Soccer's Big Show Comes to the United States.

Soccer's Big Show Comes to the United States. Known outside the United States as football, or footy for short, the sport Americans call soccer is the most popular sport in the world. In 1994 fans around the world were asking why their favorite sport's biggest event--the World Cup--would be hosted in the United States, where soccer had long been ignored. But the 1994 World Cup was a great success with over 3.5 million fans attending games in nine different U.S. locations to cheer their teams to victory. . Soccer's Big Show Comes to the United States By Paul Gardner It's known simply as the World Cup ... so universally popular that there is never any need to define it any further, never any need to mention that it's soccer's world championship. It is the world's most popular sporting event, a monthlong gala of 52 games that comes as close as anything human beings have yet invented to paralyzing the normal life of the globe. The 1994 tournament was the first ever played in the United States and drew the greatest number of fans in history. The final was watched by a record worldwide television audience of 2 billion: about one out of every three people on Earth saw Brazil defeat Italy for the world title. The intense, passionate interest in the tournament is logical enough. Soccer is, by far, the world's most popular sport. Its international governing body, FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), has a membership of 191 countries--more than the United Nations! FIFA estimates that throughout the world there are over 120 million active soccer players on organized teams. The Lure of the United States The World Cup began in 1930, with a field of only 13 nations. It has been held every four years since, except during 1939-1949, a gap necessitated by World War II. Over 100 nations now vie to gain entry to the finals, and regional qualifying games have to be played--they take nearly two years--to narrow the field down to 24 finalists. The growth of the tournament continues. For the 1998 edition, to be held in France, the number of finalists will be increased to 32. This is a true world championship, and soccer fans have always looked scornfully on the description of the U.S. domestic baseball championship as the 'World' Series. The scorn is justifiable, but it is not the whole story of soccer's attitude to the United States. This is really a love-hate affair. The apparent lack of interest in soccer by Americans has long puzzled fans of the sport, and it is even felt to be a challenge to soccer's claim to be the world's number one game. If only Americans could see the sport at its best, if they could experience firsthand the color and the passion of a packed soccer stadium, feel the drama of real, do-or-die games, ... that, surely, would turn the nation on to soccer. So was born the idea of staging the World Cup in the United States. The United States Soccer Federation (USSF), under then-President Werner Fricker, applied for the 1986 tournament. It was turned down. Fricker and company persisted, and in 1988, FIFA said OK, the 1994 tournament is yours. The World Cup, in addition to being the world's greatest sporting spectacle, was by then big business. Major international corporations were spending millions of dollars to sponsor the event. They, too, were very interested in opening up the U.S. market. Things got off to a rocky start. FIFA found it could not get along with Fricker. When Fricker came up for reelection as USSF president in 1990, FIFA blatantly intervened, backing a surprise candidate--Alan Rothenberg, a Los Angeles lawyer who had been involved in staging the highly successful 1984 Olympic soccer tournament. Rothenberg swept to victory and soon became the man in charge of running the World Cup. 'We shall put on the best World Cup ever' was his boast. There were many doubters, both overseas and within the United States. Some U.S. sportswriters derided the idea of holding the World Cup in the United States as akin to staging the World Series in India--how could there be any local interest? Foreign critics felt that money was the sole reason for FIFA's decision and that the sport was about to be cheapened to make it acceptable to Americans. The rumors flew: FIFA was going to enlarge the goals, it would allow timeouts (unheard of in the sport) to accommodate U.S. television, the game would be played in quarters instead of the traditional halves. And if those changes weren't made, well, the Yanks would cheapen the sport in another way, by smothering the World Cup with brash, tacky showbiz hype. American razzamatazz was seen as a major threat to the event. And who ever heard of soccer played under a roof, as the Americans proposed to do in the Silverdome in Pontiac, MI? Then there was the summer heat and humidity that would surely make it impossible to play. Jack Charlton, the coach of Ireland, later expressed the fear that 'players would die out there.' On top of all that, there was the hooligan problem--the dreaded English fans, who were notorious for their loutish behavior wherever they traveled. How could U.S. security be expected to cope with a problem that no European police force had yet solved? Success Story In the end the doomsayers were confounded at every turn. None of the predicted disasters came to pass, and Rothenberg's promised 'best ever' World Cup came close to reality. Luck helped--England, against all