FATHER FIGURE

For a man with four sons and 20 daughters, Tony DiCicco shows remarkable patience. Not that the strain doesn’t sometimes get to him.

Look at him leaping off the bench to berate a referee for a bad call. Look at him flying into the face of a linesman for failing to flag a foul.

They--the men and women who officiate U.S. women’s national team soccer games--are the ones who take the heat. Everyone else sees a kinder, gentler coach, a coach whose daughters are his life.

The daughters, of course, are not really his, but the 20 women who make up the U.S. national team that opens World Cup play Saturday are as close to him as family.

For the record, DiCicco and his wife, Diane, do have four sons: Anthony, Andrew, Alex and--just to avoid getting straight A’s--Nicholas.

But over the past decade, and especially since he took over from Anson Dorrance in 1994 and became national team coach, DiCicco (pronounced Dee-CHEEK-oh, not Dee-SEEK-oh) probably has spent more time away from his Wethersfield, Conn., home than at it.

In doing so, he has compiled one of the most impressive records of anycoach in any sport. Look at the statistics: 93 wins, nine losses and seven ties for an .853 winning percentage.

Look at the honors: A bronze medal at the 1995 Women’s World Championship in Sweden, a gold medal at the 1996 Olympic Games, a gold medal at the 1998 Goodwill Games, four consecutive U.S. Women’s Cup titles. The list goes on.

And now, just days away, the ultimate challenge.

“We want to be world champions again,” said DiCicco, whose team opens the tournament against Denmark at East Rutherford, N.J. “Our goal is to be world champion and Olympic champion together. We want to accomplish that now.”

The U.S., with Dorrance in charge and DiCicco serving as goalkeeper coach, won the first world championship, in China in 1991. But DiCicco was denied a world title of his own when Norway defeated the Americans in the semifinals of the 1995 tournament.

Disappointed, he set about rebuilding the team and changing its style, putting more emphasis on defense. He was rewarded the next year when the U.S. became the first Olympic champion, defeating Norway in the semifinals and China in the final.

“When he took the team over, we were sort of an attack-at-all-costs team and I think that hurt us in ‘95,” said defender and U.S. co-captain Carla Overbeck. “After ‘95, he and the staff reevaluated our team and changed our system and that was probably the best thing he could ever have done.”

Perhaps, but surely just as fortuitous was DiCicco’s decision as a youngster to make soccer his sport of choice.

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Soccer in the U.S. has undergone a sea change since the days when DiCicco, 50, earned his letters in baseball, basketball and soccer at Wethersfield High.

It has changed significantly too, since the days when he was captain, most valuable player and an All-American goalkeeper at Springfield (Mass.) College before going on to earn his master’s degree in physical education at Central Connecticut State, where he also coached.

Most of all it has changed since the days when he played for the Connecticut Wildcats and Rhode Island Oceaneers in the long-defunct American Soccer League.

“There are more and more kids playing it now,” he said. “There are more and more people who are starting to know the sport. The sport has gone through a generation, maybe a generation and a half, so that the fathers of the children [now playing] played the game and have an appreciation for it.

“It’s not like when I was young. It’s not like the kid pulling the parents to a game because the kid was a player but the parents never played the game, never understood it. We’re starting to see that fade away. Just about every kid now has played youth soccer. I think it’s just going to permeate our society.

“When I was a kid, soccer was a foreign game played by a lot of foreigners. I played on Greek teams and Ukrainian teams and stuff. But it’s not a foreign sport to my kids. It’s like Little League baseball was to me growing up. And I think all around the country the game is going to become more and more a part of the culture.”

DiCicco’s coaching career has run the gamut from founding soccer programs at Bellows Falls Middle School in Vermont and South Catholic High School in Hartford, Conn., to coaching the Hartford Hellenas and Hartford Italian Stars of the Connecticut Senior League.

As he said, in those days it was a foreign sport played by teams of foreigners.

