Soccer in a Football World: The Story of America's Forgotten Game (Sporting)

by David Wangerin

  Differences between the USSF that had languished in obscurity for decades and the USSF selected to stage the world's most prestigious sporting event were often difficult to discern. The Trinidad match was staged at a college venue in Torrance, California, described by one promoter as one of the nastiest, dirtiest stadiums I have ever seen'. Its pitch, barely 70 yards wide and mismarked (a fact which didn't come to light until a few hours before kick-off), was a bumpy mess, in part because a vandal had driven across it the day before. Officials who had expected no more than 5,000 fans found themselves scrambling to accommodate twice as many, and explaining to them that the numbers on their tickets did not correspond to any numbers on the stadium seats. A month later, in New Britain, Connecticut, the US took on Guatemala, where promoters couldn't cope with a surge of interest from foreign journalists and ended up housing most of them in a tent behind one of the goals. The public address obligingly provided announcements in Spanish for fans of the visiting team. The US won narrowly and unconvincingly with Bruce Murray's impressive first-time volley eclipsed by the surely unprecedented news that police had arrested several ticket touts outside the ground.

  One hundred years on from their unofficial debut, the national team was finally acquiring an appreciable level of support. Healthy crowds for friendlies peaked in Philadelphia, where 43,356 turned up for an exhibition with Dnepr Dnepropetrovsk of the Soviet Union (and, more pertinently to Philadelphia, of Ukraine). Results, such as a 3-0 defeat of Peru, were also creditable, but when the outcome was more important, goals proved harder to come by. The US's final home qualifier against already eliminated El Salvador-whose team was almost entirely replaced by a club from Usulutan, and who arrived in St Louis at 9pm the night before kick-off - ended 0-0, a scoreline as profoundly disappointing as the one in Guatemala City a month earlier. In only one of seven group matches had Gansler's team produced more than a single goal. Caution had evolved into fear.

  It meant that the US's fate rested on a victory in Trinidad, where they had always won, if never with the stakes so high. A draw would be enough to send the hosts through as the smallest country ever to reach the finals. Gansler claimed that he had known all along qualification would hinge on the last match, yet few had expected his team to limp into it so lamely, and their indifferent form left the USSF in a precarious position. Elimination would not only erode the federation's credibility as a World Cup host but also threaten its financial position - it had borrowed half a million dollars to underwrite the national team, with the clear expectation of reaching Italy. Meanwhile, the noises about a professional league which had echoed in the afterglow of the USA 94 announcement (Fricker had proposed that a three-division national league begin in 1989) had been reduced to whimpers. Nobody, it seemed, was interested enough to underwrite the project. Far more than qualification, then, rested on a victory in Port-of-Spain. As the new captain, Mike Windischmann of the ASL's Albany Capitals, impressed on his team-mates: 'Don't you realise if we lose some of us will have to go out and get jobs?'

  Neutral sentiment favoured the home side. Its sea of fans displayed an exuberance for their team Americans had yet to produce, and their government had benignly declared the following day a national holiday, win or lose. Moreover, Trinidad & Tobago had been scandalously robbed of qualification in 1974, when four of their goals were curiously disallowed in a 2-1 defeat by Haiti during a final qualification round held entirely in Port-au-Prince. Some 35,000 red-shirted, umbrellawielding fans now jammed the National Stadium to see their 'Strike Squad' make amends.

  The US flew to Port of Spain from Miami in relative anonymity - an announcement over the airport public address referred to them as 'the Miami Soccer Club' - but media interest in the team had reached a modest new peak. About 40 American journalists travelled to Trinidad, with almost all the major dailies sending reporters. Even the most hard-hearted of them found the atmosphere and the do-or-die stakes irresistible. 'This game was an example of what international soccer is all about,' raved the Los Angeles Times correspondent, 'if not at its best then at least at its most thrilling.'

  The draw with El Salvador two weeks earlier turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Forced to field an attacking team, Gansler made four changes, naming Caligiuri as a starter. Ultimately, though, it was not tactics so much as fear that won the match - a fear which this time crushed the opposition under the weight of national expectations. 'When we were with them in the tunnel before the game they were scared,' Windischmann recalled. 'You could tell by looking in their eyes. They didn't want to play.'

