.. it's all about optimism, ain't it ? Is there another country in the world experiencing potential soccer growth like us ? Not that we're going to be world beaters, but we'll be competitive by 2008-2010, methinks. Especially considering our 1990 team was college players, with no overseas experience, and 16-20 years later, it will be majority overseas players. Other countries have better "Xs abroad" but they didn't start where we started from. If you're in Portugal, you have your golden generation, and you wait for another. In Bulgaria, the right amount of rainfall and good luck brings you Stoichkov, and then you wait. Here, we're looking at a potential 2010 including Howard, Whitbread, Simek and Spector, Donovan, Convey, Adu, Szetala, Denny, etc... It's going to be something. And, those are the ones we know now (!) It's only too bad we're not in a better geographic location, soccer-wise. If we were in 4 other continents, our regional championship would be a hoot - we'd only have to wait 2 years, instead of 4 for big-time soccer to be played.
Not to be nit picky at all. We were a bunch of fresh faced college kids directly out of college for the most part in 1990. However there were a couple players who had overseas playing experience at that time. Chris SUllivan had been playing with Raba ETO in Hungary at the time of the 1990 WC, and I believe Pete Vermes was with FC Volendam of the Eredivise prior to the tourney. Was Paul Caliaguri in Germany with Meppen as well? ANYONE??
I believe you're right. Caliguri was like 24 in 1990. I know there was some other international experience from our players.
Hey my friend you forgot to mention DaMarcus Beasley, Arturo Alvarez, Kenny Cooper, Ricardo Clark and Gorge Wheah Jr.
Well, we played in the second round of the`94 WC and England didn't qualify. yet these days they're looking pretty good, so you have to tip your hat that direction. Seriously, for similar growth, check out a good chunk of Africa. Cameroon, Nigeria certainly have far deeper player pools abroad than we, with more high impact players. Senegal has higher numbers, but most are in France. S. Africa, Morocco and tunisia have exceptional growth and nice talent bases, as well. Elsewhere, Turkey's climb is at least as impressive as ours in the past 14 years. Turkey was off the map in the early 90s, and now show up as possible winners. South Korea and Japan don't match our numbers in Europe, quite, but their Nat. team growth probably matches ours. And, while France has had past golden generations, their 90s youth devo system kicked their level of play to a fantastic level and looks to be possible of maintaining it. So, the US growth is impressive, but we're hardly the last living cell in a dead organism.