What if nobody came? This country did not even have a soccer league, and only a few of its players were good enough to play in Europe.
Blatter, the second-highest-ranking official of FIFA, was taking an inspection tour of the New World. Like many Swiss citizens, he could speak French, German, and Italian, and his English was coming along. His press aide, Guido Tognoni, was there to help with the nuances during his interviews with the American press. When my turn came, I chose to meet at a Belgian restaurant on the East Side of Manhattan as a European touch, to make him feel more comfortable.
He seemed particularly boggled that a great city like New York did not have a world-level stadium near the center, as other great cities do. I told him that, however strange it sounded, industrial New Jersey directly across the Hudson River was considered part of the New York region, at least for sports purposes. People often drove from New York to Giants Stadium in the polluted marshlands. It could be done. But Blatter kept shaking his head.
By now, Joseph S. Blatter is known around the world for having presided over a laissez-faire epoch of arcane politics and unexplained decisions, with a growing list of scandals that saw many of his closest associates disgraced and banished.
He is also known for a litany of comments that ranged from impractical to inappropriate—the World Cup should be held every two years rather than four (which would dilute the event and disturb the entire soccer calendar), and female players should wear tight shorts so men will watch, and gay fans should refrain from sexual activity if they attend the 2022 World Cup in Qatar (a nation with considerable money but not much soccer and which was awarded the tournament under Blatter’s watch).
Back in 1993, Blatter and FIFA still seemed to me like a cute little operation that conducted soccer matches, but I was not totally fooled by his effusive bonhomie. I had seen FIFA up close, as the 1994 World Cup approached, and its disdainful attitude toward the leadership of the United States Soccer Federation seemed uncomfortably like a powerful nation seeking a regime change in a puppet state.
Every World Cup is a traveling circus, temporarily leased out to a host country by the home office in Zurich. In 1988, FIFA had made the calculated risk to award the 1994 World Cup to an emerging soccer nation with stadiums and corporate sponsors and wealthy television networks—but also with government and corporate oversight unthinkable in most of the world. FIFA was always uneasy with its new partnership with the United States Soccer Federation.
After the weak showing by the U.S. team in Italy in 1990, FIFA clearly regarded the U.S. federation as a mom-and-pop operation, once run out of a cluttered office in the Empire State Building by dedicated lifers from the old ethnic leagues. Attention must be paid to these earnest people with roots in Europe who nurtured the sport in rickety stadiums in the old cities, mostly along the East Coast. Some games drew thousands of fans on weekend afternoons, rooting for clubs like Brookhattan-Galicia, New York Hakoah, Newark Portuguese, Brooklyn Italians, Philadelphia Ukrainians, New Brunswick Hungarian Americans, Newark Ukrainians, Warsaw Falcons, Galicia-Honduras, Brooklyn Hispano, Baltimore Pompeii, or Kearny Celtic.
Soccer was not exactly born with the arrival of the Cosmos in New York. The grand old soccer city of St. Louis, home to German and Irish and Italian immigrants, produced generations of players at midcentury. “Every Catholic parish had a team,” recalled Colonel James Hackett, a former chief of detectives in St. Louis, once a star forward for Chaminade High School. Hackett recalled thousands of fans paying to see a scholastic match at Fairground Park, followed by a semipro match involving teams like Simpkins-Ford and Mike Breheny Furniture. The St. Louis system produced several members of the 1950 World Cup team, including Harry Keough. “He was my postman,” Hackett said, marveling that a man who helped beat England had delivered his mail.
The ethnic clubs were the heart of the sport in the United States, but by 1990, they were as archaic as the fedoras and ties and topcoats on the male fans in the wrinkled old photographs. In the age of multinationals and multimedia and big money, FIFA was ready for new friends.
Nearly four years away from the 1994 American World Cup, FIFA made the decision that it was time for the U.S. federation to modernize. Colombia had given up the 1986 World Cup for financial reasons, and Mexico had done fine. Did the United States want to suffer the same fate as Colombia? FIFA’s motto seemed to be: We can make you, we can break you.