  Half an hour into the match, Caligiuri produced what American soccer fans would soon refer to affectionately, if misguidedly, as the 'shot heard round the world', an awkwardly dipping, left-footed effort from 25 yards which somehow deceived the goalkeeper and planted itself in the net. It was his team's first goal in nearly four hours and only the fifth in eight group matches, but it proved enough. Though the Americans had demonstrated a worrying inability to protect such scorelines, and there were one or two anxious moments in the hour that followed, their nervous opponents could offer no real response. The US qualified for Italy with perhaps their most poised performance of the campaign.

  It did not earn their country a national holiday, of course, and only the faintest murmur of interest from a national media preoccupied with the day's gridiron. America's imminent appearance on sport's biggest stage found itself competing for space down the page with such events as the death of a journeyman NASCAR race driver. ESPN once again declined to show the match live, and their footage of Caligiuri's goal was immediately and unceremoniously followed by score flashes from the NFL. But for all who cared to notice, November 19, 1989 represented a defining moment in American soccer history, and not simply a tremendous relief to the USSF.

  Performances in the friendlies leading up to Italy were erratic: a caning by the Soviet Union and defeats to Costa Rica, East Germany, Colombia and Hungary. Even the victories were far from satisfying. During an uninspiring 1-0 victory over Malta, one reporter confessed he had taken almost as much pleasure in watching the ground staff attempt to replace advertising hoardings blown down by a gust of wind as in the match itself. But crowds continued to build and the federation applied some of the unexpected ticket revenue towards bumping up player salaries, attempting to damp down some of the ill-will bred by its confrontational approach to contract negotiations. The USSF asserted its right to determine whether and for how much a player could be allowed to sign for a club, and to keep a portion of any transfer fee. Such parsimony led goalkeeper David Vanole to quit the team in protest but others, just months from fulfilling a lifetime's ambition, bit their lips.

  The average age of the squad Gansler selected for Italy - college products to a man - was just 23. Three still played for university teams. The exiled Perez had only just recovered from a broken leg and was left at home, though without any chance to prove his fitness. For creative inspiration the team looked to the Uruguayan-born Tab Ramos, whose family had sneaked into the country when he was ten. Up front, another New Jersey product, Peter Vermes, playing in the Dutch first division with Volendam, was paired with Bruce Murray. A year earlier, the Hungarian-speaking Vermes had joined Raba ETO of Gyor, playing in the same league where his father had ended his career three decades earlier. 'I know there is communism here, but it's not something I notice in my everyday activities,' he told one reporter. 'What I notice more is how much more culture and tradition there is ... everywhere you go to eat, there are violins playing.'

  Sweeper Mike Windischmann, assigned to no club at all after parting company with the less urbane Albany Capitals, was captain. But perhaps the most prominent member of the team was its goalkeeper, Tony Meola, a multisport star at the University of Virginia who had made his full international debut only the year before. Torn between baseball and soccer, or even the possibility of kicking for the university gridiron team, Meola's performance in a friendly against Benfica had helped him make up his mind. 'This is i
t for baseball,' he announced after keeping a clean sheet against that year's European Cup finalists. 'I think it's time that I dedicate my life to soccer.' In four qualifying matches, including the Port-of-Spain clincher, Meola did not concede a goal, and soon became the latest soccer object of Sports Illustrated's attention. ('Get ready, Europe. Here comes Tony Meola, the gifted goalie who promises to be the US's first world-class soccer star.')

  Meola proved rather less frugal in the preparatory matches on European soil, where the team looked sluggish and disorganised - the 2-0 defeat to Hungary in March was America's first full international on that continent in nearly a decade. An unconvincing 4-1 win against Liechtenstein, who hadn't fielded a team in nearly six years, offered only slightly more encouragement. The final warm-up game, a 2-1 defeat by Switzerland in St Gallen, exposed the extent of Gansler's caution. The US took an early lead, then retreated into a defensive shell that eventually imploded. Beaten, but far from chastened, Gansler conceded only that his team had given away momentum, and stressed that he wouldn't hesitate to use similar tactics in Italy.

