USA World Cup

 

USA 94 was a weird World Cup. In the end, it was the first “expansion” World Cup to be held in a place where football had yet to take root. People might question the wisdom of holding the World Cup outside one of the traditional heartlands of the World Cup. But since then, there have been “expansion” World Cups to Japan, South Korea, South Africa, Russia, Qatar and the USA again. There will be World Cups held in Morocco – which may well be a world power for football eventually – and Saudi Arabia in the coming years.

1994 captures the USA in an interesting position. The Cold War had just ended. America seemed to be going downhill, and plenty of pop culture around that time captures the mood of despair of the Reagan years amongst the underprivileged people of the USA. But even though the decision to award the World Cup to the USA took place in the 1980s, during the Cold War, the USA was at the peak of its power, even though we didn't know it at that time. There was a lot of goodwill towards the USA, and when their team surpassed expectations to qualify from their group, they unexpectedly became very popular.

Throughout the years, the identity of the USA team was that of the plucky underdogs who triumphed against adversity. And this identity was forged in the USA 1994 team, the one that nobody gave a chance to at first. There were notable instances of on-field violence: an American player getting elbowed and getting a Brazillian sent off. And Andres Escobar's own goal leading to his team getting eliminated early, sent back home, and he got murdered back in Colombia. But people sat up and took note that the Americans had that one quality that had always been their saving grace: grit.

Colombia's elimination was a sad story, because it was the end of a golden generation, who, like Belgium in 2018, could see a small country do a plucky underdog story. Instead, the underdogs were the USA. Colombia could have hosted the World Cup in 1986, but they couldn't ensure that the country was safe enough and so Mexico had to step in. It's possible that Colombia's failure to host the World Cup cast a big shadow on the prospects that South America would ever host the World Cup again. After that, South America only hosted the World Cup once more, in Brazil's ill fated 2014 World Cup. In contrast, before 1986, South America hosted the World Cup in 1930, 1950, 1962 and 1978, roughly once every 15 years. The national team had Carlos Valderrama, Freddie Rincon and Faustino Asprilla. It should have done better, and they managed to reach the quarter finals in 2014, probably this is what that golden generation should have done. There was another group that was identified as the group of death. In truth, their group, with USA as the hosts, Romania as an underdog and Colombia as a great dark horse should have been considered as the true group of death.

Maradona had been the big story of the last 2 World Cups. In 1986, he was the king, who almost single-handedly won the World Cup. He managed to win games against defenders who spent the entire game kicking lumps out of him. Given how brutally he was treated, it wasn't entirely surprising that he had a relatively short career, and his body broke down, where the pressures and drug addictions basically ensured that his post-Napoli career would be nothing more than an appendix. But it was surprising how well he played in the first 2 games of USA 1994, before he got caught for doping.

USA 1994 was also unusual because 2 of the teams which reached the semi-finals were dark horses: Bulgaria and Sweden. Romania was also another big underdog. We thought that Colombia was going to be one of the dark horses but we were wrong. It was also unusual because neither England nor France was there. However, this would be the beginning of a great era for France, leaving aside the 2010 France shit show.

USA 1994 was a success, but admittedly expectations were very low. The football was more free flowing, and it was the beginning of a new era in football, where attackers were better protected, the game was more free flowing and athletic, and the attackers were cleverer. There was a run of decent-to-great tournaments in WC USA 94, Euros England 1996, WC France 1998 and Euros Benelux 2000. They had good star players, and good attacking teams. Attendances were very high. It resembled the Simpsons, where there was a lot of chaos and dysfunction, but ultimately things were optimistic.

The 1994 World Cup felt like a new beginning in many ways. It was the first truly post Cold War World Cup. 1990 had been won by a Germany that had yet to re-unite, contested by a Yugoslavia that had yet to Balkanise, and a USSR that had yet to fall apart. The World Cup would lose the magic that it had in the 1960s and 1970s, it would get replaced by a sleeker, more commercial but less innocent product. The football was good, but the surprises were eliminated. We would not see stars from other parts of the world that got unearthed at the tournament: scouting networks became so good that people no longer got surprised by the emergence of new talents.

It's striking how many of the stars of USA 94 were from the Barcelona dream team. Romario, Hagi, Stoichkhov. In spite of the underdogs, the final had the usual suspects: the greatest football nation, Brazil, faced the country with the greatest football league, Italy. Funnily enough, Italy barely deserved to win the 1982 World Cup, was eliminated by Argentina in a shock result in 1990, as hosts, and failed to win the 1994 World Cup because of penalties. Was eliminated in the final in Euros 2000. They were eliminated by South Korea, in a referee scandal in World Cup 2002. I didn't think they deserved to win in 2006, but in a way, it was some compensation for all the bad luck that they had over the years. Brazil had one of their great eras. The finals in 1994 was a replay of that famous 1982 football match where Italy upset Brazil. It was a match that proved that the system was much more powerful than great individual players.