With FIFA’s overt encouragement, the voting members of the U.S. federation abandoned the president, Werner Fricker, a Yugoslavian-born businessman and former player who had lost the confidence of FIFA. The U.S. federation installed in his place Alan Rothenberg, an American-born lawyer who had started in sports by doing legal work for the Los Angeles Lakers and later ran the soccer competition for the 1984 Olympics—a huge success, even though the organizers had to deal with ABC’s squeamishness about showing live soccer games. (No time-outs! No hands!)
Ten years later, Rothenberg was again expected to fill the gigantic stadiums of America. He had learned from Peter Ueberroth, the highly capable chief executive of the 1984 Summer Games, who had made a huge profit by using existing facilities rather than leaning on taxpayers to build pools or gyms or fields. All Ueberroth needed, he insisted, was security and decor—pastel banners and chain-link fences. That was the role model for Rothenberg.
“We are very happy with this result,” Tognoni, Blatter’s press aide, told the New York Times after Rothenberg’s election in August 1990. “Now, we can make a new start with a credible person.”
FIFA did not mess around. Blatter was the point man for the cold and autocratic president, João Havelange, a tall and haughty Brazilian who resembled Charles de Gaulle. It would not have surprised me if Havelange kept a de Gaulle uniform and trademark kepi in his closet and wore it around his office, looking at himself in the mirror and reciting the words of Louis XIV: L’état, c’est moi. He was a former Olympic swimmer and water polo competitor, who rose in the Brazilian swimming federation and moved to FIFA because that seemed like a more proper calling for a Charles de Gaulle lookalike. Or maybe there was more money in soccer.
Havelange had a way of looking down his nose at people. He spoke only French at official FIFA functions, and once seemed stunned when Phil Hersh of the Chicago Tribune told him he was full of it, in fluent French.
In 1993, Blatter was the heir apparent to Havelange. He seemed quite approachable and sensible, as the former head of public relations of tourism for the Valais region and later the general secretary of the Swiss Ice Hockey Federation and director of sports timing and relations for Longines, which was how he made his move into soccer.
In 1993, Blatter was under pressure from UEFA, the Union of European Football Associations, which had just formed the Champions League, with the top clubs playing a separate midweek competition for gigantic television income—the hamster wheel of soccer. UEFA’s president, Lennart Johansson, from Sweden, had a reputation for honesty and was a logical alternative to run FIFA. Blatter seemed quite nervous that a total bust in the New World could hurt his candidacy when Havelange finally retired.
I am hardly a chamber-of-commerce booster type, nor am I a businessman. As a sports columnist, I have huge misgivings about spending public money in the name of circuses for the people. But in 1993, I could justify holding the World Cup in the United States, which already had dozens of football stadiums, just waiting to be filled for a month of soccer.
One thing I knew about America was that our entrepreneurs, our leagues, our sponsors, our television networks, our hotel chains, our national and local governments, all knew how to throw a party. I told Blatter: If you build a World Cup, they will come.
By the time we had espresso, Blatter seemed reassured. Then I did something he may never have seen before. I grabbed the check. The Times insists on paying, I said. Blatter seemed intrigued by the concept of journalistic independence. As he left the restaurant, he had regained his peppy demeanor. I had discovered a new sideline of
my job—reassuring FIFA executives about the wisdom of their decisions.
* * *
On December 19, 1993, FIFA held its quadrennial draw ceremony for the upcoming World Cup, this time in Las Vegas, the sordid personification of the new American dream. Barbara Eden, the blond star of I Dream of Jeannie, was serving as hostess for the international television show.
The secretary general of FIFA beamed when the comedian Robin Williams burst onto the stage, obviously fascinated by the name Blatter.
“It is nice to meet you after feeling you all these years,” Williams said.
I’m not sure Blatter understood the shtick, but Williams continued his journey into matters urological.
“Mr. Blatter!” Williams said with a thick German accent. “May I call you Mr. Blatter?”
As part of the draw, Blatter dug out a plastic ball from a bowl and was about to call out the name of a team.
