Perhaps an argument can be made that the US has become a soccerplaying nation. A study by the Sporting Goods Manufacturers ofAmerica claimed that almost 18 million Americans played the game at least once in 2002 - an impressive figure, though whether picnic kickabouts and parents cajoled into a few minutes' practice with a son or daughter are the activities of `soccer players' is questionable. On a more formal level, the USSF's youth division claims three million registered participants between the ages of five and 19, with the adult division adding another 250,000. More than 20,000 high schools field interscholastic teams, turning out some 700,000 players; 2,000 colleges contribute another 40,000. And none of these figures includes the unaffiliated clubs operating under the radar.
The numbers of spectators are far less encouraging. The proportion of Americans who regularly watch the game - particularly those who do so of their own free will rather than out of family obligations, and are willing to pay an admission charge - can be charitably described as modest. MLS's average gates of around 15,000 may be the highest any American soccer league has known, but alongside the NFL's 2004 average of more than 67,000 and the 30,000 for Major League Baseball, they are not very impressive. At college level, where gridiron teams at the universities of Michigan, Tennessee and elsewhere consistently play to crowds in excess of 100,000, the disparity is even more glaring: soccer's best average in 2004 was a mere 2,385 at the University of Indiana.
Advertisers and film-makers have displayed an occasional interest in the game, but soccer's most significant contribution to American culture may have been political, in a peculiar sort of way. Many analysts claimed the election of Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, and possibly that of George Bush jnr in 2000, hinged on the vote of the Soccer Mom, the archetypal busy suburban mother who bundled her children into the minivan or SUV and ferried them to and from their various extracurricular activities, a woman whose political concerns were assumed to encompass everything from the quality of the local schools to the lyrical content of popular music.
None of this really suggests that the game has entered the American mainstream. A quarter of a million soccer-playing adults - less than half the number registered with the English FA - represents about 0.1 per cent of the US population. The inroads made into high schools may be impressive, but gridiron participation still surpasses boys' soccer by nearly three to one, and by about 10,000 to one in terms of public interest. Even dear old Soccer Mom has become an outmoded political demographic, supplanted by the likes of Security Mom and NASCAR Dad.
But if the measure of a soccer country is how well it has performed in international competition, and how well its best players measure up to the international elite, then the United States' progress towards nationhood looks more promising. No longer are Americans treated as a curiosities at foreign clubs, and victories over the established footballing nations of Europe and South America have become unexceptional. Many tired, decades-old questions -'When will our country start producing international stars?', 'When will the rest of world take the US team seriously?' - have been laid to rest. There will be no more Belo Horizontes.
All this has happened with a certain inevitability. In the four decades since the start of the American participation boom, the game never lost its grip on the young. Improvements to coaching, facilities and the level of competition eventually came to yield a thin but steady stream of professional exports, just as the NASL was subsiding and attitudes in other countries towards the use of overseas players were changing (it's easy to forget that as late as 1978 foreign professionals were not allowed in the Football League). Much the same has happened to other nations with modest football histories - most conspicuously Australia, but also Canada, South Korea, Japan and, most recently, China. As American soccer entered the 21st century, all it seemed to be missing on the pitch were a few finishing touches, and in the summer of 2002, Bruce Arena provided the first of them. Unencumbered by administrative meddling or lack of confidence from the USSF, the new national manager also benefited from a hefty dose of World Cup luck.
As early as Arena's third match in charge, the wounds suffered at France 98 began to heal. In February 1999 the US beat Germany 3-0 in a friendly in Jacksonville, Florida, a surprising result magnified by the fact that all three goals were scored by German-based players. The scoreline may have reduced visiting reporters to fits of despair (When did a German team ever get beat so badly?' lamented one) but six months later, at the Confederations Cup in Mexico, Arena beat the Germans again with almost a reserve squad. By then he had also engineered victories over Argentina and Chile.
