WORLD SPORTS SCENE / RANDY HARVEY : New Citizens Bring Soccer Luster to U.S.
As a sign of the increasing respect that the U.S. national soccer team has earned, its 1-1 tie Saturday with Italy at Chicago in the championship game of the first U.S. Cup was not considered a miracle.
That does not mean it was expected.
In five previous games against the Italians since 1934, the United States tied once, in a downpour at the Meadowlands in 1984, and lost the other four by a combined score of 27-1.
But, for the first time, the United States has a team that can stay on the field with a quality opponent without resorting entirely to defensive tactics, such as those it employed in a 1-0 loss to Italy in the 1990 World Cup at Rome.
Give credit to the U.S. Soccer Federation’s Statue of Liberty play.
You know, bring us your tired, your poor . . . your soccer players.
The USSF not only recruited a Yugoslav coach, Bora Milutinovic, but it recently added three talented, experienced European players--Roy Wegerle, Thomas Dooley and Ernie Stewart.
Wegerle, 28, the third-leading scorer in England’s first division two years ago while playing for the Queens Park Rangers, is a native of South Africa who attended the University of South Florida, married an American and became a U.S. citizen last year.
Dooley, 31, had never been to the United States until last year and speaks little English, having lived all of his life in Germany. But the defender for FC Kaiserslautern in Germany’s first division has dual citizenship because his father is an American.
The same is true for Stewart, 23, although he learned to speak fluent English while being raised in the Netherlands, where he plays in the first division for Willem II Tilburg.
With U.S. natives such as John Harkes, Tab Ramos and Paul Caligiuri gaining experience in the European leagues, and with improving young players from the Under-23s joining the national team after the Summer Olympics, the United States might prove to be more than just a congenial host during the 1994 World Cup.
Soccer’s European Championships, the most important competition outside of the World Cup for European countries, begin Wednesday in Sweden, where there has been more discussion in recent days about the potential for action off the field than on.
That, sadly, is all too common in the sport, which has been plagued for years by so-called hooligans.
In anticipation of violence by fans from the Netherlands, Germany, England and even the host country, more than one-fourth of Sweden’s law enforcement officers has been assigned to the 17-day tournament. Organizers allocated $33 million of their budget for security, but independent estimates are that the true cost might be as high as $67 million.
Italian officials believe that they discouraged rowdyism during the 1990 World Cup by persuading cities to prohibit alcohol sales in the hours before, during and after games. But the Swedes have not requested similar measures, speculating that there would be more problems if the fans were deprived of their favorite beverages.
Security forces got one break when Denmark was selected last week to replace suspended Yugoslavia in the tournament. Denmark’s fans are so gentle that they are called “roligans,” coined from the Danish word for peace.
“We can survive without gasoline and fancy imported goods,” Mila Mitic, a Belgrade pensioner, told the Associated Press. “But without soccer and basketball . . . I don’t know.”
He was responding to the United Nations’ recommended sanctions against Yugoslavia, because of its armed aggression against a former republic, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Among them is isolation of the country in sports.
So far, only soccer, tennis and cycling federations have taken action against Yugoslavia. The International Olympic Committee has called an extraordinary executive board meeting, the first in the 11-year presidency of Juan Antonio Samaranch, for next Sunday to decide whether to follow their lead.
Bosnia-Herzegovina announced Saturday it has formed an Olympic Committee, with Stjepan Kljuic as president. The committee asked the IOC for recognition and said it wants to send about 10 athletes to Barcelona.
Even before she won two gold medals in February in the Winter Olympics at Albertville, France, speed skater Bonnie Blair said that her coach, Peter Mueller, already had bought her airline ticket for Lillehammer, Norway, the site of the 1994 Games.
She informed him last week that he would not have to seek a refund, announcing that she will return in an attempt to add to the three gold medals and one bronze that she won in the last two Olympics.
“Obviously, it only being two years away was a very big ‘pro’ for me,” said Blair, who will be 29 while competing at Lillehammer. “If I had to go for another four years, I really don’t think I would do it.”
Blair also revealed that she has been honored by having her face appear on postage stamps in that hotbed of speed skating in the Caribbean, St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
Souvenir hunters in Lillehammer have stolen three manhole covers that are marked with the local organizing committee’s logo, although one was returned when the villain sobered up. The covers each weigh 140 pounds.
World Notes
Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday, did not appreciate the slogans critical of his father that were being chanted during a recent soccer game at Baghdad. So the president of Iraq’s Olympic committee ordered his bodyguards to fire on the crowd. According to the Reuters news service, three people were killed. . . . Reportedly on the short list of potential successors to NHL Commissioner John Ziegler is Richard Pound, a Montreal lawyer who serves as the IOC’s television and marketing expert.
Apartheid might be coming to an end in South Africa but not racism. Three black South African marathon runners, all Olympic hopefuls, were barred from their training center in the Natal province last week because of their color. “We don’t allow these types here,” said the white caretaker, according to officials from the South African Roadrunners Assn.
John Smith of Stillwater, Okla., was named last week as the international wrestling federation’s athlete of the year for 1991. It is the first time in the seven-year history of the award that it has gone to a wrestler for somewhere other than the Soviet Union. Two days later, he almost failed to make the U.S. Olympic team before surviving in the third match of a best-of-three series against John Fisher of Ann Arbor, Mich. . . . The Japanese are campaigning to have sumo wrestling accepted as an Olympic sport.