Leering at the plastic ball, Williams asked, “Panty hose?”
Then Williams pulled out a rubber glove and told Blatter: “Turn your head and cough.”
That night in Las Vegas was the beginning of the public phase of Sepp Blatter. He looked at Robin Williams sporting with him and seemed to be thinking, “Hey, I am not just some officious Swiss bureaucrat cutting deals with obscure third-world federations. I am a fun guy.”
Blame Robin Williams. Ever since that draw in Las Vegas in 1993, I have never been able to think of the head of FIFA as anything but Mr. Blatter.
We had one other glimpse of the inner FIFA during that schlocky outing in Las Vegas. Pelé, merely the most famous soccer personality in the world, was involved in a legal dispute with Ricardo Teixeira, the president of the Brazilian federation, who was the son-in-law of João Havelange. Because of the feud, Pelé was banned by FIFA from appearing on the worldwide draw show, clearly a loss of publicity and identity for the American organizers. FIFA did not care. Pelé, sitting in the audience, laughed off his exclusion when interviewed by reporters. He said a World Cup in his second home was “my dream come true,” and he added, “My life doesn’t change” because of the snub. This is the essence of Pelé. He keeps his balance. He smiles. He goes for the goal.
The thought occurred to me that night: perhaps Blatter was not just a dippy bureaucrat who put on tournaments out of love for the game, who enjoyed a night out in Las Vegas in the presence of Barbara Eden and Robin Williams.
Ban Pelé from the World Cup draw show in America? What wouldn’t these people do?
9
THE BIG EVENT
UNITED STATES, 1994
We all knew the American World Cup would be different—spread across a huge country, with loyal ethnic fans following the teams, with indoor matches for the first time.
But nobody could have predicted the tournament would be accompanied by a film-noir double murder or the killing of a player who had been on the field days earlier.
Five days before the opening match, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, a casual acquaintance, were found murdered in Los Angeles. Her husband, the retired football star O. J. Simpson, was the obvious suspect. The nation, and much of the world, was somewhat preoccupied by this gruesome spectacle as the tournament opened in Chicago’s Soldier Field.
By tradition, the defending champions played the first match, but West Germany had merged with the German Democratic Republic just months after the World Cup victory in Rome. The unified nation was now simply Germany, Deutschland, but most of the players were from the nation that had won in 1990.
A fleet striker, Jürgen Klinsmann, put Germany ahead in the sixty-first minute against Bolivia, and the Bolivian coach sent in his aging star, Marco Etcheverry, to try for the equalizer. Etcheverry, known as El Diablo, was whacked by Lothar Matthäus and responded with a kick, earning himself a red card and expulsion. Total minutes played, three.
Immediately after the match, I rushed to O’Hare for a flight to Detroit, for the Americans’ first game against Switzerland at 11:30 a.m. the next day.
That evening, while driving my rental car toward Pontiac, I turned on the radio to find WFAN, the clear-channel New York all-sports station that could be heard after sundown in more than a dozen states. Madison Square Garden was shimmering with excitement that month: the Rangers of ice hockey had just won their first Stanley Cup in fifty-four years, while the Knicks of basketball were in the National Basketball Association (NBA) Finals against Houston.
It was one of the craziest sports months we have ever had in New York. I’ll admit it. I was resentful that the hometown finals had erupted in the same month as the World Cup, and I could not be everywhere.
Now the games were overshadowed by the hideous drama in California.
With WFAN coming in loud and clear, I discovered that O. J. Simpson was involved in an ominous low-speed car chase on the freeways of Southern California, with television helicopters displaying the scene live, to the world. Basketball fans in the Garden were rushing into the corridors to watch the chase on television, as the Knicks took a 3–2 lead in the series; Simpson surrendered at 8:50 p.m. Los Angeles time—everything was connected.
At 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, the United States played Switzerland in the Pontiac Silverdome. Americans had been playing baseball and football in stadiums with domes or retractable roofs since the mid-1960s, on artificial grass placed over hard layers, which increased injuries to athletes. FIFA had rightfully insisted on grass fields for its major tournaments.