expectations, failed to qualify, and the hooligans stayed home. Those who predicted a lack of interest were quickly proved wrong. The World Cup Organizing Committee received applications from no fewer than 27 cities that wanted to stage games. Nine sites were selected. The inclusion of the Silverdome posed a challenge for U.S. technology, as a grass field had to be grown indoors to meet FIFA's 'no artificial turf' rule. The assignment was fulfilled by a $2 million turf grass installation that delivered as promised. Overwhelming proof that World Cup '94 would succeed came when the first ticket sales were announced in early 1993. At this stage, the qualifying games were still going on; 22 of the final 24 teams were as yet unknown, yet the first ticket allocations were already heavily oversubscribed. The two assured finalists were Germany (as holder of the trophy won in 1990) and the United States (as the host country). Germany was already installed as one of the tournament favorites, but a huge question mark hung over the U.S. team. No host nation in the history of the World Cup had ever failed to advance to the second round of the tournament. The task of making sure that the United States got at least that far was given to Bora Milutinovic, a Serbian coach who had led Mexico to a quarterfinal berth in the 1986 tournament and Costa Rica to the second round in Italy in 1990. His task was complicated by a unique circumstance: the lack of a professional league in the United States. This meant that he had to juggle two separate groups of players. The best American players had gone overseas, mostly to Europe, to seek playing experience and were rarely available. The other players--mostly younger, many of them not long out of college--had little top-level experience. The USSF set up a permanent base for 20 of these players in Mission Viejo, CA. Here, Milutinovic worked to find the players who would complement the stars when they returned from Europe. By December 1993 the suspense was over; the 24 finalists for the World Cup were now known, and at a draw ceremony in Las Vegas they were divided into six groups of four teams each. The structure of the tournament called for each team to play the other three in its group. The top two teams from each group, plus the four best third-place teams, advanced to the second round of the tournament, which then became a single-game elimination event. Tied games would be settled by 30 minutes of overtime; if that did not produce a winner, a penalty kick shoot-out would be used. In this, players from each team would take five alternate shots at the goal from the 12-yard penalty spot, with only the opposing goalkeeper to beat. If the score of the game remained tied after these ten shots, the shoot-out would then continue on a sudden-death basis. Some predicted that the draw would be manipulated to ensure an easy group for the United States, for fear that the U.S. public and media would lose interest if the United States made an early exit. Far from getting an easy group, the United States ended up with Romania, Switzerland, and Colombia, certainly one of the tougher foursomes. 'If it were fixed,' said Rothenberg, 'I don't think Colombia would be in our group.' The Games Begin No less an expert than Pelé, the retired Brazilian star usually considered history's greatest soccer player (now a television commentator), had picked Colombia as a team that could win it all, and it had shown its strength with an incredible 5-0 thrashing of Argentina in Buenos Aires during the qualifying round. Led by midfielder Carlos Valderrama with his unruly shock of blond hair, Colombia featured an exciting style of close ball control and rapid, bewildering short passes. But Colombia began poorly, as Romania simply concentrated on defense, then broke away three times to score in sudden counterattacks. The Colombians dominated the game, but they could score only once and lost, 3-1. Colombia's second game was against the United States, which had opened with a 1-1 tie against Switzerland. Once again, Colombia dominated--and again it lost, this time in a 2-1 upset, as the Americans won their first game in World Cup competition since 1950. The loss meant that Colombia was out of the tournament--even a 2-0 win over Switzerland in its final game could not alter that. But the game against the United States was overshadowed by tragedy. Before the game, Colombian coach Francisco Maturana and his staff were threatened with death if player Gabriel Gómez took the field. Gómez was left on the bench. The first U.S. goal was scored by the Colombian defender Andres Escobar, when he inadvertently put the ball into his own net--a mistake that was to have an appalling consequence. Soon after arriving back in Colombia, Escobar was killed outside a Medellín restaurant in the early morning hours of July 2, apparently in reprisal for the team's poor showing against the United States. But if the loss to the United States was a tragedy for Colombia, it was a triumph for the United States, ensuring second-round qualification. Coach Milutinovic had adopted cautious tactics in the game, relying on a packed defense of Marcelo Balboa, Alexi Lalas, Paul Caligiuri, and either Cle Kooiman or Fernando Clavijo, plus midfielders Tom Dooley, John Harkes, and Mike Sorber playing primarily defensive roles. This emphasis on defense severely limited playmaker Tab Ramos's effectiveness, but he did provide forward Ernie Stewart