whether that will happen, without the rest of the world coming here to play.

kkragthorpe@sltrib.com