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

by David Wangerin

  Belgium plays Saudi Arabia at RFK Stadium this afternoon at 12.25pm. Take a tip from a friend. Find a way to go. As anybody who was at RFK yesterday for the 1-1 tie between Mexico and Italy will tell you, this World Cup is truly special. And it's probably not coming back to America in any of our lifetimes. Sometimes, the thing itself proves to be as good as the hype. That's true of the World Cup. Its appeal isn't just the high quality of the soccer. Or the intensity and variety of the international fans. Or the transformation of RFK from an aging eyesore into a gorgeous, world-class venue. It's all of it.

  Those heeding Boswell's exhortations - nearly 53,000 of them - were treated to one of the best goals of the tournament, a mesmerising solo run from Saeed Owairan that helped send the Saudis unexpectedly through to the second round. Memorable occasions were proving plentiful. Apart from the banishment of Diego Maradona for failing a drug test, there was plenty that was positive to say about Ireland's victory over Italy at a packed Giants Stadium, the elimination of Germany by a surprisingly resourceful Bulgaria, and Romania's thrilling second-round victory over Argentina, probably the best match of the competition. Goals continued to flow: 40 in the second round and quarter-finals, 60 per cent more than in the same stages four years previously.

  It was a particular shame, then, that the United States of all hosts was burdened with the first goalless World Cup final, even if the match itself represented a merciful improvement on the equivalent in Rome four years earlier. What had begun with a botched effort from Diana Ross ended with a more catastrophic miss by Roberto Baggio, leaving soccerbashers to have the last laugh. The two greatest teams on the globe can't score one stinking goal,' sneered Woody Paige in the Denver Post. And finally, they have a shootout, soccer kicks at 12 paces, to decide the champion. That's not boring; that's dumb. Why not flip a coin, just as they did before the game?'

  Many could see his point. More than one observer likened the manner of Brazil's victory to a basketball championship being settled by freethrows, or a field-goal competition deciding the Super Bowl. Far from being thrilled by the prospect of the ball entering the net several times, many newcomers felt let down. Even the American television commentators, describing events for 10 million households, provided a strangely low-key account of the shoot-out - for which they were roundly criticised. 'If soccer is 90 per cent emotion,' wondered the San Francisco Chronicle, 'why call it like the Greater Greensboro Open?'

  World Cup 94 may not have been the 'greatest ever', but it was a remarkable success, devoid of crowd disturbances, empty stadiums or embarrassing performances from the host nation. Indeed, perhaps the greatest humiliation the American team suffered was its ghastly Adidas playing strip, dismissed by Soccer America as 'like a T-shirt your maiden aunt gave you, that you wore a couple of times just to be nice. Then you washed it, it faded badly and then you threw it to the back of your closet.' For the rest of the world, the event offered hope. Top-class international football had not succumbed to even more dispiriting levels of caution, cynicism and fear. Most agreed the goalless final had been more an example of defensive prowess and exhaustion than a lack of attacking will. The proud sentiments of the Boston Globe's Bob Ryan were hard to argue with:

  They have loaned us their treasure and we have enhanced it. We turned out not to be heathens at all, but respectful curators instead ... it turns out we were the perfect country to host the World Cup. Name the ethnic group, and it's here on our shores, somewhere. No team went unsupported or unloved.

  Far from being punctuated with an exclamation mark, though, the 1994 World Cup ended, inevitably, with another question: where would American soccer go from here?

  9. Clash and Burn

  MLS: back to square one

  The media will give soccer a fair shake. But it will have to be presented well. It can't screw up.

  Steven Goff, The Washington Post

  n the 1990s, sporting entrepreneurs looking for a way on to America's major league map were faced with a bewildering array of investment opportunities. In 1995, a professional cycling league made its inauspicious debut in the parking lot of New York's Shea Stadium, its promoters vowing to produce more of a contact sport'. CBS television, which had lost its NFL rights to Rupert Murdoch's Fox network, mulled over an ominous new gridiron proposal in which teams were to be backed by corporations instead of private investors. Before the end of the decade, two women's basketball leagues came to fruition, one with the blessing and financial support of the NBA. Even the television series Gladiators looked set to turn professional.

