U.S. Soccer Takes Step in the Right Direction
If the United States becomes a major player on the world soccer scene, what happened in Saudi Arabia last month might be considered the starting point.
“It’s history,” says Ralph Perez, one of the coaches of the U.S. Under-20 team that finished fourth in the Youth World Cup tournament. “The main thing we stressed was we wanted to make history by getting out of the first round, be the first U.S. team that went to a world championship and got out of their group.”
The Americans not only did that by going 1-1-1 in the opening round. They stunned Iraq in the quarterfinals before falling to Nigeria in overtime in the semifinals.
“What we did assures that FIFA people who saw it, and people around the world who followed it, saw great representation of U.S. soccer,” Perez says. “For U.S. teams that go anywhere in the future, the ingredient of knowing it can be done has been established.”
The United States will be the host of the 1994 World Cup. The national team begins the final round of qualifying for the 1990 tournament later this month and is expected to make it. Suddenly, soccer just might have a future in this country.
“We were the surprise team of the tournament and what we did was a real astonishment to many people,” Perez says. “It was a major upset when we beat Iraq, who beat Argentina and Spain and had not conceded a goal up to that point in the tournament.
“We had to travel up Taif in the mountains from Jiddah to play them and they stayed where they were. Everything was against us and a there was a soldout stadium rooting for their Arab brothers. It was like going into the pit.
“These are things that would have intimidated our previous teams. But the boys responded brilliantly.”
Bob Gansler, the national team coach, is in South America with the U.S. squad that will go after one of two available spots in the 1990 World Cup. Before leaving for the exhibition tour through Venezuela and Paraguay, Gansler admitted that the underdog role perfectly suited his team.
“Being underrated helped us,” he said. “Nobody at the tournament mentioned the Americans to do anything. We were sort of an unknown commodity; we don’t have the track record of Brazil, Argentina or even Nigeria.”
They didn’t even have a berth in the tournament until Mexico was disqualified last year for using overage players. Perez believes the American team was the reason the Mexicans cheated.
“We came in the backdoor because of Mexico’s disqualification, but I felt we played well enough to have qualified,” he says. “We had beaten them in Mexico a month before the qualifing game, 2-0. I think that was reason they went ahead with overage players. They saw how strong we were.”
With the illegal roster, the Mexicans edged the United States to qualify for the event in Saudi Arabia. Then they were expelled and the Americans replaced them.
“We were ready,” Perez says. “We had 20 international games, and only three were in the U.S. Five were in Russia, eight in Guatemala. It was the right approach, no question. We were prepared for anything and we clicked.”
Most of the players on the Under-20 team will form the nucleus of the 1992 Olympic squad and, most likely, the World Cup team in ‘94--the United States gets an automatic bid as the host. The stars in Saudi Arabia were Steve Snow, who scored three goals, Troy Dayak (two goals), Neil Covone and goalkeeper Kasey Keller.
Keller, of Seattle, was selected the runner-up as best player of the tournament.
“Kasey was sensational,” Gansler said. “You have to have great defense and keeping to win on the international level and that’s what we got.”
Now that the young Americans have gotten a taste of winning on that level, they are anxious for more.