  This was not a man short on self-belief. Critics maintained that Gansler, like his mentor Chyzowych, did not set much store by the advice of even the most respected foreign tacticians, perhaps because he considered himself their equal. He preferred to pick through footage of previous matches in search of chinks in the opposition's armour, in the obsessive manner of American gridiron coaches. 'From what we see on tape,' observed Windischmann after the draw, 'Austria and Czechoslovakia will have the same system. It's what you'd consider traditional European, with big target men and forwards who can turn pretty quickly. Italy has some of the same style, but they're so much better at it.'

  Quite what the American style was, no one could say. Our formula is simple,' the manager claimed, '11 guys play offense, and 11 guys play defense. We're going to have to hope that is good enough in Italy.' Brian Glanville haughtily dismissed the unit as a 'galumphing side of cornfed college boys'. Yet if their university experience and its emphasis on structured, disciplined team play did not lend itself to creative freedom and ball artistry, it had certainly built a competitive psyche and an indomitable spirit. 'I think the players will concur with me,' Gansler asserted, 'that our expectation is to get in the second round.'

  Such optimism reached fever pitch in Florence on the night of June 10, the US's first World Cup appearance in 40 years. Gansler had decided to attack against Czechoslovakia, a team he realistically needed to defeat to advance. He inserted Eric Wynalda, a striker with limited defensive skills (and whose quick temperament led one magazine to claim his behaviour at San Diego State University had 'incited 34 letters to the athletic department'), as an attacking midfielder, a move which soon proved calamitous. For 15 minutes, as the Czechs felt their way into the match, the Americans nurtured hopes of a result; after that, they were overrun, `humiliated to the point of embarrassment' in the words of the New York Times. Crushed by the aerial power of Tomas Skuhravy and flustered by the near-post corners whipped in by Jozef Chovanec, they gave away two penalties (although one was knocked straight at Meola) and found it almost impossible to contain the Czechs in midfield.

  The 5-1 debacle left full-back Desmond Armstrong wide-eyed. 'The game was a lot harder than we expected,' he admitted. 'From a technical aspect, they were a lot better than we thought.' Meola sighed: 'I never gave up five goals at Kearny. Heck, in that town giving up one goal was bad enough. You'd hear about it for weeks. Give up two goals and they'd shoot the mayor.' The Czechs exposed Wynalda's temperament, baiting him into a needless shove on Chovanec which produced a red card. Caligiuri's adroit effort pulled the score back to 3-1, but it sparked no comeback, only further raids on the US goal. As Bruce Murray later confessed: 'They were lined up like airplanes on the runway, waiting to slam it home.'

  It was clear that the lack of professional league experience and an endless string of exhibitions against half interested opposition had left the Americans under-prepared. The furtive use of arms and elbows, stamping on toes, shirt-tugging and leg-clutching were not distinctive features of competitions like the Marlboro Cup or the World Series of Soccer with which the team had prepared. Withdrawn in the 85th minute, Murray raced on to the pitch after the final whistle to confront one Czech player he thought had kicked Ramos all evening.

  'It's called paying your dues,' Gansler offered in sober reflection, but some had witnessed more than simply the subjugation of youthful inexperience. The London Times said the US 'were utterly exposed by such Bronze Age devices as an overlapping full-back'; USA, What A Delusion read the headline in Milan's Corriere della Sera. Perhaps the manager was referring to paying his own dues. Certainly, against the next opponents there would be little in the way of adventure.

