U.S. Soccer Team Has Its Work Cut Out, Star Player Tab Ramos Says
The U.S. is considered a favorite to qualify for the World Cup soccer competition in Italy next year, but it will take a lot of work to make that prediction a reality, says former North Carolina State player Tab Ramos.
“It’s just a matter of whether we can keep our intensity up,” said Ramos, who led the team to a victory over Costa Rica last week. “Of course, you have to get a little lucky and play well.”
The U.S. will play host to the World Cup finals in five years, but Ramos is hoping the Americans will get a look at the competition before that with a U.S. team in next year’s finals.
“The last time a U.S. team was ever in it was in 1950, and we were invited to go there,” Ramos said in a telephone interview from his Hillside, N.J., home. “For the last 40 years, we haven’t been able to qualify to get to the World Cup.
“I think it would be a very important step to show to the rest of the world that we don’t have to host a World Cup in order to be in it, that we can qualify to get there, too,” he said.
With its return to World Cup competition, the Americans took an important step toward gaining recognition last Sunday with a 1-0 victory over Costa Rica 1-0 on a Ramos goal late in the second half.
The U.S. is competing with four other nations in North America and Central America to advance from regional competition into next year’s playoffs. Two teams will join 22 others in the final round. The next five months will lead the U.S. into matches with Trinidad and Tobago, Guatemala and El Salvador.
Each must travel to the other team’s home country, and the U.S. has finished its round-robin with Costa Rica, to whom it lost a 1-0 match in that country last month.
“To me, even as I was growing up, being on the national team was a goal that you don’t look forward to,” he said. “Out of all the kids that play, very few really get to the level that I am. I consider myself very lucky to be here, even though I worked very hard to get here. Every day I go out there, I have to give it 120%.”
American soccer is apparently booming on the youth levels and has gained some popularity in high school and college. Not enough, however, to help generate a national team that can compete with Europeans beyond the amateur level since there no longer is a a professional soccer league in the U.S.
Ramos remembers when professional soccer was big in the U.S., partly because his home was just 15 minutes away from the Meadowlands, where the Brazilian star, Pele, dazzled crowds for the New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League.
“I had an opportunity to witness one of the most drastic changes here. I had been to games where, if we didn’t get there early enough, there would be 60,000 people there and I would have to sit in the upper tier and you could barely see the game,” Ramos said. “Toward the end, you would get 30,000 people if you were lucky and it got worse and worse.
“The kids . . . that grew up around here . . . had heroes when we were young,” he said. “The problem is, after our generation, there’s going to be a little gap because the kids don’t have anything to look up to any more. Hopefully, we start by winning and qualifying, we start to bring that back.”
Ramos could be the candidate for renaissance man and role model. He scored in the 72nd minute of play in today’s match at St. Louis. That led to one of soccer’s patented moving celebrations as Ramos’ teammates eventually tackled him and piled on one-by-one.
“I hit it from about 20 yards out,” he said. “It was really an incredible feeling because out of all the shots I had gotten in that game, that was probably my weakest one. It was sort of lucky that it went in because I really didn’t hit it as hard as I wanted to.”
Still, the U.S. had to survive a penalty kick by Costa Rica’s Mauricio Montero. All Ramos could think about during that kick was the Summer Olympics at Seoul, when the American team was in the same situation.
“We played Argentina in the first game. We were winning that game 1-0 until there were four minutes left. Argentina had a penalty kick and they tied it,” he said. “I had a flashback. I was praying to God that this is the one a team misses against us.”
Goalie David Vanole apparently guessed that Montero’s would try for the left corner of the net. The kick went that way and Vanole stopped it.