  Into this fiercely contested scrap for the leisure dollar stepped Alan Rothenberg, president of the USSF, chairman of the `greatest World Cup ever' and now the driving force behind another bold new offering: the soccer league pledged to FIFA as part of USA 94's legacy. It had taken nearly eight years to set up, with progress drip-fed to an often sceptical public. No one, it seemed, had realised just how difficult honouring the promise would be.

  The proposal which emerged, and which was christened Major League Soccer, marked a sweeping departure not just from the NASL but from American professional leagues in general. MLS was as much a reflection of the way sport had changed as Rothenberg's own indubitable savvy. That it came about at all - after a few near-collapses - reinforced beliefs that the gold Porsche-driving, unsinkably optimistic Californian had become the most significant figure in the game's history, despite a lessthan-intimate knowledge of the sport. 'I don't think you have to play the game, coach the game, line fields to know the game,' he once said. 'It might be better if you haven't.'

  As a former NBA and NASL owner, Rothenberg spoke the language of a big-league operator. He recognised that MLS's pretensions would be abruptly dismissed without regular exposure on national television and residency in the country's top stadiums. For the right price these ambitions could be realised. An increasingly fragmented market, brought on by the growth in cable and satellite channels, had made even network TV far more attainable than it had been for the NASL, while even the busiest of stadiums still lay dormant for much of the year.

  But gate-crashing the American sports psyche - if that was what was required - took more than just a hefty wallet. It meant producing superstars, not just familiar faces but the sort of luminary icons who could command the attention of the ordinary fan and force their way into the privileged domain of Sports Illustrated and ESPN's SportsCenter. This, too, would cost money, far more than Rothenberg thought wise.

  Pro sports owners had paid a steep price for their lack of financial selfcontrol since the advent of player free agency in the 1970s. Major league baseball salaries had risen from an annual average of $29,000 in 1970 to $1.2 million by 1994, by which time the average NBA player was making close to $2 million a season. MLS was not in a position to compete with such fairytale sums, or the paranoia of cut-throat owners which largely fuelled them. Though it soon found television 'partners', it had to pay for the privilege, buying airtime from ABC.

  Even with a more lucrative network deal, the success of M LS would scarcely have been guaranteed. Television and its parade of commercial advertising had helped to subsidise professional sport's salary explosion, but did nothing to control it. Increasingly, owners desperate to shore up their diminishing returns turned to local politicians and taxpayers, who offered them new or improved stadiums, or even lured them away from their traditional homes. The NFL and its legions of devoted fans could withstand such noxious developments (they had done so for decades), but an emerging pro soccer league would not - as the wild city-hopping sanctioned by the NASL illustrated.

  It was largely for these reasons that Rothenberg hit upon the idea of a 'single-entity' league. Rather than being offered the opportunity to make money through ownership of a club, investors would buy into MLS as a whole, splitting profits (and sharing losses) with their rivals. This would limit the owners' autonomy, but it would also curb their avarice and smooth the disparities between markets. There would be no New York Cosmos; equally, there would
be no Rochester Lancers.

  For someone like Rothenberg with the free market to thank for his wealth, it was a decidedly socialist approach. It was also very alluring, allowing club payrolls to be kept in check and all but eradicating the negotiating power of the players. For each 18-man squad, M LS would impose a frugal salary cap of $1.3 million - roughly what the major leagues paid a single baseballer - resulting in an average wage of about $72,000 a year. Of course, if international talent were to be obtained and US World Cup stars tempted back from Europe, the journeyman players would be paid rather less: as little as $25,000, the earnings of a librarian or a sheet-metal worker.

  Rocketing salary costs had hastened the NASL's demise, and Rothenberg had first-hand experience of this, having paid Johan Cruyff $750,000 a year to play for his Los Angeles Aztecs before off-loading him to Washington. Yet sagging attendances had been a more visible enemy. Initial MLS projections were modest: average gates of about 11,000, hardly an imposing figure when sprinkled across the cavernous stadiums it sought to hire. To mitigate what officials termed the `rattle factor', stadium capacities were to be'downsized', with expanses ofempty seats and vacant upper tiers cloaked in brightly-coloured canvas. In time, such compromises were to give way to more intimate new venues which, at around $30 million a throw, would finally demonstrate the long-term commitment pro soccer had found so hard to make.

