Friday, June 21, 2002
What's next for U.S.?
MLS among keys to keeping Cup momentum
By Michael Hiestand
USA Today
Playing Germany in today's World Cup quarterfinal is a milestone for U.S. soccer. It suggests that the tens of millions of American kids playing soccer, over decades, will eventually produce world-class players. It helps validate America's Major League Soccer, still struggling to attract even minuscule TV audiences, as a key component to national soccer success on the world stage.
And the U.S. Soccer Federation, with a budget that has tripled to $30 million since 1990, might still prove an old maxim: With enough time and money, Americans can do just about anything.
“The World Cup is really the only measuring stick to see how far a nation has come in soccer,” said Paul Caligiuri, who played on the U.S. national team from 1984-1997. “The world knows the American athlete is superior. Now, it's only a matter of time before we develop the world's best soccer teams, the world's best players.”
Most Americans, only now turning their attention to international soccer, might not see how anything is inevitable when it comes to the Cup.
Favorites have gone home early, upstarts are still around and TV highlights routinely show that a matter of inches determines whether streaking shots become goals or near-misses.
The keys to future success could be as unknown now as Landon Donovan was during the 1998 World Cup in France. Then, Donovan showed up a half-hour early at his Redlands (Calif.) High School and asked to catch some Cup action on a TV. He says his classmates thought he was “crazy.”
U.S. Cup star Landon Donovan, 20, is still not convinced about the support back home: When President Bush called to congratulate the team after its second-round win Monday against Mexico, Donovan said, “We were thinking - which president?”
But America's soccer establishment believes it finally has a plan that will perpetuate success.
“We knew this day was coming,” MLS Commissioner Don Garber said. “We weren't sure it would come this soon.”
Regardless of the outcome of today's game against Germany, the U.S. men's national soccer team has already posted its best Cup performance. To most Americans, it might seem like that success came out of nowhere, as the USA finished last in the 32-team Cup finals in 1998.
But it was a long time coming.
The National Soccer Hall of Fame has a lithograph showing Union troops playing soccer, brought over from England, during the Civil War. Hall president Will Lunn suggests soccer in America at least has longevity to rival the sport's superpowers: “We played for 10 years before Brazilians even saw a ball.”
That led, in the early 1900s, to the start of the National Football League - for soccer. It didn't last, Lunn says, but it preceded that “other” NFL: “And they stole our name!”
In the 1930 Cup, the U.S. team beat Belgium and Paraguay to advance to the semifinals. And its biggest Cup win - and perhaps most embarrassing moment in British sports history - was beating England in 1930.
But a U.S. team didn't qualify for the World Cup finals - the 32-team field - for another 40 years.
However, American interest in soccer grew in the 1970s, thanks largely to the sport's biggest star, Pele, joining the New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League in 1975. In his three seasons with the Cosmos, Pele produced soccer sellouts across the USA and TV ratings soccer might never see again — and helped draw top talent from Europe.
“From the day Pele arrived, America's soccer interest jumped tenfold,” Bradley said.
But the NASL was a showcase for foreigners, with its token Americans relegated to the sidelines. Interest waned, and the league folded in 1985.
The inevitability of American soccer power, which Caliguiri suggests, seemed anything but that. At least, that is, until a single moment in Trinidad in 1989, when he scored a 35-yard dipping shot that rescued America from World Cup oblivion.
That goal secured a 1-0 win against Trinidad & Tobago in a qualifying game that put the USA in the '90 World Cup finals. Without that win, America might not have been able to host the '94 Cup finals.
Giving America the '94 Cup finals had already irritated various soccer-loving nations. Giving the USA its automatic free pass as 1994 host, if the team hadn't qualified in 1990, might have been too much to bear.
A Southern Californian who went to UCLA, Caligiuri become one of the first Americans to sign with a major European league. At home, nobody but his family seemed to understand what he was doing. But as he played in Hamburg, Germany, he recalls, “I couldn't get a flat tire without it being in the morning newspapers.”
Playing for the 1990 U.S. World Cup team, largely comprised of young players with little experience beyond college, was a lesson in humiliation.
“We needed to put on our Superman capes,” Caligiuri said. “But before we opened against Czechoslovakia, we hadn't looked at tapes, or scouting reports - or even the players' names.”
The Czechs won 5-1. And before the U.S. team salvaged a moral victory to Cup host Italy, Caligiuri said, “We were at each other's throats.”
The 1994 Cup, he says, was completely different. Players returned with Cup experience, and the U.S. Soccer Federation found new funding.
“They put us in together for two years preparing. We lived and breathed soccer, watched tapes at lunch. It became monotonous.”
And foreign national teams, finally, wanted to tune up against the Americans - who didn't even appear on national U.S. TV until 1993.
“Before, they'd say no thanks,” Caligiuri said, “because they said they needed a quality opponent.”
U.S. soccer got a boost by hosting the 1994 World Cup finals. The U.S. team got into the second round, where it lost to eventual champion Brazil.
And the Americans got noticed: Against Brazil, it drew a TV audience comparable to what Tiger Woods drew in winning golf's U.S. Open Sunday.
The next step was Major League Soccer's debut in 1996. That, said U.S. Cup coach Bruce Arena, was key: “If we didn't have a pro league, I don't know where we'd be today.”
MLS players make up half his roster, with the other half from the big-time European clubs. Arena suggests some of his players might not even be playing pro soccer without the MLS.
John Harkes, who played on the U.S. team from 1987-2000, says MLS “gives kids a place to go and play. We had to take it upon ourselves to find a place to play wherever we could.”
Said U.S. player Jeff Agoos: “Now guys like Donovan can go straight from high schools to the pros, just like in other sports.”
Jeff Agoos, who first joined the U.S. team in 1985, remembers he didn't have a pro league to join.
“But now guys like Donovan can go straight from high schools to the pros, just like in other sports.”
In 1998, U.S. Soccer developed a blueprint — dubbed Project 2010 — meant to bring a U.S. Cup title by 2010. It calls for young players to get more international experience and attend soccer academies.
Although U.S. youth participation has grown largely from more girls taking up the game, the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association says there are now 8.8 million players under 12 — a 36 percent jump since 1987.
After this Cup, the next debate will concern how young players are handled. Arena argues for a bigger MLS role. Harkes agrees. Caligiuri thinks college soccer should continue to play an important role.
“Player development all over the world is the responsibility of (pro) clubs,” Arena said. “In the U.S., it's been soccer's governing body, which is not the way to do it.”
Harkes agrees MLS clubs should oversee player development, in part because “good coaching would be there day in and day out — something we don't have in America now.”
Caligiuri, about to become Cal Poly/Pomona's coach, disagreeD: “Maybe only 10 percent of college players make the next big jump. But we need college soccer. The European system isn't the American way - the American way is to get an education.”
And after Monday's win against Mexico, the American way is finally getting noticed in the soccer world. Dating to 1934, the U.S. national team got just five wins in its first 41 games against the Mexican team - but had won four of its last five matches.
Whatever the future holds.
“In 20 years, the U.S. team has come such a long way,” said Giorgio Chinaglia, an Italian World Cup star in 1974 and the NASL's all-time leader scorer. “It's astronomical.”
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