To reach the 2002 finals meant wending a two-phase, 16-match course, but with three places again reserved for Concacaf even a middling performance was likely to suffice. Breezing through qualification rounds, though, had always been anathema to American World Cup entries, and even with the benefit of four M LS seasons and more enlightened fixture arrangement from the USSF, Arena still managed to turn what seemed fairly routine work into a disappointing struggle, in which the US almost contrived to be eliminated at the first group stage.
By now the trickle of American internationals leaving MLS for Europe had become a stream. DC United lost right-back Tony Sanneh to Hertha Berlin of the Bundesliga ('It's a better league than Major League Soccer, but I didn't necessarily play for a better team'), while Joe-Max Moore left the New England Revolution for Everton. Loaned to Preston North End, Columbus's Brian McBride received a rough welcome to the Football League: 'It was five minutes into my first game. It was a 75-25 ball I knew I wasn't going to get, but I wanted to make sure the fans and team-mates knew I wasn't afraid to get involved in a little collision.' Complications from the blood clot he suffered kept him out for five months. Another member of the Crew, Brad Friedel, famously signed for Liverpool in 1997, though the move came to little. By 2000 Graeme Souness had taken him to Blackburn Rovers, where his star shone much more brightly.
Through to the final qualifying phase, the USSF at last succeeded in weaning itself away from the money-spinning tradition of staging home fixtures with Mexico in Los Angeles. They opted instead for chilly Columbus, where Latino support was far more limited. The federation's bold thinking reaped the reward of a full stadium virtually devoid of Mexican support, and a 2-0 victory. There was even greater satisfaction after an unexpected win in Honduras. Though far from emphatic (the deciding goal came in the 86th minute), a 2-1 victory put them in pole position for Japan and South Korea, even if Arena still insisted: 'I think this is going to get crazy.'
It did. After the traditional defeat in Mexico City - 1-0 this time, with Claudio Reyna suspended and Ajax's John O'Brien absent after the club threatened to bench him for the rest of the season if he went - and a 3-2 home loss to Honduras, the Americans' three-point advantage disappeared. The Honduras match, forced by ESPN to kick off at 10am because of college gridiron commitments, was the first qualifier lost at home since Costa Rica had knocked the US out of the 1986 World Cup. 'Give our guys credit, they never quit,' Arena reflected. 'They were running around like a bunch of idiots, but they didn't quit ... idiots with a heart.'
The more easily outraged supporters began to throw stones at the manager, with suspicions festering that Arena had succumbed to the college coach's preoccupation with tactics and formations. When Costa Rica claimed an emphatic 2-0 home win in one ofthe US's bogey grounds, the 'Monster's Cave' of Estadio Saprissa, detractors scornfully pointed to what they construed as a seven-man defence. A month later, an 81st- minute penalty from Moore gave the US a vital 2-1 win against Jamaica in Foxboro. But the best news was yet to come: the Mexico-Costa Rica match had ended goalless and Trinidad & Tobago had inconceivably won in Honduras. The unlikely combination of results - so improbable no one had thought to bring along any champagne - meant the Americans qualified with a game to spare.
A few months later, with nerves soothed, the US claimed their first Gold Cup since the inaugural event 11 years earlier, with a performance far more persuasive than t
heir qualifying form had suggested. By now Arena had largely made up his mind about who would be going to Korea, and few eyebrows were raised at his final selection: 11 from M LS, six from the English leagues and six from elsewhere in Europe. Their average age, close to 29, was greater than that of the team's oldest player at Italia 90, yet it still included 20-year-old Landon Donovan, whom Leverkusen had loaned to San Jose for the summer, and 19-year-old DaMarcus Beasley, the ten-stone prodigy of the Chicago Fire.
But the man who drew more of the media attention was, inevitably, nearer to New York: Clint Mathis, the 25-year-old MetroStars striker whose clinical finishing had turned heads during the team's run-in. Sports Illustrated chose the Georgia-born Mathis for the front of their World Cup preview issue, name-dropping Bayern Munich as a potential suitor while focusing on his desire to play in the Premiership ('he already knows his way around a proper English breakfast, since it resembles the traditional Southern breakfast his mother cooks for him'). 'My life could change drastically after two months,' Mathis observed hopefully.
