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

by David Wangerin

  The coach also exploited a loophole in American immigration policy to land Bundesliga centre-half David Regis, a native of Martinique who had an American wife but spoke almost no English. Regis was named in the squad at almost the last hour, after his wife agreed to work for a travel agency, in effect fast-tracking her husband through a citizenship procedure that ordinarily might have taken years. Agoos, whose position was most under threat from the newcomer, was even told by Sampson to help him pass his citizenship test. Regis did - and appeared in every US match in France. Agoos didn't play a single minute.

  Fourteen days after his team kicked its first ball of World Cup 98 Sampson resigned, his plan in tatters and his squad close to meltdown. He had been given a difficult draw: Germany in the first fixture and Yugoslavia in the last, with a politically-charged confrontation with Iran in the middle. But his team came bottom of the unofficial 32-nation table and many of his most experienced players left no doubt as to who they believed was at fault. Tab Ramos, whose participation in France the manager limited to 78 minutes, was among the most scathing. From the beginning, this whole World Cup has been a mess,' he complained. 'I blame the coaches for the losses.'

  It took Germany's Andy Moller only eight minutes to unpick the American defence at the Parc des Princes, with the US offering serious resistance for little more than a quarter of an hour. The 2-0 scoreline might have been less emphatic than the 5-1 pasting Czechoslovakia had handed Bob Gansler's youngsters in Italy eight years earlier, but in some ways it reeked of the same naivety, the belief that slavish devotion to the whiteboard could triumph over international nous. Seven of Germany's starting line-up had been in Franz Beckenbauer's World Cup-winning squad of 1990; seven of the US team had never played in the finals before. Sampson had chosen to build his team around one of them, Reyna, whose first-minute slugging from Jens Jeremies seemed to leave a match-long impression. The curious 3-6-1 formation was successful only in isolating Eric Wynalda up front.

  Unfortunately, the veterans who were called upon had largely let the side down. Thomas Dooley was badly beaten on both the German goals, 73-cap Mike Burns was given the run-around by Jorg Heinrich and the performance of Earnie Stewart was almost imperceptible. Down, but not out. 'We lost to the Germans. So what? Everybody loses to the Germans. Let's forget about it and think about Iran,' Ramos implored.

  American politicians and commentators had been thinking about Iran ever since the draw had been made. The occasion was widely perceived as a diplomatic ice-breaker that might begin to restore relations severed in the wake of Iran's Islamic Revolution two decades earlier. Parallels were drawn with the 'ping-pong diplomacy' of 1971, when the US tabletennis team toured communist China, paving the way for President Nixon's visit the following year. Bill Clinton did not turn up in Lyon - the highest-ranking US government official at the tournament was the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Carol Browner, a self-confessed soccer mom - but the match went some way towards softening national prejudices.

  With his team in the unusual role of favourites, Sampson produced still more changes. He removed Deering, whose performance against Germany had been better than most, and introduced striker Joe-Max Moore as a defensive midfielder. Wynalda, Stewart and Burns were benched. Deploying a 3-5-2 formation with a line-up which to one New York Times correspondent 'looked like a mixer on the first night of a cruise', Sampson nearly managed to produce the result expected of him. But his team botched their chances and conceded a late first-half goal to encourage the largely pro-Iranian crowd. On four occasions the US struck the frame of the goal, and by the time Columbus's Brian McBride connected with an 87th-minute effort, Iran had doubled their lead and buried any notions that they were the poor relations of Group F.

  Away from the pitch the atmosphere was rather more hopeful. The hostilities anticipated by international journalists unfamiliar with the largely middle-class, liberal sensibilities of the typical American soccer fan never surfaced. Soccer America observed with some incredulity:

  Anyone who'd read or heard about or remembered the simmering tensions sparked by the Islamic Revolution and subsequent imprisonment of 52 American hostages in 1979 could not have believed the sights and sounds in the streets outside the stadium: chants of 'U-S-A!' and 'Iran!' ringing out from groups joined at the hip trying to out-shout the other: fans wearing Iran caps festooned with American flags; and on some faces, the colour of one nation painted on the left cheek and the other nation daubed on the right.