No longer. Not with national team players such as Julie Foudy and Kristine Lilly running camps of their own and passing along the legacy. DiCicco does that too, at his own Soccer Plus Goalkeeper Schools, to which he invites some of the world’s top ‘keepers such as China’s Hong Gao. It’s where youngsters first get a glimpse of the sport’s worldwide possibilities.

Tracy Ducar was one such youngster. She was 13 when she first went to one of DiCicco’s camps. Today, at 25, she’s the No. 3 goalkeeper on the U.S. World Cup team.

“I have videotapes of myself each summer at the camps,” Ducar said. “They’re hysterical to watch. I was awful. I couldn’t even catch a ball. It’s so funny to watch the progression over the years. Those camps really made a difference to me. Tony was really good at encouraging us and helping us develop.”

Ducar, like everyone on the U.S. team, sees DiCicco as a friend as much as a coach, although the relationships changed slightly when he moved from assistant coach to coach.

“He’s a good guy, really down to earth, somebody you can relate to and be friends with,” Ducar said. “He’s very professional as a coach, but there are times when he’s your friend, when it’s appropriate. He’s easy to approach. You can go to him and talk to him.”

DiCicco’s main link to the team is through co-captains Overbeck and Foudy.

“The good thing about Tony is he has a pulse on our team,” Overbeck said. “And he usually he goes through Foudy and I. He really trusts and respects our outlook on things as far as the team in concerned. Do we need a day off? Have we been training too much? We have a very open working relationship. Obviously, he has the last call, but I think he has a lot of respect for us as far as just knowing what the team needs.

“He has a huge heart. He would do anything for any of us and we all know that.”

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DiCicco’s national team assistants are Lauren Gregg, the U.S. women’s under-20 national team coach, and Jay Hoffman. Gregg remembers working alongside DiCicco as Dorrance’s assistant at the 1991 World Championship in China.

“We carried like a 100 videotapes with us,” she said, “and every night we’d go to the top of this hotel and we’d just be watching and watching [upcoming opponents] for hours and hours.

“People had no idea what we were doing or who we were, so we started nicknaming ourselves the ‘mystery people.’

“It’s kind of cool to see one of the mystery people really make it.”

Forward Tiffeny Milbrett recalls first meeting DiCicco on a trip to China before the ’91 World Championship.

“We had a banquet every night, it seemed like, on that trip,” she said, “and the coaches maybe drank a little too much [because of all the toasts]. But it was great, because in order for them to walk off their alcohol we’d take a lot of walks. I just remember that he was in on the walks and it was really a peaceful time. That’s when you really can see a different side of people and that’s when I saw a different side of Tony.”

Not that DiCicco cannot be tough. Midfielder Michelle Akers says he can be as hard and as critical as the best of them.

“Tony wears his heart on his sleeve,” she said. “What you hear is what he is. I think that’s one thing I admire about him, that he throws his heart into his job and into his relationship and interaction with his players. For good or bad.

“I mean, there are some negative consequences to that, but there are also, in my mind, a lot more positives. So I enjoy working with Tony because I can trust that he’s into it the whole way, that he’s committed, and he’s giving everything he has. That kind of inspires me to do the same.”

She and her teammates don’t mind in the least that DiCicco sometimes yells and screams during training or games.

“He’s an Italian,” Akers said. “What can you say?”

“He’s emotional. He’s into it. He’s in the moment and he wants the best for our team. Sometimes that emotion gets a little carried away or comes out at inopportune times. But I think, knowing Tony and knowing where his heart is and what his desire is, you can kind of look past those times and hear what he’s really trying to say.

“Also, in those moments, he’s always quick to apologize. I learn a lot from that and I respect that.”

Respect is what DiCicco has earned after a decade at the top. Failing to win World Cup ’99 will not change that. Winning it would be a just reward. Especially for a man with four sons and 20 daughters.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

FIRST U.S. GAME

Saturday vs. Denmark, noon

at East Rutherford, N.J.

FIRST GAMES AT ROSE BOWL

Germany vs. Italy, Sunday, 4 p.m.

Korea DPR vs. Nigeria, Sunday, 6:30 p.m.