U.S. to Make Big Push for FIFA Cup

OK, United States, what’s next?

How is a country that awoke briefly to the fact that soccer can be a pretty compelling sport when the national team makes a decent run at the World Cup going to keep the ball rolling?

Well, there’s the first FIFA under-19 Women’s World Championship in Canada Aug. 17-Sept. 1, but even though the U.S. will be among the favorites, an age-level tournament doesn’t exactly stir the spirit.

Then there’s the fourth Women’s World Cup in China next year. The U.S. is the defending world champion, but the Americans so dominate their region that the Oct. 27-Nov. 9 CONCACAF Women’s Gold Cup serving as the qualifying tournament will be a mere formality. Fun, but no high drama.

And there’s the Gold Cup itself--the men’s version--that will be played next year, July 12-23, at an undetermined location.

But these days the men’s Gold Cup doesn’t have much more luster than the women’s, and only a U.S.-Mexico game would cause anyone beyond the already committed fans to take notice.

No, the next event that could put Clint Mathis back on the cover of Sports Illustrated or Landon Donovan back on the “Late Show With David Letterman” is the 2003 FIFA Confederations Cup.

But there’s a big if involved--as in, if the U.S. stages the eight-nation event, which FIFA has scheduled for June 18-29.

The Americans’ rivals as potential hosts are Australia, France and South Africa, and FIFA will make its decision known when its executive committee meets in Zurich, Switzerland, on Sept. 23-24.

Between now and then, the sport’s movers and shakers in this country are going all out to make sure the U.S. lands the tournament, which would bring world champion Brazil, along with six other top national teams, to these shores.

“I think it’s a huge opportunity for soccer in this country,” said Tim Leiweke, president of the Anschutz Entertainment Group, which these days pulls more strings than U.S. Soccer itself.

“I think we are going to be very committed to playing whatever role the federation and CONCACAF want us to have to bring that here. I think it’s another milestone event for us.

“There’s not going to be a clear moment when soccer breaks through in this country. There are going to have to be a lot of additional steps. Yes, we’ve made progress, but we need more.

“There are still many who don’t believe the sport can be successful here, and the Confederations Cup will be another opportunity for us to prove that soccer has a very large base of fan support in this country.”

Robert S. Contiguglia, the Denver doctor who is president of U.S. Soccer, said the U.S. success in reaching the quarterfinals of Korea/Japan ’02 has increased expectations among fans of the national team.

“We’ve raised the bar and we now have to keep testing ourselves and see how good we are,” Contiguglia said. “Obviously, that [the Confederations Cup] is a competition we would want to do well in and I think we can do a real good job hosting it.”

Three factors operate in favor of the United States.

First, Australia is a remote destination for any but the home team and soccer is only a blip on the Australian sporting radar. Comparatively speaking, the country is half a century behind the U.S. in terms of its development of the game.

That should be made obvious when the teams meet in a friendly that Greg Bates, the acting chief executive of Soccer Australia, said would be played later this year but which U.S. Soccer has yet to announce.

Even Bates has said that cash-strapped Soccer Australia’s chances are slim.

“It’s not one of the priorities right now, but we’d like to do it,” he said, “but regrettably in this country we’ve been poorly organized, and we need to walk first.”

Even if they don’t host the Confederations Cup, the Socceroos can take part if they defeat New Zealand in Auckland today in the final of the Oceania Nations Cup.

France, too, would automatically take part regardless of whether it plays host to the event because it is the reigning European champion as well as the defending Confederations Cup champion.

But its chances of staging the event are not particularly strong, and worsened when UEFA said Thursday that Europe will pull out of the Confederations Cup after the 2005 edition in Germany.

FIFA seems unlikely to award successive tournaments to a continent that would just as soon see the event disappear.

South Africa might be a more serious challenger were this the 2009 Confederations Cup and were South Africa scheduled to play host to the 2010 World Cup. But 2003 is way too early for the South Africans to be needing a warmup for 2010.

“It is a controversial event, but it constitutes an ideal test run for the World Cup,” Wolfgang Niersbach, vice president and chief spokesman for the 2006 World Cup, said in Berlin in May, when Germany declared that it would stage the 2005 Confederations Cup.

All of which leaves the U.S. in a strong position.

It doesn’t hurt, either, that the U.S. has a track record of putting large amounts of cash into FIFA’s no-longer-bulging coffers.

The 1984 and 1996 Olympic soccer tournaments, the 1994 World Cup and the 1999 Women’s World Cup contributed sizable sums to the positive side of FIFA’s balance sheet.

“I think the rest of the world has learned that we can put on events,” said Dan Flynn, U.S. Soccer’s executive director. “I think we have a relatively decent chance of getting it. We’ve still got to work through some of the details.”

Those details include where the Confederations Cup would be played in the U.S.--nationwide or on only one coast.

“My guess is, if at all possible, we would probably want to spread it around,” Flynn said. “But we’ll leave that up to FIFA.”

Leiweke sees Los Angeles being very much involved, even if the Galaxy’s 27,000-seat stadium in Carson--due for completion just weeks before the Confederations Cup begins--will be too small to play a big role.

“The final would be too big for this facility,” Leiweke said, “but L.A. is fortunate. We have the Rose Bowl and the Coliseum. I think we’re reasonable and realistic enough to know that our role would be some of the initial games and the quarters and semis, maybe.

“The other role AEG can and will play is in being a co-promoter with the United States Soccer Federation and CONCACAF.

“I hope FIFA understands that it has an opportunity to break through in this country and I’m hoping that at the end of the day they see this as another way to continue the growth of soccer in the U.S.”

The Confederations Cup would fall in the middle of the Major League Soccer season, but Ivan Gazidis, the league’s deputy commissioner, said MLS strongly supports the tournament coming here and would release players early so that they can prepare with the U.S. team.

“It’s a big tournament,” he said. “Outside of the World Cup, you don’t get opportunities to play meaningful tournaments against the best teams in the world very often. The Confederations Cup is one of the primary world tournaments. We would treat it as we did the World Cup. It’s that significant.

“We would love to host it. But regardless we have to put our best team out there and do well in it to continue the momentum.

“I’m not sure we would release the players a month early, but we would work with U.S. Soccer to make sure they have every chance to be successful.

“We have to be supportive of the U.S. team. It’s great for all of us.”