COMMENTARY : Even a Berth in the World Cup Can’t Put U.S. on a Soccer Kick
If he lived in almost any other country, Paul Caligiuri wouldn’t have to buy a beer for the rest of his life. The bartender would always beat him to it.
Caligiuri is a soccer player from Diamond Bar, and Sunday he scored a goal that put his country in the World Cup for the first time in 40 years. Such a feat would make him a sporting legend in almost any country except the one where he lives.
That is the United States, and even though his left-footed shot made soccer history, most Americans still don’t know his name. Soccer may cause riots elsewhere and stir more passion than any other game in the world, but most Americans prefer not to watch unless their kids are playing.
In Trinidad, where Caligiuri scored his goal and ruined the home team’s hopes of becoming the smallest country to play in the Cup, the game was treated as an epochal event. A national holiday was declared. Fans filled the stadium hours before kickoff. Such reaction is a worldwide tradition.
There was less excitement in the States--almost none, to be specific. The game was televised on tape and cable, opposite pro football, no doubt to a small audience. The victory did not result in network bulletins, as it did in Italy, where the Cup will be played next summer. Had the game been in the United States, it probably would not have drawn 20,000 fans.
Caligiuri’s goal should help matters. Playing in the Cup will raise the soccer consciousness of the American public, and the United States is now assured of playing in the next two; the Cup will be played in the United States in 1994, and the home team automatically qualifies. There will be no problem finding sponsors, a concern that might have forced the national team to disband temporarily had it not won Sunday and qualified for Italy.
The hardy souls still trying to sell the game here will, surely, pronounce the victory as the start of something big. They do have reason to be excited. Staging a World Cup in the United States will focus tremendous attention on their game. They could attract millions of fans.
It is debatable how high the public’s soccer consciousness can go, however. The sport has been stuck at a curious station in America for some time now: Millions of kids are playing, but no one wants to pay to watch pros. This quirk has existed for so long that it is beginning to seem permanent.
Youth soccer has grown exponentially in the last 20 years, all but rubbing out football as a game for youngsters. The reasons are obvious. It’s relatively safe, it’s good exercise, and everyone gets to kick the ball. But this popularity hasn’t spawned a ticket-buying public. The one league that had some success, the North American Soccer League, folded. An indoor league remains viable on a small scale.
The traditional explanation for this failure is that there is little scoring in soccer, and Americans are an impatient lot who become bored unless bells are ringing and the score is changing every two minutes. There may be something to that, although personally I’m a little insulted.
To me, a better reason is that Americans don’t understand the game, having no background in it. Plus, there is no room on the sporting landscape here. Football, baseball, basketball, hockey--is there room in that glut for another major sport? No, particularly when Americans invest only in ones they invent. (Hockey is the only exception.)
If there is any chance for soccer to become popular, it will come when the kids weaned on it grow up and have soccer-playing kids of their own, creating families where it is the No. 1 sport. By then, the 1994 Cup will have created more fans, and there should be enough competent American players to fill a credible league. It might work.
It probably won’t, though. There just aren’t enough interested souls. Try as I might, for I find the sport and its culture fascinating, it is difficult to envision soccer as anything other than a cult in the United States. That is unfortunate, for the United States has made enormous strides in the last 20 years.
It is true the Americans probably would not have qualified for Italy had Mexico not been banned for falsifying the ages of junior players and Canada not been upset in earlier qualifying. And, even then, the United States barely made it, struggling in important games against such countries as El Salvador and Guatemala.
That sounds embarrassing, but isn’t when one considers that, only 20 years ago, the United States could not have stayed within a half-dozen goals of the worst of those teams. Populations were irrelevant. Soccer had no structure in the United States. Almost no one played. The national team had played in the World Cup in 1950 only because it had been invited. It never could have qualified.
In that larger framework, the victory in Trinidad is significant and symbolic. The United States will get beaten in Italy, but it is now a legitimate player in the international game and, with its army of youngsters kicking endlessly, will improve. Any successes will continue to be celebrated only by a small band of believers, however. Too bad.