  The result, though, left some to prepare for less encouraging reactions back home. Creating interest in a World Cup was challenging enough, but a World Cup in which the US team didn't win was nearly impossible. The American media had chronicled events in France in unprecedented depth, producing much less of the condescending and often banal prose of 1994. Incendiary events such as Sampson's cold-shouldering of Harkes, which traditionally merited just a sentence or two, no longer passed without serious comment. Sampson had even announced his final squad live on SportsCenter and ESPN aired the manager's behindthe-scenes diary two days before the Germany match.

  Encouraged by the size of its audience in 1994, television prepared for even greater things from France. ABC rescheduled its popular daytime soap opera General Hospital to accommodate the United States' first game, but wound up taking a ratings nosedive squarely on the chin. Not only did the defeat by Germany attract fewer viewers than the fictional goings-on in Port Charles, it also fared considerably worse than any of their American fixtures four years earlier.

  Only diehards bothered with the final, meaningless match with Yugoslavia, another fixture rife with political overtones given America's role in the Balkans conflict. What had once been anticipated as the group's most crucial game turned out to be a backdrop to the animosity and bitterness festering in the American camp. Preki, incensed at not being named in the starting line-up against his former compatriots, complained bitterly ('I've been overlooked every day'), while Lalas warmed up the reporters ('everybody's ready to explode'). One report even suggested Lalas, Wynalda, Stewart and Balboa had been close to being sent home.

  Despite all that, the US produced their most competent performance of the three, but were again suckered by an early goal and crippled by poor finishing. The 1-0 defeat left them to swim out of the competition with the other minnows. Once more Sampson had made wholesale changes, punctuating the second half with substitutions, but in replacing the shifty Hejduk he withdrew what many considered had been his most potent weapon.

  'They stunk. And they hated their coach,' was the pithy summary of one Associated Press writer, and as the players packed their bags their hatred seemed to intensify. 'We were naive to think an inexperienced coach would see the value of experienced players,' concluded Wynalda, who only once appeared in the starting line-up. 'We should never let this happen again.' Ramos insisted he had played his last match for the team with Sampson in charge. His assessment of the manager's competence - 'as he became more of a coach, we became less of a team' - drew the threat of a fine from the USSF. Agoos, a player volatile enough to have burned his training gear upon learning he had not been selected for the 1994 World Cup, also declared himself through with the national team, as did Lalas, who took aim at Sampson's integrity. 'We all have a scrapbook, and I would have liked to at least have a picture of myself on the field,' he reflected, having spent every minute of every match on the bench. 'The most important thing is having the respect of the people you associate with yourself... Steve is going to have to settle for a scrapbook, and that's all.'

  Though bruised, the coach remained unapologetic. He had no regrets about leaving Harkes at home or keeping veterans on the bench. But it was his contention that few Americans were yet capable of playing at a World Cup level that jarred the most. It was a surprisingly harsh indictment of M LS, well into its third season and the home of all but four of the US's outfield players. The comments and the team's performance seemed to add weight to the view that the league was more of a prov
ing ground for aspiring talent than a showcase for the nation's elite.

  As the unbowed manager stood down and Alan Rothenberg began his search for a replacement, MLS played out its third season hoping to rebound from what its commissioner had termed the 'terrible twos' of its second year. Far from climbing towards Doug Logan's bold target of 20,000 a game, gates had fallen by more than 16 per cent in 1997. Imaginatively, Logan excused the drop with a reference to President Clinton's welfare reform bill. 'Not only was the Government going to take away health benefits and food stamps from poor people,' he contended, 'but on Spanish radio everybody was talking about la Migra, la Migra - as if [US] Immigration was going to scoop them all up at mass events like a soccer game ... I blame the government, totally.'