  The desire to start a new professional league from scratch was not confined to the federation. A Chicago businessman named Jim Paglia put forward an interesting, if ambitious, single-entity concept called League One America, which hinged on the construction of a series of multipurpose venues. 'We intend to buy land and build stadiums, as private real-estate developers,' he asserted. ' If Chicago wanted a stadium for soccer, we'll build it.' But his thinking seemed light-years distant from the actual state of the game. The American Professional Soccer League, named more out of hope than achievement, had by 1992 been whittled down to five clubs, surviving only through the absorption of teams from the failed Canadian Soccer League. Though the APSL insisted it represented the sensible future of the professional game, the USSF disagreed. In 1991 it classified the APSL as a 'Division II' league, helping to clear a path for something bigger. The divisional nomenclature may seem esoteric - and misleading to anyone assuming promotion and relegation would take place between 'divisions' - but it was important, since the USSF would sanction only one Division I league. The APSL, perhaps naively, sought an upgrade from the federation, believing this would transform its dwindling fortunes.

  Another league worthy of mention, a sprawling entity known latterly as the United States Interregional Soccer League, had been classified as Division III. Lacking the pretensions of the APSL, the USISL had perhaps become more successful because of it. Launched in 1986 as a five-team indoor circuit, by 1993 it encompassed 38 outdoor teams in 16 states. Few anticipated it at the time, but this was a sturdy foundation on which more ambitious plans could be built.

  In December 1993 the three proposals to fill the Division I vacancy - League One America, the APSL and MLS - were placed in front of the USSF's national board of directors. Not surprisingly, MLS, with its chief proponent doubling as president of the federation, emerged the clear winner. Rothenberg insisted that everything was beyond reproach, that votes had been cast without undue influence from him, even if he had appointed many of the board members (though the APSL could also claim friends in high places). He now called on the rival bidders to join forces with him, but the APSL declared its aversion to single-entity soccer and vowed to fight on. So too did League One America, which had received no votes at all. But Jim Paglia soon disappeared from view, his threats to counter MLS with a 'soccer' using multi-coloured pitches, eight match officials and players dressed in unitards mercifully failing to surface.

  With the APSL to placate, investors to court and a World Cup to produce, 1994 was perhaps as taxing a year as any a federation president had faced - though not taxing enough for Rothenberg to give up his legal practice, from which he continued to draw a salary. But this was a man whose tigerish zeal and commitment had earned him the nickname Rothenweiler, and whose hopes for MLS were couched in the confident prose of USA 94. 'I think the time is right for pro soccer to be successful in this country,' he said, vowing MLS would soon become the elusive 'fifth major league of American sports'.

  Still, the World Cup came and went without the chance for prospective fans to buy MLS tickets or T-shirts, or even identify their nearest team. Even as Brazil were being crowned world champions in Pasadena, only seven of the intended 12 franchises had been earmarked and Rothenberg found himself with just one committed patron, a New York investment banker. Yet he still insisted he would raise the $50 to $75 million needed to kick off the following April.

  Tempting the super-rich with soccer was not an easy proposition, not even for a man who had been awarded $7 million from the World Cup's estimated $50 million 'surplus' by an organising committee he had largely appointed. Rothenberg was soon forced to compromise over MLS, halving his entry fee to $5 million and designating a new category of 'investor-operator', individuals who would be permitted to control a club while still adhering to the single-entity framework. Yet hopes for a 1995 kick-off faded. By November Rothenberg, unable to produce a full list of teams, was forced to admit defeat, though he remained confident enough to begin handing out contracts. Tab Ramos had signed the first 11 months earlier, but was now left to reflect: 'It seems like soccer has disappeared again.'

