We may very well find it very difficult to come up with something that has no possibly offensive cultural baggage. Do you think soccer was one where someone made even an attempt to mitigate that baggage?
Possibly, as soccer isn't exactly a premier sport in the US. If it was American football, baseball, or basketball (with which the average American male is more familiar) I think the authors point would be stronger.
I could make an argument that using a sport which has massive popularity outside Western European culture is a sign that the interviewer was thinking about diversity.
Sports are good candidates for these challenges as they have reasonably complex rule, so it isn't necessarily that the interviewer was just selecting something they liked.
I agree with the author that it would be better to have alternative coding challenges, even though interest in soccer is obviously not a male-only thing.
