Ya, Bennett says a couple of times that they thought they'd killed the sport in the U.S. So, they thought there was even more at stake than there ended up being. But, we probably have those selfish babies to thank for suMLuSsf.
I found that perspective kind of funny since it was during and immediately after the world cup that I started really following the USMNT. (it also helped that 1999 was a fun year for the team too.)
I dont think that was far off from people's view of the game back then. We had gone over 10 years without a professional league, MLS wasn't a huge hit with teams being dissolved and AEG owning half the teams in the years to follow, and interest had spiked on the heels of 90 and especially 94. Im pretty sure we still had mainstream media guys going out of their way to bash the game in general. Things stabilized quite a bit over the next 8 years. 2006 was a valiant 90 minutes vs the Italians to make it slightly better than 1990 and 98, but might be the worst world cup relative to expectations and it just got shrugged off. I'd be interested in Rog doing something on those two cups after a full look at the recent fiasco. I think expectations of our team have been way out of whack since 1994. We aren't horrible now, just like we weren't a top 5 team in the world in 2005. Unfortunately, we are are still talented enough that if everything goes right, we could make the quarterfinals or just as easily go home after the group phase with one or no points.
2006 kinda showed people that it doesn't take the US doing well to get people into soccer though. For me that was the first time I remember a lot of casual sports fans tuning in and enjoying what they were seeing. The growth in interest between 2006 and 2010 just seemed immense. I also thought about Bennett this past weekend since I was driving through coastal Maine on a vacation. We stopped at a random bar and grill for lunch and everyone in the bar was watching the Croatia/Russia game and enjoying cheering against Russia. Even the random blue collar-looking guys seemed to know what was going on in the game. So much has changed in 20 years when getting people to turn the games on seemed like a chore at times.
[QUOTE="CMeszt, post: 36879423, member: 36573"So much has changed in 20 years when getting people to turn the games on seemed like a chore at times.[/QUOTE] In 1982, where I was, it was only available via a station from Tijuana. In 1986, I don't recall watching it in the U.S. (I was in Europe for most of that tournament). In 1990, where I was, it was only available on a Spanish language tv station. In 1994, I went to a small local Irish bar to watch U.S. Brazil. There weren't many people there (it was the 4th, after all) In 1997 a friend and I wanted to watch the WCQ against Mexico. The only place we could find it was to go to a Mexican bar in Tustin. We had to pay to get in, and they had seats set up theater style, with a big screen. We were the only U.S. fans there. In 2002, I went to the local Irish bar in Costa Mesa to watch U.S. v. Germany. I knew about a fifth of the people there. 2010, went to the same Irish bar for U.S. v. Algeria, it was packed. 2014, went to a sports bar in Anaheim - like a cavernous place, to watch U.S. vs. Belgium. It was packed to the gills with screaming fans. If the U.S. had made it this year, it would have been even bigger. Btw, the number of viewers for per game this year is larger than for the non-U.S. matches in 2014.
I'm only 33 so those early years are beyond my imagination. I actually attended two of the Silverdome games in 94 when I was 9 years old. My dad had to order tickets a year in advance but they weren't very hard to get. He got a block of tickets in the lower bowl and none of us in my family had ever seen a professional soccer game. I remember being surprised that people came all the way from Switzerland to watch as a kid. Out of the 8 or so of us who went, I was the only one who kept watching soccer. By the time 2010 rolled around, the local Fado in Philly held an outdoor watch party. It wasn't huge (mainly due to space), but just the opportunity to do something like that felt like a dream come true considering 4 years prior I was living in Ann Arbor and there was only one place that was consistently showing the games back then. For 2014, The Grant Park watch parties in Chicago were epic. USSF seriously underestimated the number of people who'd attend and people were being turned away from the Ghana game if they didn't get there before kickoff. The huge crowd they got for the Portugal match would have been far bigger except the field they had originally planned flooded a couple days before so they had to move it to the street. I'd like to think they'd try to host those in Soldier Field again this time around like for the Belgium game had the US qualified.
In 1982, where I was, it was only available via a station from Tijuana. In 1986, I don't recall watching it in the U.S. (I was in Europe for most of that tournament). In 1990, where I was, it was only available on a Spanish language tv station. In 1994, I went to a small local Irish bar to watch U.S. Brazil. There weren't many people there (it was the 4th, after all) In 1997 a friend and I wanted to watch the WCQ against Mexico. The only place we could find it was to go to a Mexican bar in Tustin. We had to pay to get in, and they had seats set up theater style, with a big screen. We were the only U.S. fans there. In 2002, I went to the local Irish bar in Costa Mesa to watch U.S. v. Germany. I knew about a fifth of the people there. 2010, went to the same Irish bar for U.S. v. Algeria, it was packed. 2014, went to a sports bar in Anaheim - like a cavernous place, to watch U.S. vs. Belgium. It was packed to the gills with screaming fans. If the U.S. had made it this year, it would have been even bigger. Btw, the number of viewers for per game this year is larger than for the non-U.S. matches in 2014.[/QUOTE] Good summary. It also used to be until about the mid-2000s that you would have to find a "soccer bar" to be able to watch a game. Watched the 2014 Portugal game at a random sports bar in San Francisco which was packed to the gills to the point of people standing on furniture, everyone screaming and chanting. We've come a long way.
