New Kids in the World Cup

The Totally Late '80s and Early '90s Tale of the Team That Changed American Soccer Forever

In 1990 a fearless group of players changed the sport of soccer in the United States forever. Young, bronzed, and mulleted, they were America's finest athletes in a sport their country loved to hate. Even sportswriters rooted against them. Yet this team defied massive odds and qualified for the World Cup, making possible America's current obsession with the world's most popular game.

Back then players earned twenty dollars a day, the crowds at home games cheered for their opponents, and the fields were often mismarked. In Latin America the U.S. team bus had a machine gun turret mounted on the back, locals sabotaged their hotels, and in the stadiums spectators rained coins, batteries, and plastic bags of urine down on the U.S. players. The world considered the U.S. team impostors. Yet on the biggest stage of all, in the 1990 World Cup, this undaunted American squad and their wise coach earned the adoration of Italy's star players and their fans in a gladiator-like match in Rome's deafening Stadio Olimpico.

From windswept soccer fields in the U.S. heartland to the CIA-infested cauldron of Central America and the Caribbean, behind the recently toppled Iron Curtain and into the great European soccer cathedrals, New Kids in the World Cup is the origin story of modern American men's soccer. It's the true adventure of America's most important soccer team—and the one that made America finally fall in love with soccer.

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