In case you didn’t hear, the United States is a soccer country again.
By virtue of its 2-0 loss on Wednesday, the US Men’s National Team clinched a spot in this year’s World Cup–which kicks off in November in Qatar. It might sound odd that a team would clinch by losing–but the US would have had to be beaten by at least six goals by Costa Rica to lose the goal differential tiebreaker with the same team. (Soccer uses goal differential as the first tie-breaker because that actually encourages teams to try and score during games.) Had the US lost by six, they would have gone into an Inter-Continental Qualifier against a team from the Oceania region to get a wild card spot in the World Cup. But the US managed to not lose by a bunch, and celebrated it’s return to the sports most prestigious event.
Now, I could be mean-spirited and ask you how the US did in the last World Cup in 2018. You would probably guess that we lost all of our games, or you might recall that they did pretty well and that the goalie had a bunch of saves in one game and that he was put in a bunch of memes and GIFs saving babies falling out of buildings or blocking objects from colliding with each other. Actually, asking how the US did in the 2018 World Cup is a trick question–as the United States failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. (The record-setting 16 saves that Tim Howard had against Belgium was in 2014. And the US lost that game too.)
2018 featured another last night of qualifying loss–this time to Trinidad and Tobago–when the US needed just a tie against that “powerhouse” to make the big show. But a 2-1 defeat in a game televised on the Be In Network “sent shock waves” through the American soccer community. TV commentators went on minutes-long diatribes about how it was obvious that the US doesn’t take building a national program seriously enough. Numerous on-line articles from every sports and news outlet decried the fact that Americans are never going to care about soccer. But now, a mere 4-years later–and with a team that literally eked into World Cup–all those same outlets are about the let us know about the “resurgence of soccer in America”.
I will be 50-years old in a couple of months, and for my entire lifetime I have been told that the soccer is going to be the “next major sport in the United States”. The North American Soccer League (with it’s less-than-appealing acronym that sounded like “nasal”) was going to bring international stars to US cities and inspire generations of kids to give up baseball and football and pursue careers in professional soccer. Except it didn’t. Indoor soccer was going to turn people on to the sport because the smaller size of the field promoted more scoring and Americans love scoring. But it didn’t.
Hosting the World Cup in 1994 was really going to ignite a soccer craze in the US. Seeing the passion that almost every other country on the planet has for that event was going to convince Americans that we are really missing out on something here. It may have led to an increase in participation in youth soccer programs–and it birthed Major League Soccer (which continues to draw national TV audiences measured in 100’s of thousands)–but nine out of ten Americans still couldn’t tell you a single member of the US National Team this year.
The real stars of American soccer are members of the US Women’s National Team–that regularly win World Cups, that are featured in high-profile advertising campaigns, and (in the truest mark of societal recognition) that earn public scorn for liberal stances on social issues. But that is only because they win. If this was a program that struggled to make World Cups like the men, they would be as little-known as their male counterparts.
I wish the energy and money being sunk into making soccer “the next big thing” for the past 50-years would have gone into other sports. The Miracle on Ice in 1980 certainly boosted American interest in ice hockey–but the geographical limitations and cost to play will always make it a second-tier sport here. The US is a slumbering giant in rugby–but it’s cousin, American football, sucks up all the talent with the possibility of college scholarships and gigantic NFL contracts.
So expect to see plenty of local TV news stories about members of the American Outlaws (the USA Soccer fan club) gathering at a bar at 3:30 am to watch Team USA play in Qatar, or the owner of the soccer equipment shop in town talk about how he has seen a few more people coming in because they saw a game on TV. Brace yourself for everyone in the office to become an expert on “back line play” and “freeing up the mid-field” for a couple of weeks. And look for on-line articles about why you should skip watching the NFL games on Thanksgiving and instead tune in to Belgium versus Cameroon because “this is the sporting tradition of the future”.
Now would be a good time to mention that the US will be a co-host with Canada and Mexico for World Cup 2026. Fortunately, host countries automatically qualify. It would be rather embarrassing to miss a party in your own house.