USA gave birth to a football culture, where it was centered around the more liberal and immigrant half of the USA. The Barack Obama USA. It was very international, and immigrant communities were as much likely to support their own foreign countries as the Americans. It gave rise to the famous saying, “poor Americans, always playing away”. Football resembled what it was in Singapore: people watching at odd hours, and supporting European teams. IT was not really a recipe for success. But there was always potential for growth. On the fandom side, the USA had a great future.

When it came down to the on-field side of the equation, things are a little grimmer. Football became this country club sport, where people charged large amounts of money for kids to participate in it. It never got taken seriously.

The truth is that USA 94 wasn't just supposed to be the dawn of football in the USA, that period of time was a period of reform, following the Heysel and Hillsborough stadium disasters. There were rules that were introduced that were positive, like the back pass rule and 3 points for a win instead of 2. This made the game more attacking and positive. But it also made the game more elitist, and turned football into a winners take all sport.

The powers of countries in the sport are very lop sided. There are only 8 countries which have won the World Cup. Of these countries, Uruguay probably were a little lucky to win 2 World Cups, even though they were the “it” team of the 1930s. 1950 was Uruguay upsetting Brazil to win, and 1954 was West Germany upsetting the Hungarians to win. Those were the last few times the dark horse won the World Cup. Uruguay went back to being a small backwater country, but Germany grew to become a major power in football. Otherwise, the great powers were the usual suspects: France, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, France and England. Italy is in danger of dropping out of the ranks of the greats.

It is very hard for other countries to break into this club. It is also very hard for countries to create a great league. Although it is true that sport washing has taken place. During the 1990s, PSG, Manchester City and Chelsea were relatively average clubs. All 3 of them have been bought over by rich oil sheiks and achieved great success on the football field. The English Premier League was very young when 1994 happened, but they were poised to succeed in the long run, because of their ability to reach out to people all around the world. Paris and London became great magnets for footballing talent all over the world. Pele, on the eve of USA 1994, made 2 infamously bad predictions. He predicted that Colombia would win the World Cup, when in fact they were knocked out in the first round.

European leagues had always dominated world football, but from around 1992 onwards, because of commercial deals and TV money, the disparity became even more pronounced. The English Premier League managed to extract the most money from the game. Serie A at that point had a lot of great teams, and was a genuinely competitive league which attracted the great players from all over the world, but that was because the football clubs were bankrolled by plutocrats. There was the traditional big 3, like AC Milan, Inter Milan and Juventus. But there were also other great clubs like Napoli, Lazio, AS Roma, Parma, Sampdoria, Fiorentina. Teams like Brescia even occasionally had the big stars. After the 5 year ban following the Heysel stadium disaster, English teams never really dominated the European Cup like they used to, but they are making their presence felt in Europe. However, in the 90s, they were very weak in Europe, and Man United winning the Champion's League in 1999 felt like a great big underdog story.

So the USA 94 to me represented 3 things. It represented the introduction of football into the USA. It hasn't really exploded. The USA was the big sleeping giant in football and in many ways it is still sleeping, but it is a country with a lot of football potential. In many ways, Pele was right when he predicted an African winner of the World Cup. Football is essentially a working class, developing country sport. That's why Brazil and Argentina excel at it and that's why the USA and England don't. But a lot of European countries have an immigrant underclass, which is a great raw ingredient for producing great footballers.

In the USA, you couldn't put the migrants and the underclass to work on the sport. And football couldn't divorce itself from the college sport system. It was too expensive and too exclusive. If the US could make those things work for them, there's no telling how well they could do in the future. The good news is that Christian Pulisic is playing for AC Milan. The bad news is that AC Milan is no longer a great football team.

The other thing it represents is the globalisation and its effects on the sport. The commercialisation, and possibly FIFA evolving into some kind of a kleptocracy.

I have yet to see what this World Cup tournament is going to turn out to be. It could possibly be one of the more infamous ones, like Argentina 1978. South Korea and Japan in 2002 was also a bit of a fiasco with the refereeing scandals, but at least it was fun to see a lot of big countries eliminated early. This one has ICE raids and

The USA team has just beaten Paraguay 4-1. It's a great result for them, and there is this promise that Pochettino could bring the team deep into the tournament. It would be great to see them do well. I also hope that England will do well in this tournament. Otherwise, this tournament is also related to the 2 themes of USA 1994. The development of football in the USA, and how it's become some kind of alternative pop fandom whereby teams from Europe are cool but easy to love (but no love for Major League Soccer). The USA being a rainbow nation that doesn't really have home fans and a local following of local teams.

And the other big theme this time is that there is this great big backlash against globalisation. Sadly but unsurprisingly, there has been ICE raids on some of the football teams, and a Somali referee banned from entering the USA. There has also been England's kit being stolen from their camp in Kansas City. Not much surprise there, considering that Trump can barely stop himself from fucking it all up.

We didn't really expect that the USA would be MAGA country for the 2026 World Cup, but it's a fait accompli and you just have to get on with it. There are some people from the Muslim World and they are sour that European teams have protested against the human rights records.