In 1983, the Italian national team visited New Jersey to play a friendly on the rock-hard carpet in Giants Stadium. Claudio Gentile and his mates watched the soccer ball veer like a bowling ball down a polished lane and decided they would not be making any sliding tackles that day.
A decade later, scientists from Michigan State University had concocted a system of trays of grass that could be nurtured in the sun and rain outdoors, then hauled indoors before a match—around two thousand segments of hardy grass, each weighing three thousand pounds.
The first indoor match in the Silverdome had been held on June 6, 1993, between Germany and England as part of a three-team tournament called the U.S. Cup. Julie Cart of the Los Angeles Times described the “steamy, stultifying” air, noting the lack of air-conditioning for players or fans. But FIFA went ahead with its plans for four first-round World Cup matches indoors.
The Silverdome was part of the objective to sell tickets, lots of tickets. The original conservative plan for 1994 had been to use midsize stadiums, but the nation had dozens of huge stadiums sitting empty in June and July. FIFA did not award the World Cup to the United States because of its soccer prowess. This was America. Think big.
The organizing committee was run by Rothenberg and Scott Parks LeTellier, a lawyer from Los Angeles, and they recruited talented people, many with soccer backgrounds, to run the ambitious project. This was not amateur hour.
The stadiums selected were: Stanford (capacity 80,906), the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California (91,794), the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Florida (61,219), Soldier Field in Chicago (63,117), the Cotton Bowl in Dallas (63,998), Foxboro Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts (53,644), Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington, D.C. (53,142), the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan (77,557), and Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey (75,338). The Giants played on nasty artificial turf, but for the World Cup officials trucked in trays of real grass.
With a minimum of rejiggering, these football stadiums were converted into soccer stadiums, with slightly wider and longer fields, although sometimes dodgy sightlines for the lowest rows and precious little room for corner kicks or warmups. But they could surely pack in the fans.
All the 1994 stadiums had one thing in common: the organizers did not feel the need to spend money for extra lavatories for temporary facilities like media centers and hospitality tents. Instead, at every stadium, they installed dozens of Porta Potties, which sat there for a month in summer weather. Charming.
* * *
Just in time for the 1994 Worl
d Cup, FIFA changed a major rule: keepers were no longer allowed to pick up the ball when it was kicked back by a defender under pressure. Opposing fans would whistle derisively at such timidity, as the keeper would cradle the ball like a babe in arms, coo softly to it, waste many seconds to let the danger pass, and eventually deliver the ball upfield. Under the new rule, if a defender kicked the ball backward, the keeper could not touch it with his hands but had to kick it. He had to be a footballer.
Over the winter, I had seen Franco Baresi of AC Milan screw up an exchange with his keeper. If the great Baresi had to adjust to the new rule, how would other defenders do under increased pressure?
Sepp Blatter, who often spouted off as informal interpreter of rule changes and general societal trends, issued this pronunciamento just before the World Cup: “When in doubt, keep the flag down.” That was easy for him to say. Woe to the player who botched a play near the goal-mouth.
The rules for group play had also been changed, allotting three points for a victory, thereby encouraging more aggressive play. And sixteen of the twenty-four teams would advance to the knockout round, which meant four squads would advance after finishing third in their group. The consensus seemed to be that Italy, Mexico, Ireland, and Norway formed the Group of Death because there was no obvious weak team.
England had failed to qualify, thrilling local police who did not have to monitor hooligans. The usual contenders were back—Brazil, Italy, Argentina, and the unified Germany.
Considering that the United States was not seeded among the top teams, its group of Switzerland, Colombia, and Romania was not terrifying. The United States’ first opponent, Switzerland, was considered the least of the three, which meant that if the United States got a victory in its first match, it would have a good chance of advancing.
The American team was a huge upgrade from 1990. There was still no major professional league, and many players were still coming out of college programs, subsidized by the federation, but more of them were finding employment in Europe.
Eight World Cups Page 11