When the draw for Korea-Japan was made, odds-makers rated the US as the usual hundreds-to-one outsiders, well aware that the Yanks had not won a World Cup match on foreign soil since 1950. 'We're not going to win [the Cup] because we're not a good enough team,' Arena freely conceded. 1 I don't think anyone is going to be damaged by us saying that. I mean, how many countries have ever won it?' Yet he was not about to dismiss his chances of reaching the second round. If we can get a point in the first game, it will put the whole group in chaos.' Few imagined the chaos that would follow.
At a press conference shortly before the opening match against Portugal, Arena bet journalists that none of them could name the 11 players he would start with. An injured Reyna gave way to 25-year-old Pablo Mastroeni of the Colorado Rapids, with only a handful of caps to his name, while Mathis was left out, ostensibly over fitness concerns. Most surprising of all, both Beasley and Donovan were in. It was a calculated risk, and a combination of players the manager had never used before.
Four minutes into the match, O'Brien provided an early pay-off. Hurrying and harassing Portugal's 'golden generation' over the next half-hour, the Americans turned his goal into a 3-0 advantage, a scoreline tinged with fantasy. 'After the first goal, I didn't really celebrate, I just jogged back,' Mastroeni recalled. 'The second goal, same thing. But after the third goal, it was like, "This is for real".'
Not since 1930 had a US team scored three times in the World Cup, but a quick response from Beto Severo and a 70th-minute own-goal from the luckless Jeff Agoos ('one of the finest ever to grace the World Cup', according to one account) left them hanging on for 20 minutes. Emerging with a victory few could have imagined, the US suddenly found themselves on course for the second round. 'The whole world thought we were going to lose,' claimed Friedel, who had narrowly wrenched the goalkeeping position away from Tottenham's Kasey Keller. 'But we thought we were going to win.'
South Korea's defeat of Poland threw the group wide open. Now the two underdogs met in Taegu in front of 60,000 excitable fans, all seemingly dressed in Korean red, with a place in the second round waiting for the winners. Mastroeni and Stewart made way for Reyna and Mathis, and once again Arena's changes reaped a generous reward. In a new haircut which a New York Times correspondent compared to 'David Beckham circa 2001 or Travis Bickel, the Robert de Niro character in Taxi Driver', Mathis scored the lone American goal. But the team leaned heavily on Friedel, who blocked a first-half penalty and twice denied Seol Ki- Hyeon with breathtaking saves. Only a second-half header from Ahn Jung-Hwan beat him, a goal celebrated with the famous speed-skating routine that referred to a controversial incident at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics earlier in the year. Even though the Americans had played poorly, Arena's stock was rising. One Italian journalist described his team as 'beautifully organised - like a European power, like Real Madrid'. Not everyone gushed so effusively, but now even the haughtiest British journalist could not reject out of hand the former lacrosse coach's desire to manage in the Premiership.
But two goals in the first five minutes from already-eliminated Poland sent his team perilously close to going out as well. Decisively beaten, 3-1, only a breathtaking volley from Park Ji-Sung in Korea's match against Portugal kept them in the tournament. American World Cup campaigns had produced some odd twists and turns, but here was perhaps the strangest of all - one which, Arena joked, had sent him to the shops the next morning in search of thank-you gifts. Few sniped at the manager now. Supporters had frequently defended him by pointing to his 'winning percentage' which, as far as these things went, was the best in national team history. But, with a helping of good fortune, he had also proved himself when it mattered most.
Paired against Mexico for a place in the quarter-finals, the US came up with an inspiring performance against their bitterest rivals: a 2-0 victory in Chonju, fashioned by an early goal from McBride and a second-half header from the impressive Donovan. In between, the Mexicans had controlled much of the possession and might have had a penalty - and probably a man advantage - after O'Brien appeared to punch a shot clear with his hand. Strewn with ten yellow cards and one red, the match did not yield much vintage football, but few agreed with Javier Aguirre's claim that his Mexico side had simply been unlucky.
