Northern Ireland v USA

THE BIRTH OF A ‘SOCCER’ NATION

‘Soccer’ has experienced an exponential rise in popularity in the United States ever since the country hosted the association football FIFA World Cup back in 1994.

Prior to that World Cup, American broadcaster ESPN introduced ‘soccer’ - perhaps slightly tongue-in- cheek - to its viewers as a game that “involves 22 foreigners in funny shorts kicking the ball, and each other, for 90 minutes. After this period, in the normal course of events, the Germans win, the losers riot and the English slatch off muttering about who won the war anyhow”. It’s fair to say that cynical view of the beautiful game rather summed up the dismissive attitudes both inside and outside of America about the prospect of the US staging the sport’s biggest event. Yet the tournament ended up being an unequivocal success. The performance of the host nation certainly contributed to the warmth of feeling shown by Americans then and now to USA ’94. Appearing in just their second World Cup finals since 1950, the Stars and Stripes drew 1-1 with Switzerland in front of over 70,000 in Pontiac on 18 June, 1994. A 2-1 victory over Colombia in their next Group A game, with 93,869 watching on at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, was enough to send Bora Milutinović’s side through to the knockout phase of the tournament despite a 1-0 defeat to Romania in their final group fixture. The States bowed out in the Round of 16 with their heads held high, as they went down to a 1-0 defeat (in front of 84,147 spectators) to eventual champions Brazil in Stanford on Independence Day. Despite it being a 24-team tournament (a 32-team format was introduced in 1998), USA ’94 still holds the record for the highest total attendance at a FIFA World Cup (at 3.57 million) and the highest average attendance (68,626). With an average of 2.71 goals per game, the entertaining tournament provided the perfect showcase to win over a soccer-sceptic nation. Gary Hopkins, author of the 2010 book Star Spangled Soccer, pinpointed the 1994 World Cup as the moment which “ultimately positioned it (soccer) to become a major force in the rapidly changing American sports landscape”.

From the success of the US men’s national team – they have qualified for all but one World Cup since 1994 and reached the quarter-finals in 2002 – and the all-conquering US women’s team to the growth of the country’s domestic leagues, the sport has moved from niche to mainstream in the nation’s psyche in the space of just 27 years. Indeed for those aged 12 to 20 soccer is now the second most- watched sport in the country. Major League Soccer (MLS) was founded in 1996 and has expanded from 10 teams in its inaugural season to 27 currently – and is due to expand further. In 2019 it was the ninth-best attended football league in the world (with an average of more than 20,000 per game). In 2026 the United States of America - along with Canada and Mexico - will host the expanded 48-team FIFA World Cup. Sixty of the 80 tournament matches, including all fixtures from the quarter-final stage onwards, will take place on American soil with the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey the chosen venue for the final. Unlike 27 years ago it’s now a given that the locals from the 16 US tournament host cities, such as Los Angeles, Washington DC, Dallas, Kanas City, Denver, Houston and Baltimore, ‘get’ what the World Cup and

this sport is all about. Words Andy Greeves

The word ‘soccer’ is a derivative of association, as in as-soc-iation football, with ‘er’ added. The beautiful game is called soccer in the US so that people do not confuse it with American Football.

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