  There was no humiliating scoreline either, and instead of the tengoal feast pessimists had anticipated Italy to dine on, the Americans nearly produced one of the shocks of the tournament. Gansler had little choice but to pack his defence and trust in his team's tenacity and luck, yet the score proved more flattering than even he could have hoped for. Almost on cue, the hosts scored after 11 minutes, but that was all they would get. Resolute defending, combined with Italian passivity, left the Roman crowd whistling with derision, particularly after Gianluca Vialli thumped a penalty against a post. Midway through the second half Walter Zenga failed to hold Murray's free-kick and watched Vermes's follow-up cleared off the line, the US's only threat of the match. 'The Americans proved they are an excellent team, nothing like the team that lost 5-1,' claimed Italy's besieged manager Azeglio Vicini, perhaps in self-defence. A relieved Gansler claimed that 'this is the US team I know', a statement which could scarcely be refuted in the light of its ultra-defensive performance.

  The learning curve was steep, but the Americans were climbing it, thickening their collective skin and responding to the more physical demands of World Cup football. 'Guys came out to practice on Tuesday and really started banging into each other,' Vermes observed. 'Czechoslovakia pushed us around and we knew if we let the Italians push us around, we'd get buried again.'

  There was plenty of pushing in the final match with Austria, a meaningless encounter for the Americans, though their opponents stood a slim chance of reaching the second round. In an ill-tempered, poorly-refereed anticlimax, the Austrians had Peter Artner sent off after only 33 minutes, but scored twice in the second half before Murray found the net in the dying minutes. The one-goal margin looked respectable enough, but the US had been soundly defeated, unable to capitalise on their hour-long advantage. To the surprise of very few - apart from themselves - they finished beaten, but not too bloodied. 'Even though we lost tonight, I think we ended on a high note,' Ramos claimed. Yet their World Cup represented only a faint improvement on what Canada, similarly bereft of a professional league, had produced in Mexico four years earlier: neither team had earned so much as a point, although the US had at least managed to score. Despite this, the experience had been one long cadenza. Playing in stadiums filled with real fans and cameras from around the world, attending huge multilingual press conferences, being recognised on the street - these were novelties for a squad unfamiliar with being treated as if soccer mattered.

  It still didn't matter back home. Italian TV may have attracted record ratings for the match with the US, but America had tuned out. Ted Turner's TNT, the cable channel that had bought US rights to the tournament for $7.25 million, found its modest investment difficult to recoup: their telecast of the final failed to attract even 500,000 viewers. While this represented two per cent of the national audience, it compared unfavourably with edited highlights of a college volleyball match on a rival station (and, as one critic claimed, two per cent of the nation's TV audience 'would watch a man balance a pencil on the end of his nose'). TNT's coverage included five commercial breaks in each half, an array of pointless graphics and untold interruptions to promote the station's other programmes. During one of the semi-finals, viewers missed a goal because the dir
ector had been preoccupied with showing a picture of the trophy.

  Watching the World Cup on TNT, one reviewer concluded, 'was like sitting behind a post at a baseball game'. Those who spoke Spanish, or just couldn't stand all the interruptions, had the alternative of the Spanish-language Univision network, which ran its commercials across the bottom of the screen. Their commentary team worked from a studio in California, but few seemed to mind. The station claimed it as 'the most successful program in the history of Spanish-language TV'.

  The lack of interest from the mainstream audience was in some ways excusable. It was a dreadful tournament, notable for cynical, defensive play and inept officiating. Few could remember a less inspiring final. The noted sportswriter Frank Deford asked incredulously: 'They're going to bring this thing to the United States of America in 1994 and charge money for people to see it?' While Deford and his peers spent much of the month debating the merits of soccer and its biggest event, too often the game's supporters became sanctimonious and its critics narrowminded. Rarely did such haranguing generate an honest assessment of the event itself.

  Only those few sportswriters to whom the Cup was a familiar experience dared to point out what had been painfully obvious to the rest of the world: crippling levels of gamesmanship and overtly negative play were at fault, not the sport itself. FIFA at last began to address this malaise - about a decade too late for the NASL - by revising its laws. Although it did not consciously draw on the American experience, the most radical changes of the early Nineties - clamping down on the tackle from behind and the 'denial of a goalscoring opportunity', tinkering with the offside rule and banning backpasses to the goalkeeper - would have warmed the heart of many an NASL owner keen to raise the entertainment level.