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Soccer has grown in the United States, and the country seems ready to take action World Cup This summer – that didn’t sound right in 1994.
Back then, when the US last participated in the World Cup, the country did not have a professional league and the national team was made up of former students, travelers, and professionals.
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“Since ’94, we were at risk of tickets,” former US Soccer president Sunil Gulati told Al Jazeera in a recent interview. “For the United States Organizing Committee, it was a big concern if we could sell all the tickets.”
In the end, the 1994 race was won. A total of 3.5 million (68,991 per game) attended the game; The US advanced from the group stage for the first time since 1930, losing 1-0 to eventual champions Brazil in the last 16; and the seeds were planted for a professional league, Major League Soccer.
Football has moved from the coast to many states in the US.
With MLS on the rise, the national team ranked 16th in the world by FIFA, and the World Cup coming up again this summer, demand for tickets outstrips supply.
“If you say that in 1994 MLS will be a 30-team league, with (22) soccer-related stadiums and 20,000 people – not in our dreams,” said Gulati.
“The landscape is completely different. The most visible is the growth of the professional leagues, MLS and the Women’s League (NWSL). We didn’t have a first division league. Now there is (also) USL Division 2 and 3. The number of teams has increased significantly.”
Today, the US Soccer Federation, often referred to as US Soccer, has banned 127 professional teams – 102 men’s and 25 women’s.
Eighteen of the 50 (important) teams in the world are in MLS,” said Gulati. “These numbers are very unusual. The women’s team in Columbus was recently sold for $205 million.
Credit Joao Havelange for seeing the future. During his tenure as FIFA president, Havelange often got what he wanted, and he wanted the 1994 World Cup in the US, along with a professional league.
Easier said than done. Organized soccer has been played in the US since the end of the 1900s, and the American Cup was established in 1884. But over the next few decades, several major leagues collapsed, and when the North American Soccer League (NASL) ended in 1984, it seemed that there was no future for the sport. Enter Havelange and FIFA.
“FIFA realized a long time ago that, for the game to grow internationally, it had to do well in the US,” Farrukh Quraishi, a Tampa, Florida-based manager who played in the NASL, told Al Jazeera.
“For me, it was just a matter of time. This is a big and rich market. Now, you see who is buying the clubs in MLS, and who are the owners of the NFL.”
In retrospect, it’s amazing that the US ever competed in World Cups and even played in one, without a world championship.
Over the years, the foundation of football in the country was built on amateur and youth participation. By the early 1990s, the numbers were much higher, with an estimated 18 million people playing the game at some level in the US. But the pyramid lacked the top tier, leaving a dead end for the players they wanted, little television coverage, and a scattered fan base.
The 1994 World Cup came and went, and in 1996, MLS began.
Havelange duly arrived to celebrate the opening game, sitting in the packed Spartan Stadium in San Jose, California.
San Jose Clash beat DC United 1-0, when Eric Wynalda scored a goal in the 88th minute – just in time to prevent the game from going to a “shootout”, in which the players were selected by the players going one-on-one with the goalkeeper from 32 meters (35 yards) out. This new method of selecting games ended in 2000.
Soccer stadiums began to bloom in 1999. Lamar Hunt’s Columbus Crew Stadium became the first major purpose-built stadium in the country since Mark’s Stadium in Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1922. Now, Columbus is home to their second stadium, ScottsMiracle-Gro Field, with a total of 22 MLS teams.
Football eventually became part of the American sport.
“Is it the same as the NFL, with (the number of more than 18 million people) watching, or the American Pastime that baseball is? No,” said Gulati.
“It was not at this level, (but) in the world of sports. Lionel Messi is playing in Miami. This is part of the story.”
‘Football is not king in the US’
Not that the picture isn’t wrong. Wynalda, who managed to score 34 goals in 106 games for the US national team, sees the current system as a way to limit, enrolling millions of young people but reducing their ambition because few US players take top positions in MLS teams.
Most are given the league’s annual salary ($80,622) and only two US players were listed last year among the 40 highest paid, according to the MLS Players Association – Austin FC forward Brandon Vazquez (24th at $3.55m) and Nashville SC defender Walker Zimmerman (27th at $3.45m).
“Look at the growth of (MLS) and you can say that football looks like a professional, it looks like a big thing, it looks like a big deal. And many people look at the game with a different lens now because it is a legitimate game,” Wynalda, who is now a coach and commentator, told Al Jazeera.
“(But) tools don’t make talent. We need to focus on the competitive environment to develop players. We tell them that winning doesn’t matter and then wonder why they can’t win. We have lost the spirit of competition.”
They tend to initiate promotions/demotions as a response.
“If you’re going to a team that won’t be relegated, because it has enough money, you don’t learn to fight and go down, beat 11 men angry with their lives,” said Wynalda.
And even though the MLS franchise has made a fortune, with teams valued like Los Angeles FC at $1.25bn (due to having BMO Stadium with 22,000 seats) by Forbes Magazine, the play of the game is not always consistent.
MLS teams have struggled in CONCACAF competitions, even in 2022 Seattle Sounders it ended a 22-year drought for an MLS team to win the premier league, previously won by DC United in 1998 and LA Galaxy in 2000.
“There are things we agree with and things we don’t agree with, on and off the field, but (MLS) is going well,” Fox Sports commentator Alexi Lalas, a US center back in 1994, told Al Jazeera. “I don’t think you can argue with that.”
Thanks to the 1994 WC and MLS, soccer in the US became “a very different world, to finally recognize what you did, let alone be respected”, said Lalas. “You know, football has never been king in the US, but, let’s be honest, it’s part of the mouth and it’s part of the experience of this generation.”
Lalas predicts the US will use the “magic” of being the hosts to reach the quarterfinals, while Gulati hopes the game will continue to grow in the US after the World Cup.
“This is what has gone into these competitions and why we are asking for it,” said Gulati.
