U.S. Soccer Team Improved Since Disaster in World Cup
A year ago the United States was about to embark on a World Cup adventure in Italy that ended in disaster. A team of young, inexperienced players, not fully prepared for what it would face, walked onto the field in Florence and was beaten 5-1 by Czechoslovakia. Two games later, the United States left Italy as one of only four sides that didn’t get a point in the 1990 championship.
A year to the day later, Sunday in Yale Bowl at New Haven, Conn., a much better United States team will play Juventus of Italy. The Americans have a new coach, Bora Milutinovic, several new players and, most important, a new spirit born in that Italian caldron.
“We had a good coach and a good team,” midfielder-sweeper Marcelo Balboa says, “but we were only 21 or 22 years old. We were nervous and inexperienced in Italy. Now we are starting to have confidence in ourselves and the new coach is starting to give us a new style. I know we all are listening. We want to be there in 1994.”
Milutinovic, who lifted Mexico and Costa Rica to World Cup glory in the past eight years, is still getting to know his cast of characters, but he is clearly stamping his own mark on the Americans.
Midfielder Hugo Perez, shunted aside by Bob Gansler in the one truly incomprehensible squad decision leading up to 1990, is given freedom to roam and create. Indoor league players Brian Quinn, Bruce Savage, Fernando Clavijo and Janusz Michallik are being given a shot at the national team. No indoor players were part of the 1990 side.
“We are beginning to establish a comfort level,” says John Kowalski, Milutinovic’s assistant, who learned his soccer in Connecticut. “The team chemistry is just starting to develop, but the fact that the players can learn from Bora is already established. They know that he will do the job for them if they do it for him.”
Kowalski, whose coaching experience includes stints at the University of New Haven and in the MISL, has a particularly important role as the U.S. side is reshaped. He took over as acting coach in February when Gansler resigned and now helps Milutinovic identify players worthy of a shot at national team places.
“I know the professional players and the college players,” Kowalski says. “We want to look at as many of them as we can between now and 1993. Winning matches is important, but not as important as the search for the talent that will make the 1994 squad.”
Kowalski says ex-UConn standout Dan Donigan is one of those players who may get another look. So are overseas pros John Harkes, Tab Ramos and Ernie Stewart and veterans Frank Klopas and Kevin Crow.
Then there is the pool of Olympic talent, including Curt Onalfo and standouts Dante Washington, Troy Dayak, Dario Brose and Henry Gutierrez, all preparing for their own qualifying matches.