with a brilliant assist on the winning goal against Colombia. So Colombia, along with Greece, Bolivia, Morocco, Norway, Russia, Cameroon, and South Korea, was eliminated in the first round. Some of the smaller teams (notably Bolivia, Morocco, and South Korea) had played enterprising soccer--especially the Koreans, who, after going 3-0 down to the Germans, had fought back brilliantly to 3-2 and were threatening to tie the game when time ran out. Cameroon proved a faint shadow of the team that had so delighted four years earlier in Italy. Norway's crude longball style endeared it to no one, and its early exit was mourned by few. Soccer politics virtually ensured Russia's failure--the team was lacking a number of top players, who had refused to play for coach Pavel Sadyrin. But the previously unheralded Oleg Salenko salvaged some Russian pride with a World Cup single-game goal-scoring record when he hit five goals in a 6-1 win over Cameroon. The 24-year-old forward, a player with Valencia in Spain, had been a late addition to the Russian squad, joining it in October 1993 just in time for its final World Cup qualifying game. In their previous two games in the 1994 World Cup, the Russians had scored only one goal. That was also by Salenko, and it was his first goal in international competition. Even that feat did not make Salenko the talk of the first round. That distinction went to Argentina's captain, Diego Maradona--for all the wrong reasons. His career in its later years had been soured by the scandal of a 15-month suspension for cocaine use, but the 33-year-old Maradona had been recalled by Argentina after the disastrous 5-0 defeat by Colombia in September 1993. All seemed to be going well for Maradona. He had shed much of his surplus weight, and in Argentina's firstround victories against Greece and Nigeria he had looked to be approaching his best form. Then one day before Argentina's final first-round game against Bulgaria came the news of a positive drug test. Neither the name of the player nor his team was released, but suspicion quickly focused on Maradona. Julio Grondona, president of the Argentine soccer federation, confirmed that the player was indeed Maradona. Traces of a banned substance, ephedrine, and four related drugs had been found in his urine sample given after the game against Nigeria. Some observers believed that the drugs had been used to help Maradona lose weight. Evidently fearing that FIFA might deduct points from the team, Grondona announced that Maradona was being voluntarily withdrawn from the tournament. Later, FIFA imposed a 15-month worldwide ban on Maradona. This may well mark the end of the career of one of the game's greatest players, the man who had played so brilliantly eight years earlier when leading Argentina to the world title in the 1986 World Cup. The Second Round Even without Maradona, Argentina was still considered a potential World Cup winner. It moved into the second round, there to face Romania. As they had done against Colombia, the Romanians defended staunchly and counterattacked with deadly efficiency. Argentina produced some of the best soccer of the tournament and was desperately unlucky to lose, 3-2, in an exhilarating game. The tournament had lost its most lively team, one of the few that was unreservedly devoted to attacking soccer. Another such team was Brazil, by now being viewed as the most likely winner. Never before noted for defensive solidity, Brazil had surprised everyone by giving up only one goal in the first round. Up front was the more traditional Brazilian strength: Romário and Bebeto, two of the most skillful and dangerous forwards of the tournament. It was the bad luck of the United States to face Brazil in the round of 16--on July 4. Before a capacity crowd of 84,147 in Stanford Stadium near San Francisco at Palo Alto, CA, and a nationwide television audience, the Americans went down, 1-0, as Romário worked his magic by feeding Bebeto perfectly for the game's only goal. The contest, however, was not as close as the final score suggests. Milutinovic's aim was to defend and defend again, hoping to frustrate the Brazilians and take the game into the lottery of the penalty-kick tiebreaker, which the United States had as much chance of winning as Brazil. Brazilian domination was almost total. Even in the second half, playing with only ten men after defender Leonardo had been ejected for elbowing Tab Ramos of the United States in the face, the Brazilians were in total command. Although the United States had achieved its goal of getting into the second round, Milutinovic's cautious, almost defeatist tactics against Brazil meant that his squad did not exactly go out in a blaze of glory. He had sounded a warning for FIFA about the iniquities of the tiebreaker: it invited teams to stall, thus producing dull games. The same message came from Bulgaria. Its game against Mexico went into overtime, tied at 1-1. 'At that point, we played for penalty kicks,' coach Dimitar Penev later admitted. Or was he claiming credit? After 30 minutes of dull overtime soccer, Bulgaria took the penalty kick shoot-out, 3-1. The most surprising of the second-round teams was Saudi Arabia. The Saudis had learned their soccer from Brazilian coaches, and they demonstrated what good pupils they were. Their 1-0 win over Belgium featured highly entertaining soccer and a magnificent goal from Saeed al-Owairan. He dribbled half the length of the field and had the Belgian defenders falling over themselves before he beat goalie Michel Preud'homme and put the ball into the net. 