I was there too, for the England game (although we went to Fox and Hound for the game itself). They had a live band, Fado and the other bars on the street had stands set up outside to sell beer, it was an awesome time.
yeah, I was at Fox and Hound for the Slovenia and Ghana matches. Had to stand in the corner for the latter because I couldn't get a table. For the Algeria game I was watching at Fado and sitting on the floor in front of the TV. I won a Jordan Harvey-signed mini-ball in the raffle the Union held after that game was over.
Small world, I was at F&H for the Ghana game as well. I remember the Jamaican guy rooting for Ghana and getting about the same reception you'd expect from a guy wearing a Cowboys jersey at a bar in Philly (also watched TO's return to Philly there)
And, there's a sports bar within walking distance of my house. Last cycle I asked the owner if they were going to be showing the World Cup. His reply was "first, I don't like soccer. And, I've found that soccer people go to soccer bars. They're not going to come here to watch soccer." Today, they are promoting the game on their facebook page. Times are changing.
I remember reading a guest editorial in my local paper after the US went out of the world cup. Can't remember the author but it was from the Dallas Morning News so could very well have been Skip Bayless. The writing celebrated the US finishing, last proclaiming that this would be the final nail in the coffin for soccer in the US and we could all go back to watching real sports. I couldn't believe that an American was genuinely happy that the US had lost I was flabbergasted. I also still remember it because it was published on the same day as the Arg-Eng round of 16 match. A match i'd been really looking forward to and turned into one of the best I've ever seen. That's when I stopped trying to convert people, if you were so blinded that you couldn't sit back and enjoy THAT game then it's on you.
Yeah we have. I think Gen X did for soccer acceptance/marketing power in this country from the mid 90s to mid 00s what Millennials are supposedly doing to politics today. The front end of that generation was the core of the first World Cup team in ages back in 90. By the time we hosted in 94, the youngest of that generation were at least in HS and the oldest were still in their late 20s. 98 marked the first time we had to qualify via the hex format, which provided better opportunities for supporters to sort of latch on and follow the campaign more consistently. By 2002, the entire generation was of drinking age and completely within the "adult" marketing cohorts. A few things suppressed the support around that time though IMO. Coverage was still relatively scarce. Large package cable/satellite networks had been around since about 94, but they still weren't ubiquitous. Sites like this one filled the void, which was a huge step up compared to my Soccer America subscriptions in the late 80s/early 90s. I was still in my 20s when I signed up for this site around 2002. If I was in my 20s today, probably wouldn't because there are so many ways to get information. Gol TV started up shortly after the 2002 WC as well. But the big one IMO was the WC location and US match times. That 2002 quarterfinal run in a more favorable time zone would have been received almost as well as 2010. IIRC, the Portugal match came on at about 4am CT, the Korea match at 2am, and Poland at about 7 or 8am. Part of me still misses walking into a smoky pub at 6am to watch a match on a big projection screen with 100 other people. The place entirely darkened from blankets that are hung over windows and barmaids with Irish accents serving breakfast and pints to an audience that was probably >50% foreign born. That was my experience in Chicago before about 2004 anyway.
Which basically describes the meat and potatoes of the rough WC pecking order. Not that you need it, but since about 2002, I end up sending a variation of this to somebody I know every WC who sincerely wants (and asks) to understand where the US standards: Tier IA: BRA and GER. DNQing not an option. Catastrophically bad = group phase crash. Below average = knockout phase. Average = in 4-5 core contenders. Above average=likely to be tourney fave. This was the odd tourney where one wasn't a true contender based upon form (GER). Tier IB: the other 6 traditional powers (ARG, ENG, ESP, FRA, ITA, NED). DNQing possible. Below average=possible group elimination. Average = knockouts. Above average = core 4-5 contenders. IMO in this tourney, only FRA was above average in this group relative to their prior teams. ENG better than 2010 and 2014, but not up to their historic standards from the prior 6 finals they qualed for...but somebody had to advance from that side of the bracket. Tier II: Belgium, Portugal, Croatia, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay. DNQ out of difficult confeds with some frequency. Knocked out in groups with below average squads generally. But they usually have high ceilings. With a true Golden generation, can crack into the group of 4-5 core contenders (Belgium this tourney). Merely above average and they're QF material. Maybe a semi with a friendly draw. IMO Cro doesn't have a true Golden gen. In a normal tourney where GER+BRA are average, France is joined by one other team in Tier IB as "above average" and a true golden Gen Tier II like Belgium are involved, they're no better than 6th best, not sniffing a final, and they're probably getting bounced in quarters. They'll probably go out and win the thing after saying all that. Teams move in and out of this group in long arcs (Yugos of 80s-90s, Czechs, narco Colombia, Laudrup's Danes out for example). Tier III: a bunch of teams, including the US, with MEX+SUI probably the top of the class in this group at the moment. For these teams, if the squad is comparatively weak or they're not cohesive in a short form tournament, they're crashing out or DNQing. They can do damage if they're average to above average, but there's simply too much traffic in the three groups above them. In the 32 team format, these teams have won 13 of the 90 knockout matches, but 10 of them came via defeating one another. The other 3 were hosts (Russia v Spain this time and S Korea v Italy and Spain in 2002). Both of SK's wins came via some really bad officiating too. People really underestimate the amount of player development, resources, and required cultural emphasis it takes to go from Tier III to Tier II. We had a pretty tenuous claim to Tier III status in 1994, but we're close to the top of the pile of that group today.
Really interesting listen with one episode to go, I sometimes forget these days how new the United States is to really being part of international football and the inexperience/naivete of that time comes through very clear listening to the 94' veterans and the front office people.