  By the time the full MLS line-up was revealed, most of the World Cup momentum was lost. Even Rothenberg, who had presided over the most prosperous years the USSF had ever known, only narrowly avoided a reelection defeat, an outcome which almost certainly would have strangled his fledgling league. But the year's delay served its purpose. Ownership capital ultimately reached $75 million, spearheaded by the doggedly optimistic, soccer-friendly oilman Lamar Hunt.

  Finally, the focus could shift toward the teams, and in particular which of America's World Cup stars would return from exile. Alexi Lalas, who after the 2-0 defeat of England in Foxboro had famously begged ofvisiting journalists 'Somebody find me a job! Anywhere!' had been loaned to Padova of Italy, discovering the fishbowl existence of a Serie A footballer ('It's like being in the zoo'). Californian winger Cobi Jones, whose dreadlocks ran Lalas a close second among national team coiffures, joined Coventry City. Thomas Dooley returned to the Bundesliga with Bayer Leverkusen after a year of full-time commitment to the World Cup squad. VfL Bochum made Eric Wynalda their record signing, but the million dollars it cost to bring him to the Ruhr failed to produce a single goal - Wynalda broke his ankle and missed most of the season. Tony Meola, on the other hand, placed his faith in a new career as a kicking specialist for the NFL's New York Jets. When that failed, he took his soccer indoors with a team called the Buffalo Blizzard.

  Milutinovic disappeared too: the federation said he had resigned, but he claimed to have been dismissed. Much of the confusion stemmed from federation secretary Hank Steinbrecher's master plan of 'vertical integration', widening the role of the national manager to include developing other coaches, an obligation Milutinovic had never warmed to. The federation eyed the former Portugal manager Carlos Queiroz, but failed to sway him from Sporting Lisbon. Approaches to World Cup-winning manager Carlos Alberto Parreira were also rebuffed.

  As the hunt continued, responsibility for the national team fell on the unlikely shoulders of 38-year-old Steve Sampson, one of four assistants the USSF had made available to Milutinovic. The tenure of the Utah-born Sampson was expected to be brief. He had last been in charge of a team five years earlier at Santa Clara University, where he claimed a share of the national championship in the icy 1989 stalemate with Virginia. But the interim choice soon muddied the selection waters by stringing together a series of attention-grabbing victories. At the 1995 US Cup the Americans romped to a record 4-0 victory over Mexico, the product of a more attack-minded philosophy.

&n
bsp; His shining moment came in Uruguay at the Copa America a few weeks later. For the second time the US had been invited as a guest, but unlike in 1993 the event now received their undivided attention. Using primarily World Cup players, Sampson orchestrated a surprising 2-1 defeat of Chile. An even more eyecatching 3-0 victory over Argentina in Paysandu sent his team into the quarter-finals, and his stock into orbit. Detractors called attention to Argentina's rather arrogant decision to rest nine members of their first team, but the result was still creditable, and a beaming Sampson seemed at ease in his new role, capably fielding press conference questions in Spanish and English.

  After dispatching Mexico on penalties, the Americans proved no match for the world champions. Even without Romario or Bebeto, Brazil made short work of the semi-final, though the 1-0 scoreline was one of few similarities to the same fixture at USA 94. Sampson asserted that his team had gone down with guns blazing, refusing to merely guard the net as Milutinovic had done the year before. His players agreed. 'We played 50 times better,' Lalas claimed. 'For example, we actually touched the ball this time.'

  None of the TV networks bothered with the Copa. ABC had handed the federation $1 million for the rights to ten national team matches, but neither it nor ESPN, which affixed its name to 52 other games, seemed able to separate relatively meaningless, home-grown competitions like the US Cup from events with more international gravity. Fans, though, were beginning to do so. Like the American player, they were reaching maturity. The World Cup had left a legacy of enthusiasts who spoke a more cosmopolitan language, supporters who were no longer prepared to accept half-hearted interest from the media or its frequent lapses into derision and antipathy. One of the most infamous moments of ESPN's coverage of the World Cup had occurred when a commentator, struggling to wrap his tongue around the name of Italy's goalkeeper, Gianluca Pagliuca, blurted out: 'I hate soccer!' Too many journalists continued to pass judgement on the game instead of providing insight, while some newspaper editors remained happy to ignore it altogether.