WORLD CUP USA ’94 / MEMORIES : JULIE CART : It Was an Experience of a Lifetime for U.S. Team and Reporters

If you must hang around an athletic team--an unfortunate occupational requirement--you could do much worse than to spend a year with the U.S. national soccer team.

The players on the U.S. World Cup team are as unlike other professional athletes as it’s possible to be. They are mostly college educated, polite, patient with autograph seekers and wholly without pretension. Mostly.

In many ways, covering the U.S. team was the easiest beat of the 24 in the World Cup. There was no language problem, if you don’t count the coach. Access--a big media issue during the tournament--was no trouble for the Americans. Almost every player came out after the game and spoke with reporters. The sole exception was Marcelo Balboa, who spent most of his time after games in random drug testing, drinking gallons of fluid.

The American players understood their sport’s position in the hierarchy of sports here. They took it as their responsibility to promote the sport, and if that meant answering the same questions and retelling the same anecdotes to wave after wave of reporters, so be it.

Not that it didn’t get old. The team put on a skit at a function before the World Cup, poking fun at American reporters’ ignorance of the game. It was an accurate reflection of the inevitable when-did-you-first-play-soccer questions that accompany something considered a minor sport here. Gymnasts hear the same thing every four years, as do swimmers, divers and most other Olympic athletes.

The World Cup has been a learning experience for reporters and the American public, true, but also for the players. As the U.S. team bandwagon picked up steam, the players got a good look at what hype and public scrutiny is all about.

From a reporter’s perspective, I think I know what the Beatles’ beat writers felt like. Most sportswriters are more accustomed to hearing screaming coaches at practices rather than screaming teen-agers.

The fan favorites changed frequently, usually depending on hairstyle. First it was goalkeeper Tony Meola, who, I’m told, exudes a kind of Vinnie Barbarino charm. Then came mop-headed Cobi Jones and his Tiger Beat fan club of screaming teeny-boppers.

Then, as the World Cup got closer, Alexi Lalas became the rage, with his rock band and his long red hair and goatee. Lalas was the most fun. Even when Lalas-mania was at its height--perhaps it has yet to crest--the saving grace was that Lalas never took himself or his overnight fame too seriously. He has been intelligent and aware enough to know that whatever is happening is fleeting and he has decided to enjoy the moment.

It was good for the players to bask in the attention and healthy for the sport that it had such presentable ambassadors. And now it’s over.

That’s the reality that perhaps Lalas knows but others will discover. Fame is fickle. It’s a wild and often brief ride that’s seldom worth it, except financially. Sudden fame spoils. You come to expect it and, worse, actually believe it is something that reporters and fans are obliged to offer.

Meola, who has been known to scold reporters for not writing enough about him, said a curious thing the day after the U.S. team lost to Brazil in the second round. He said he was going to retire from international competition because he didn’t want to put his family through the hell that is media attention. He said that while he could take it, he wanted to protect his parents and wife from the criticism.

What Meola didn’t understand is that the attention paid to the U.S. World Cup team was like a narrowly focused spotlight, trained on the team for a short time but soon turned elsewhere. And, for the most part, it was a friendly light.

The players experienced about one-tenth the criticism and scrutiny heaped on professional athletes and even college athletes in this country. It was certainly nothing like what professional soccer players deal with in Europe or South America. Whatever mild criticism or offhand remark the U.S. soccer players might have read or heard was nothing like the tirades that go on every day on sports talk radio or in bars.

No, the American public’s ignorance of soccer spared the U.S. team a more harsh reality. And the player’s naivete earned them the goodwill of reporters who couldn’t bring themselves to rip a team of such hard-working and earnest young men. If they are smart, they enjoyed the experience, because it is not likely to be duplicated in their lifetime.

The media learned too. If you have to cover a team, make it soccer. The worst guy on the U.S. team would be the prince of any American baseball team.