It was supposed to be the evening the United States squared the
circle.
They were back in Trinidad and Tobago, on the brink, their
challenge to show that the nation with all the best resources has a team to
match. America, remember, hope to co-host the next - as yet unassigned - World
Cup in 2026. Part of their argument will be that as party givers they will not
get trampled by the guests.
Back in 1989, the US went to Trinidad for their last qualifier
for the 1990 World Cup. History beckoned. They shattered Caribbean hearts with
a single goal and went on to the finals in Italy, breaking an absence from
World Cups that had lasted 50 years.
A bandwagon began to roll, in advance of the US's hosting of the
tournament in 1994, and launching Major League Soccer (MLS), its professional
league.
The situation on Tuesday meant those involved with the US Men’s
National Team - or USMNT - took a glance back over two decades of building the
game in the self-styled "most powerful nation on earth", and pointed
out the differences.
Back in 1989, the part-timers representing the US needed a win in
Trinidad. This time, the professionals of USMNT - qualifiers at the last seven
World Cups - needed just a draw against a Trinidad with nothing to play for but
pride.
Even defeat, had other results in Central America gone their
way, would have sufficed. USMNT promptly
lost 2 -1 a fourth defeat in 10 matches in the second phase of
Concacaf qualifying.
Oct 10, 2017 at 7:04pm
PDT
On a topsy-turvy night elsewhere, Panama and Honduras - in the
mix to leapfrog the Americans - both came back from deficits to win. Panama
reached their first-ever finals, while Honduras qualified for a play-off
against Australia.
“A perfect storm,” the US captain Michael Bradley called it.
“Everything that could have gone wrong did.”
USMNT went behind to an own goal and were two down at half time.
Christian Pulisic, the 19-year-old Borussia Dortmund player, then pulled one
back. Television replays suggesting Panama’s first goal in their 2-1 win over
Costa Rica did not cross the goal-line are a nasty jolt of lightning in that
perfect storm.
Panama, beaten 4-0 last week by the US, have staged quite a
putsch. Their country has a population of four million. The US pick their best
11 from a population of 325m, some of whom can reflect on even more awkward
demographic stats.
Like Panama, Iceland will go to their first World Cup. There are
1,000 Americans in the world for every Icelandic citizen.
US broadcasters now expect fewer of those millions of Americans
to watch the World Cup than they anticipated when the Fox network upped their
bid for the US rights to the 2018 and 2022 tournaments to US$400m (Dh1.47
billion), against fierce auctioning from ESPN.
Without the patriotic burst of enthusiasm networks noted at
Brazil 2014 - when under Jurgen Klinsmann USMNT reached the knockout stage - or
even in 2002 - when the US reached the World Cup’s last eight - audiences will
certainly dip below projections.
Fifa’s accountants will be unhappy at this star-spangled
setback. Conquering the US market, where so many key sponsors are
headquartered, has been a guiding ambition in their Zurich offices for close to
50 years.
Beyond patching up relationships with broadcast partners, the US
Soccer Federation confronts a crisis. In the 28 years since that historic
qualification match against Trinidad, football has become the strapping
adolescent of US sports.
However, momentum has been key, and World Cups are the most effective
nurturing agent for a sport wrestling to find its space in a landscape where
baseball, basketball, American football and ice hockey have firmer traditions
in the professional sphere.
“It’s true football has never been in the forefront of sports in
the States, but from the time I can remember, which starts around the 1994
World Cup, you can’t compare with how things were before then,” Bradley, who
won his 140th cap in Trinidad, told this writer. “It has grown so much.”
Chiefly, that is thanks to the MLS, 21 years old, and swelled
from a 10-club league to a 22-team top flight.
Yet, as Klinsmann used to stress, MLS still provides an inferior
finishing school for potential internationals to the leading leagues of Europe.
Klinsmann, the former Germany player and manager, wanted worldlier players and
observed - as many others have - that elite US footballers have not been
emerging from the country’s full diversity of backgrounds.
Klinsmann lost his job as the 2018 qualifying campaign faltered.
Home losses to Mexico and Costa Rica hurt USMNT. Bruce Arena came in for a
second stint as manager and had the good luck to see Pulisic, already looking
like the nearest thing the US game has produced this century to a potential
world-class star, maturing rapidly.
Jurgen Klinsmann was
dismissed after a floundering 2018 World Cup campaign. Kevin C Cox / Getty
Images
In Trinidad, Pulisic scored his seventh goal in 12 starts in
this qualifying campaign. He may yet become the longed-for hero his vast nation
can wrap a stars-and-stripes flag around. He is of age to light up the 2026
World Cup. But he is not enough on his own.
He will be watching Iceland and Panama from a long away next
June. And many of his compatriots will now choose not to watch the tournament
at all.
This
post first appeared on thenational.ae