Four years earlier, the tactics of Steve Sampson in France had been condemned as the product of a college manager who believed internationals could be won with radical formations and team changes. Arena tinkered even more compulsively - he had already used 18 of his 19 fit outfield players - but for him virtually every change seemed to click. Against Mexico he gave a World Cup debut to defender Gregg Berhalter of Crystal Palace, playing him alongside Eddie Pope, a former college team-mate, to great effect. Eddie Lewis, whose appearances for Fulham had been largely confined to the reserves, was also in from the start for the first time, and his cross produced the clinching goal. Donovan, one of the few ever-presents, had been asked to play in a different position in every match, but seemed to thrive in each of them. Even the agonising decision to leave out Keller was vindicated, since in Friedel the Americans possessed perhaps the best goalkeeper in the tournament.
Had the manager's uncanny acumen suddenly thrust the US into the higher echelons of world football? 'Not even close,' he insisted. 'We're not pretending to be at the same level as the established teams, but the gap has closed considerably.' In the quarter-final against Germany in Ulsan, the narrowness of the gap was there for all to see. The Washington Post maintained the US 'had out-run, out-shot and out-played the Germans on nearly every count but the final score'; the Boston Globe said they 'played the three-time champions off their feet for most of the evening'. Others claimed the victors had merely sat back, absorbed the pressure and waited for the right moment: a 39th-minute free-kick headed into the net by Michael Ballack. But a different referee might have given the US a penalty when Berhalter's volley struck Torsten Frings on the arm, and on another day Sanneh's 87th minute header would have levelled the score instead of sailing inches wide. The Americans had stood toe-to-toe with their more celebrated opponents and found themselves separated largely by the amazing performance of Oliver Kahn in goal.
Arena accepted the Frings incident with a poise not normally associated with losing World Cup managers. Perhaps coming from a country which had largely been asleep - literally - throughout the tournament, it was easier to accept defeat graciously. 'It's nice to hear all the praise that we played well and we should have won, could have won, this call, that call', he added. 'But the bottom line is we should have won.'
Not many American sportswriters put in an appearance in Korea. Only 15 newspapers bothered to send reporters, far fewer than had travelled to France four years earlier. But for the handful of veterans on hand in Ulsan that night, among them George Vecsey of the New York Times, the rewards were unexpected:
Three German sportswriters packed up their laptops and stopped by our little American cluster. You guys outplayed us
,' one of them said. 'You should have won.' 'One-nothing,' I said. 'Germany won.' I know these guys - good colleagues, always willing to explain the sport to bumpkins from the New World, like me. But there is no code of effusive sportsmanship in a soccer press room, only pragmatic judgements of who played well and who did not. From Old Europe came the rather startling possibility that the United States is now a player.
Nearly four million American households had stirred themselves early that morning to watch the live transmission, with commentary piped in from a studio in Connecticut. It may not have matched the 40 million who three years earlier had spent a Sunday afternoon watching the US women edge China in Pasadena, but it was more than had ever seen a soccer match on ESPN before, and it eclipsed all the station's big-league baseball telecasts that summer. Once again, though, interest peaked with the performance of the American team. More than a million fewer households bothered with ABC's broadcast of the final.
For as long as anyone could remember, it had been customary for any significant development in American soccer to be detailed not just for its own sake, but in terms of its impact on the future of the game. This was as true as ever in the summer of 2002. The World Cup performance was not merely to be celebrated, it had to mean something for soccer's march on the national conscience. Eight years earlier, in the run-up to USA 94, Ann Killion of the San Jose Mercury News had lamented sagely that 'we won't be allowed to simply enjoy the event ... every TV rating, opinion poll and ticket sale will be sliced and diced and analysed ...' Not much had changed since then: a large crowd, a budding star or a World Cup victory was still as much a means to an end as an end in itself.
Soccer in a Football World: The Story of America's Forgotten Game (Sporting) Page 42