  MLS's surveys indicated the Latino element of its fan base had fallen significantly, but the size of the decline could not be explained by mere paranoia. Television ratings also foundered, with coverage - at least in English - often lamentably poor (one director even failed in the moderately simple task of capturing a penalty kick). Meanwhile, not a spade had been lifted in pursuit of a soccer-specific stadium. Voters in Columbus comprehensively rejected a proposal to fund a new facility from a sales tax increase, leaving the Crew stranded in the mammoth home of the Ohio State University gridiron team.

  Playing standards might have improved, but ageing imports such as Thomas Dooley, whose Bundesliga career had ended, could still quickly establish themselves among the league's elite, while more youthful, world-class talent remained out of Sunil Gulati's price range. The easiest way to sell tickets, it seemed, was to put on a fireworks display. LA's Fourth of July match with New England drew 51,700 to the Coliseum.

  Rather than splashing out on better talent, MLS was resigned to making the most of what it had. Its marketing arm went so far as to devise nicknames for star players (John 'the Juggler' Harkes; Cobi the Missile' Jones, Roy 'Lights Out' Lassiter), which mercifully failed to catch on. Other gimmicks succeeded only in alienating committed fans. Not everyone wanted to clap along to piped-in music or gorge themselves on pyrotechnic displays, yet many clubs persisted in taking a patronising approach to match day. The assessment of Soccer America's Ridge Mahoney was unequivocal:

  Ambience consisting entirely of roaring rock music, beach balls bouncing in the stands, and dance programs is rubbish ... you can put all the icing you want on a plain cake donut, and it's still a donut. And fans in some MLS cities aren't even being sold the donut. They're being sold the hole.

  Being much more doughnut than hole, DC United repeated their championship victory in 1997, defeating the Colorado Rapids in the final. Similarities between the second MLS Cup and the first were almost uncanny: a rain-drenched field, a surprisingly healthy throng of hardy fans thumbing their nose at the elements (all 57,431 tickets were sold) and another close-run victory for United, this time by 2-1 on their own pitch.

  If the second season ended with noticeably less optimism than the first, it was to the league's credit that all its teams remained right where they had started, and that close-season gossip never drifted into the more familiar pro soccer territory of guessing which clubs might be moving where. The only change of any note was Kansas City's gratifying decision to rename themselves the Wizards, allegedly because of the threat oflegal action from a similarly-named electronics retailer. 'Flushing the Wiz', though, had long been a temptation of mischievous headline-writers.

  Yet ten teams still represented only about half a professional league, a hindrance that was partly remedied by the addition of franchises in Miami and Chicago in 1998. The latter, nicknamed the Fire (suggesting a limitless appetite for naming teams after catastrophes), claimed the MLS Cup at their first attempt. Coached by former DC United assistant Bob Bradley, they rarely displayed the kind of open, attacking soccer league officials had pursued, but an infusion of Polish talent, headed by midfielder Peter Nowak, proved a hit in a city home to thousands of eastern European immigrants. More than 36,000 turned up for the Fire's home debut, with the club's average of nearly 18,000 easily outstripping anything the NASL had achieved with the Sting or the Mustangs.

  The story was rather different for the new Miami Fusion, who had opted to play down the coast in Fort Lauderdale after failing to find a stadium anywhere closer to their nominal home town. Owners who had spent more than $20 million to land the team sank another $5 million into converting the former residence of the Fort Lauderdale Strikers into something beyond a high school football stadium. With an intimate capacity of 21,000 and an international-size pitch, the Fusion possessed one of the most soccer-friendly venues in the league, but they were unable to match even the modest crowds the Strikers had once attracted. Even the arrival of Carlos Valderrama from Tampa Bay failed to galvanise Latino fans, and he lasted only one turbulent season.