'It was the best goal I ever scored in my life,' he said later, 'I scored it for every Saudi person in the world, for every Arab.' The disheartened Belgian coach, Paul Van Himst, commented, 'To be able to run through half the field and come to the goalkeeper like that--it's not normal.' But against the efficient Swedes, Saudi Arabia could not recover from giving up a goal after only five minutes and went down, 3-1. Meanwhile, Germany and Italy, both three-time winners of the title and among the pretournament favorites, were advancing, but without convincing performances. Germany had been lucky to beat Bolivia, 1-0, in the tournament's opening game and had then survived that scare from South Korea. Against Belgium in the second round, the Germans squeaked through by a 3-2 score--but only after Swiss referee Kurt Roethlisberger had inexplicably failed to call a blatant penalty kick against Germany when German defender Thomas Helmer bumped Belgian striker Josip Weber, who was heading toward the goal. Italy, as always, seemed determined to make its own life difficult. After playing poorly in its opening game and losing, 1-0, to Ireland, it had to face Norway. Disaster struck after only 21 minutes when goalkeeper Gianluca Pagliuca was ejected after a foul on Norwegian forward Oyvind Leonhardsen--the first goalkeeper ever ejected in the World Cup tournament. Playing with only ten men and with its reserve goalkeeper in the nets, Italy suffered another major setback when captain Franco Baresi had to leave the field with an injury. The chapter of woes had a happy ending: Dino Baggio headed a splendid goal to give the Italians a 1-0 victory. Italy's opponent in the second round was Nigeria. Strong, fast, and very skillful, the Nigerians exemplified the growing strength of African soccer, and they came within two minutes of knocking Italy out of the competition. That was how much time was left when Roberto Baggio (FIFA's 1993 World Player of the Year, and no relation to teammate Dino Baggio) scored to equalize Emmanuel Amunike's 27th-minute goal for Nigeria. Baggio scored a second goal (from a penalty kick) in overtime, and Italy had survived yet again. Completing the eight quarterfinalists were the Netherlands (a 2-0 victor over Ireland), and Spain (3-0 over Switzerland). Quarterfinals and Semifinals Sweden vs. Romania was, predictably, one of the tournament's worst games, featuring, as it did, two teams content to lie back and let the other set the pace. Boredom reigned until Tomas Brolin scored for Sweden after 78 minutes. Florin Raducioiu replied for Romania ten minutes later, and the game went first to overtime and then to penalty kicks. Sweden triumphed because its goalkeeper, Thomas Ravelli, made saves on two of Romania's attempts. With his receding hairline and protruding eyes, the 34-year-old Ravelli, Sweden's oldest player, turned out to be one of the more colorful participants in the tournament. He proved his mettle against Romania. He was also known as a bit of a joker. In the game to determine the World Cup third-place winner, the irrepressible Ravelli enlivened the Swedes' convincing 4-0 victory over Bulgaria with a second-half display of somersaults and dances. 'I heard the Swedish crowd yelling that I should dance,' he said, 'so I danced a little bit.' In the quarterfinal match between Brazil and the Netherlands, Brazil's opponent once again opted for defensive caution. But the 0-0 half-time score was cracked when Romário volleyed home a Bebeto pass seven minutes into what turned out to be a dazzling second half. Bebeto himself scored ten minutes later, and Brazil appeared to be well in command. But at last the Dutch woke up and began to play. Dennis Bergkamp made it 2-1, and Aron Winter tied it up with a superb header. Eighty-one minutes into the seesaw battle, fullback Branco's spectacular 30-yard left-footed free kick won the game for Brazil. This time the Brazilians kept it and won the contest, 3-2. More late heroics from Roberto Baggio saw Italy past Spain--his winning goal came, once again, with only two minutes left in the game as the Italians won, 2-1. The shock of the tournament came at New Jersey's Giants Stadium, where Germany's faltering progress finally staggered to a halt. Unfancied Bulgaria came back from a goal down to beat the Germans with two goals in the space of three minutes. The first was a left-footed free kick that Hristo Stoichkov spun over the six-man German defensive wall; the second was a flying header from the balding Yordan Lechkov. 'Today, God is a Bulgarian,' said Stoichkov after the game. But the achievement seemed to satisfy the Bulgarians. Against Italy in the semifinal, they played with much less verve. The Italians won, 2-1, on two fine goals from Roberto Baggio. Stoichkov complained that the referee had twice turned down Bulgarian appeals for penalty kicks. 