Americans are a fortunate lot, born to moon landings and miracles on ice on other unprecedented successes. We assume a degree of superiority in comparison to other peoples, an over-the-top arrogance based on a history of industrial and technological advances. We invented the airplane, chemotherapy, chocolate chip cookies. Baseball.
But we ain’t perfect, and the start of another World Cup tournament is a reminder to have some humility. As Will Leitch noted in a New York magazine essay, “In no other context outside international soccer are Brazil, Argentina, Belgium and Denmark global powers and the U.S. a plucky upstart.”
So, no, there is no expectation that the Yanks will bring home the Cup from the month-long event being staged out of season and out of the sport’s normal zone of influence—in the tiny oil-rich, culturally restrictive Persian Gulf nation of Qatar. Of the Cup’s 32 participating countries, the United States is ranked roughly in the middle, with—according to FiveThirtyEight website predictions—a 1 percent chance of going all the way. FiveThirtyEight gives the U.S. only a 53 percent hope of surviving the three-game opening round.
The Leitch article accurately headlines the World Cup “the only real American underdog story,” even as Leitch posits that this situation “makes the team considerably more fun to cheer for.” The lovable underdog. And, while there is plenty of evidence that the 2022 Yank team has a number of handicaps—the second-youngest roster in the tournament, a disappointing run-up to the tournament in terms of victories, perfect health and firepower—it ought not to be forgotten how far American soccer (and American soccer fandom) has come in the last 40 years.
1983. Caracas, Venezuela. Pan American Games. There was a first-round U.S. soccer match against Guatemala, a country with roughly 1/20th the population of the United States, in which the Yanks had their rather large heads handed to them. 3-0, I think it was.
The Latino fans in attendance were kind, not averse to showing appreciation for the Americans’ efforts but fully aware of the chasm of competence and how foreign the sport was to the 1980s American scene. One could imagine a thought bubble over the fans’ heads, with the words: Gringos, this is a football. It is round. Are we going too fast?
It was another seven years before a collection of U.S. college lads, lining up against hardened pros from around the globe, barely sneaked into their first World Cup in 40 years only to remind that “American soccer player” was widely regarded as an oxymoron. Like “jumbo shrimp.”
Then again, how much adventure is there in rooting for a team always assured of victory? How real is that? When the Yanks trampolined into the second round of the 2002 World Cup with shocking wins over Portugal, then fifth in the world, and longtime rival Mexico, U.S. soccer spokesman Bryan Chenault summed up the giddy reaction—and sudden interest from the opinion-shaping media—saying, “Everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. And they’re all welcome. There’s plenty of room.”
Something clearly was afoot. That year, as the Americans came within a referee’s failure to penalize a German’s illegal touch of surviving a 1-0 quarterfinal loss, talk-radio and sports-column pundits began to unreasonably fret over the possibility that soccer somehow could shoulder aside the place of football, baseball and basketball in the pantheon of U.S. sports. As if that were the point.
The truth is that a large portion of the American citizenry has come to acquire a taste for soccer, and their national team—not a world-beater but clearly competitive—has added to the appeal of the World Cup’s top-notch sporting theatre.
Old friend George Vecsey, among my sports journalism heroes, who has written a book about the eight World Cups he covered for the New York Times, has just posted thoughts on the Yanks’ present football situation, including this (to me, surprising) observation: “The accumulation of injuries and benchings and transfers lead to my conclusion that the best days of American soccer just might be—I hate to say this—in the past.”
Whoa. But we still have chocolate chip cookies.