WORLD CUP USA '94 / THE FIRST ROUND : SPOTLIGHT : ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN

By HELENE ELLIOTT

July 2, 1994 12 AM PT

Although many reporters asked Ireland Coach Jack Charlton about playing Brazil in the quarterfinals, he cautioned about looking too far ahead.

That applied not only to his own team, which faces the Netherlands, but to the Brazil-U.S. match.

“Who knows, we might be playing the Americans,” Charlton said. “It’s not beyond the realm of possibility. Everybody is assuming Brazil will beat America. Everybody’s assuming the Dutch might beat us. You just take it one game at a time, that old cliche.”

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Helene Elliott

Helene Elliott was with the Los Angeles Times’ Sports department from 1989 to 2024, first as a staff writer and then, starting in 2006, as a columnist. She became the first female journalist to be honored with a plaque in the Hall of Fame of a major professional sport as the 2005 winner of the Hockey Hall of Fame’s Elmer Ferguson Award, awarded to writers “who have brought honor to journalism and to hockey.” A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, she has covered 18 Olympics.

WORLD CUP USA ’94 / THE FIRST ROUND : SPOTLIGHT : ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN

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