Hartford, CT --
Just after the United States was awarded the 1994 World Cup, I received a telephone call from Radio Scotland.
Derek Rae, well-known now for his work with ESPN, BT Sport and on FOX Soccer Plus, somehow discovered that I actually covered international soccer and wanted to know what kind of event the Americans could possibly stage.
"It will be a terrific show," I told him, "because there isn't anywhere else in the world where every team will have huge support."
Rae wanted to know something about the American team.
I had to be honest with that question, too.
"We don't really have one," I said. "It will be interesting to see what we can do between now and 1994."
That was 1988, and soccer in the United States was established on the ethnic level, growing on the school level, but barely recognizable on the national team level. Yes, the USSF managed to gather teams together for World Cup qualifying, the Pan-American Games and the Olympics -- but the United States didn't take the world's game seriously. Had there been FIFA dates in those days, the United States wouldn't have bothered. It was hard enough to find teams fit to qualify for the most important world events.
So... how did we get from 1988, when no national team matches were on television, or even noted in newspaper briefs, to 2014 when Landon Donovan's omission from Jurgen Klinsmann's Brazil squad is a front page story?
Bob Gansler and Bora Milutinovic are the men who laid the groundwork for what Klinsmann has today. It's probably not incorrect to believe that the new legion of American fans, many of whom were "born" in 1994, don't understand how remarkable it is that Klinsmann's team heads to Brazil under the pressure to achieve.
Gansler, a soccer lifer, took his team to Italia 90 with little more than passing notice in the American media. In those days if Paul Gardner and I had any company in a press tent -- and we didn't always have that much -- it was a local writer who was tasked with writing how wonderful it was to have "this event" in "this town" -- no match understanding or analysis was required.
My editor at The Hartford Courant, for whom I covered Italia 90, honestly thought the United States must have a chance to do something in that event. He knew nothing about the international game and he did not understand that our team was composed almost entirely of collegians, semi-pros and amateurs who would play against hardened professionals for the world's toughest trophy.
Gansler cobbled together a team that was naive but competitive. Yes, the opener in Florence against Czechoslovakia turned out to be more than a bridge too far, but game two against host Italy in Rome proved that American athletes, even when over-matched, never play without hope. Italy won 1-0, but the United States threw down a marker that night in the Olimpico. They might not have been in a World Cup since 1950, but having returned to the world stage they weren't about to become cannon fodder for anyone.
Game three in 1990 was bizarre: Austria beat the Americans in Florence, but the crowd spent the whole night listening to Italy versus the Czechs and responded entirely to the radio report rather than what was happening in front of them. Thus huge cheers could accompany a pass directly into touch. Oh yes, Austria won.
I will always say that Bob Gansler is the unsung American coaching hero. He built a team that had self-belief when realists said that there was no reason for confidence. He was a gentleman at every post-match press conference, supportive of his players and proud of their effort. He and captain Mike Windischmann were the veteran leaders on a team that had young, emerging players who would help to create the future.
Enter Bora.
There can be no more effervescent modern soccer personality than the Serbian who took Mexico to a 1986 World Cup quarterfinal and Costa Rica to a 1990 World Cup opening victory over Scotland. When he agreed to prepare the USA for 1994, he was universally regarded as a soccer miracle worker. Pretty much everybody knew that a miracle would be required if the Americans were not to be embarrassed as 1994 hosts.
Bora took one look at his available talent and decided that to get any results he needed to build a solid defense and hope that something would happen up front. His first key decision was to pick Tony Meola as his goalkeeper, although many thought the job belonged to Kasey Keller, already playing well overseas. Meola elected to stay home, and Milutinovic built a back four in front of him that learned to play together despite an injury that sidelined Marcelo Balboa during the months of preparation.
It is now largely forgotten that the USA was not expected to win a 1994 game and that the media interest around the event was largely based on curiosity rather than a knowledge of the game or an understanding of the magnitude of the event.
I'll be honest, I had even told Derek Rae in that 1988 telephone interview that "after the final, soccer will again fall off the radar. I don't really expect long term impact, but I do think 1994 will be a tremendous success."
I was wrong.
No, the USA didn't get beyond a knockout stage loss to Brazil. Veteran Rick Davis, the Landon Donovan of his time, who had been famously omitted from the 1990 side, didn't get a famous goal in Palo Alto and Bora didn't go on to build a USA Dream Team.
But the win over Colombia in the Rose Bowl, national ESPN coverage, the first time soccer was presented in English without commercial interruptions, and the fact that the whole world seemed to love the show combined to sell the world game to a new audience. (Amazingly, there were paychecks for writing about soccer in the United States long after the Rose Bowl final. Now that was a miracle.)
So we reach 2014 and the United States heads to Brazil with pressure to win. This is just 20 years later, 20 years after the majority of Americans did not know we had a national team, 20 years after the time when those of us who did know were fervently hoping that the USA wouldn't be humiliated on home soil.
Bora made sure America exited with its head held high.
A generation later, the 2014 World Cup will be a huge event in the United States. Fans will debate the team selection and exchange opinions on social media, a technology as unknown twenty years ago as Gansler's team.
I cannot believe that any of us who attended that opening 1990 match in Florence would have dared to think it possible.