'Today, God is still Bulgarian,' he said, 'but the referee was French.' Somehow, the Italian coach, Arrigo Sacchi, by fielding a different lineup in every game, had coped with the injuries and the suspensions to his players. Italy was through to its fifth World Cup final. Its opponent was Brazil, a 1-0 winner over Sweden in the other semifinal. For the Brazilians, it was a familiar story as they tried to find a way past a tenaciously defensive Sweden. It took them 80 minutes, when the 5'6' Romário scored an improbable header over the much taller Swedish defenders. The Championship Match Brazil vs. Italy promised a great final. There were so many great players, and had not these two countries produced a classic final back in 1970? On that occasion Brazil--with Pelé leading what many still regard as the greatest of all World Cup champion teams--came out on top with an emphatic 4-1 win. Although the attacking freedom that had characterized Brazil's play of 1970 had become a thing of the past, the Brazilians of 1994 were a more solid, much less adventurous team. Its midfield told the story--made up of workers and runners rather than the creative artists of the past. Nevertheless, if for nothing else the final was notable for matching the two most prominent players of the World Cup--Brazil's Romário and Italy's Roberto Baggio. Romário was one of the most flamboyant players on the scene. When he was married he held his wedding on the penalty spot in a huge stadium before a live TV audience. He had acquired a reputation as one of the world's most skilled and instinctive players; a renowned striker, his coach called him king of the penalty area (the area just in front of the goal), where he dominated, waiting for the slightest opportunity and then using his quickness and skill to score. Baggio, who had scored an impressive 19 goals in 33 games for Italy in the qualifying rounds, was hailed as an offensive genius, able to score from seemingly impossible angles. Reporters, ever on the alert for the unusual, made much of his ponytail (the Italians called him Il Divino Codino, or 'the divine pigtail') and the fact that he had converted from Catholicism to Buddhism, an act of considerable consequence in a country that is 95 percent Catholic. Baggio had begun the tournament slowly and had even been benched during the game against Norway, but his late goals against Nigeria and Spain reminded everyone of just how dangerous he could be. He scored two more in the semifinal against Bulgaria, but also suffered a pulled muscle. Despite the injury, Baggio played in the final but was clearly not at his best. In the end, however, it was not the players who dictated the course of the final, but the two coaches, Carlos Alberto Parreira for Brazil and Sacchi for Italy--two men who had never played the game at the top level but who were strong on the theory of coaching and tactics. It was more of a chess game than a soccer game. Brazil, at least, tried to attack. But its lack of guile in midfield was exposed by the Italian defenders, who countered every move. Italy did very little attacking of its own. There was no score at 90 minutes, and no score after the 30 minutes of overtime. The first-ever scoreless World Cup final thus became the first final to be decided by the penalty kick tiebreaker. Italy's two biggest stars--captain Franco Baresi and Roberto Baggio--missed their kicks; Brazil took the shoot-out, 3-2, and became the first country in history to win the World Cup four times. Controversy and Profit Brazil, the tournament's only unbeaten team, was unquestionably a worthy winner, but the use of the shoot-out to decide a world championship provoked violent criticism. It was an immensely unsatisfactory way to finish what had been an exciting tournament, one that had been a great improvement on the 1990 World Cup in Italy, which had been plagued with poor games. FIFA had since introduced a number of rule changes to encourage attacking play. The changes, plus a refereeing clampdown on foul play, helped to increase goal scoring from the all-time low average of 2.2 per game in 1990 to 2.7. For Alan Rothenberg and his U.S. organizers the news was almost all good. Media coverage was extensive and intelligent. Television ratings were above what had been expected, with the final reaching over 10 million U.S. households, the highest rating ever for a soccer game. The total stadium attendance of 3,567,415 for the 52 games was over 1 million more than the previous World Cup record. The fans behaved impeccably throughout. That was a big plus for soccer in the United States, where its image had been marred by its reputedly savage supporters. The World Cup had been one huge party--and a very profitable one. A surplus of $40 million was paid into a foundation that would oversee its use for the promotion of the sport in the United States. A separate initiative was the formation of a professional major league. FIFA had insisted that this was a principal reason for holding the tournament in the United States. It was to be the proof that the United States had finally joined the world community of soccer-playing nations. In June 1994 it was announced that the new league, to be called Major League Soccer (MLS), would begin play in April 1995. But the organizers, headed by Rothenberg, ran into insuperable problems raising the $100 million capital they needed. In November 1994 came the announcement that the launching of the MLS would be delayed one year. Play would not begin until April 1996. About the author: Paul Gardner is a freelance writer specializing in soccer and the author of The Simplest Game and Nice Guys Finish Last: A Study of Sport in American Life. He has served as a soccer commentator for all three major U.S. television networks. His column, "Soccer Talk," appears each week in Soccer America. Source: 1995 Collier's Year Book. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.