  The match-up of the Fire and United at the 1998 MLS Cup drew more than 51,000 to a Rose Bowl blissfully free of rain, with Chicago's stingy defence and two goals from Nowak bringing Bradley's 'blue collar' team the title. The Fire then took the Open Cup as well to complete a remarkable first-year double. United had opted out of the latter competition partly to focus on Concacaf's Champions Cup, a decision that proved far-sighted: in defeating Toluca of Mexico in front of 12,000 at RFK Stadium, they became the first American winners of the competition. To Bruce Arena, the achievement pointed to MLS's impressive pedigree. 'I take offence to any comment that this is not a good league,' he declared.

  Perhaps it was a good league, if not a great one, but after three years its survival was still in doubt. Crowds had dipped further, if only slightly, and TV ratings were the worst yet. Even Univision found the audience for its Spanish-language broadcasts slipping away, confirming the league's own suspicions about its fading popularity amongst Latinos. Painful numbers of Americans were still unable to identify any native soccer player, and the national team's anonymous performance in France hadn't offered them many clues. Spurious correlations continued to be drawn between wanting to play the game and wanting to watch it, though it was now 30 years since the birth of the NASL and several generations of eager young kickers had grown up without ever clamouring for season tickets.

  But the owners stood their ground. Anschutz had spent another $5 million putting the Fire in Chicago, and the Kraft family briefly added the San Jose Clash to their holdings. The financial losses may have looked daunting, but they were still a pittance compared with those being suffered by the likes of the NH L's Pittsburgh Penguins, the 1991 and 1992 Stanley Cup champions, who filed for bankruptcy claiming two-year debts of $37 million (they were rescued by a former player at a cost of $99 million).

  Even ESPN seemed happy to bring soccer into what seemed an intolerably small number of households. Its advertisers might not have been thrilled by the size of the audience, but they certainly liked its demographics: young, malleable consumers whose'brand loyalties' were not yet 'entrenched'. Eager to accommodate them, Nike stepped forward with another $380-million USSF marketing deal, increasing its financial obligations to an extraordinary $500 million spread over 12 years.

  By and large, though, the nation showed little sign of wavering from its fascination with the usual sporting agenda. Though one survey had found that 50 million Americans considered themselves soccer-literate, another determined that only 52 per cent of the nation could even identify the World Cup as a soccer competition. The game had not touched the heart of the American sports fan, and some now began to wonder if it ever would.

  io. Momentary Insanity

  In and out of love with the women's game

  Americans like winners, in tiddlywinks or in soccer.

  Bruce Arena

  n the eyes of most fans, it remains the country's proudest soccer moment, witnessed by more than 90,000 in person and another 40 million on television, and settled by the nail-biting vagaries of a penalty shootout. It came on a sunny July afternoon in California, one which put America finally on top of the football world, its players feted by an adoring
public and a sympathetic national press.

  Outside the United States, the women's World Cup final of 1999 is not treated particularly seriously. The competition suffers from the same kind of indifference and deprecation the game as a whole receives from the typical American. In Associated Press's worldwide poll of the ten most important sports stories that year - a soccer-sympathetic list topped by the clutch of trophies accumulated by Manchester United - the event was nowhere to be found. Yet in its domestic poll, and countless other equivalents, it finished first. Sports Illustrated hailed the American team as its sporting personalities of the year.

  The foreign fan who unwarily refuses to equate the talents of Mia Hamm or Michelle Akers with those of Ronaldo or Maradona can expect a stern reprimand - not to mention accusations of snobbery and sexism - from his counterparts in America, where the top female players are generally held in greater reverence than their male equivalents. As far back as 1993, when the draw was made for the men's 1994 World Cup finals, the American organisers placed Akers, who three years earlier had led her team to victory in the first women's equivalent, on the same stage as Franz Beckenbauer. Some non-Americans winced: to them it was sacrilege, a deplorable level of posturing from a nation manifestly unable to appreciate the gravity of the occasion. Football, especially at its highest level, was still a man's game. But America disagreed, and by the 1990s it disagreed strongly enough to have unwittingly yielded another epithet for its soccer-loving males to dodge. While for decades the game had been ridiculed as the domain of 'commie pansies' and other undesirables, in the 1990s soccer also became a 'girls' sport'.