Eight World Cups

by George Vecsey

  In the championship match in front of sixty-five thousand fans in Guangzhou, Michelle Akers (then married and known as Akers-Stahl) scored both goals, one with three minutes left, in a 2–1 victory over Norway.

  “I think we feel we are on a mission now and no one will get in our way, no matter what,” Akers told the Times. Off the field, Akers was a gentle soul, but on the field she could track down any opponent and divest her of the ball—Big Bird with a mop of curls and an attitude. She and Carin Jennings and April Heinrichs, the other forwards, were labeled “the triple-edged sword” by Chinese reporters, and Akers was the best player in that tournament. For that matter, she remains the best female player of all time.

  That first national team was coached by Anson Dorrance, who had won eight of the first nine national tournaments for North Carolina. The team was blessed with skill and personality, including the three youngest players: Julie Foudy, twenty years old, an activist Stanford midfielder known to her teammates as Loudy Foudy; Kristine Lilly, age nineteen, who could score and defend, a true footballer; and Mia Hamm, also nineteen, a highly skilled and competitive forward with the aura of a Jackie Kennedy or a Greta Garbo, a superstar who seemed to shun attention and therefore received more of it.

  When the American women returned home, they were greeted at the White House by President George H. W. Bush and lauded in an editorial in the New York Times, but the championship did not attract much attention. America’s soccer self-esteem was still quite low after the men’s poor performance in Italy in 1990.

  That championship in China created a heritage, which included a rivalry between the U.S. women’s team and Norway. Linda Medalen, now an Oslo police officer, hounded the American forwards as if they were alleged perpetrators, as law-enforcement officers say. One of the best things that ever happened to women’s soccer took place in the 1995 Women’s World Cup final in Sweden, when Medalen and the Norwegians knocked off the Americans, 1–0. That was a signal to other countries that they could compete with the Yanks. Then the Norwegian players chose to celebrate on their hands and knees in an elaborate ritual known as the Train. The American players stood at the edge of the field and watched the Norwegians cavort, and implanted the scene in collective memory.

  Many male soccer buffs scorned women’s soccer because, they said, the women’s speed and power and technical skill were far below that of men. Yet others—and I was one of them—loved women’s soccer because they played with teamwork and heart and brains at a pace anybody could follow.

  Another interesting thing about female players: they had much better balance than their male counterparts. That is to say, they did not flop nearly as much.

  “Our front-runners want to keep standing up,” Carla Overbeck said in 1995. “The instinct is to stay on your feet. But our coaches have been reminding us that one Norwegian player got five penalty kicks from diving. That’s a huge amount of penalties. Our coaches are saying, ‘If you get hacked, go down.’ The other teams are so successful at it.”

  * * *

  In 1996, the Olympic tournaments consisted of separate male and female groups in Orlando; Miami; Washington, D.C.; and Birmingham, Alabama, with the semifinals and finals moving to Athens, Georgia—after the hedges were removed to eradicate the dreaded if perhaps nonexistent nematodes and coincidentally provide space for the wider field.

  In the semifinals, the American women met their chums from Norway. Medalen scored in the eighteenth minute, but Akers scored in the seventy-sixth minute—two great players coming through for their teams. In the ninety-sixth minute, U.S. coach Tony DiCicco sent in Shannon MacMillan for the weary Tiffeny Milbrett, and MacMillan scored four minutes later to put the Americans into the finals. China moved past Brazil, 3–2, in the other semifinal.

  Great things were happening in Athens, but somehow the excitement had not reached NBC, which was televising the Olympics. American television executives were still fearful of soccer because it did not have time-outs for commercials, and Americans were said to dislike the sport, so the network gave minimal coverage to some of the most charismatic athletes performing in those games. (Television still prefers to show hours of Olympic women’s beach volleyball, butts in bikinis, than more traditional sports.)

  In the final, the Americans beat China, 2–1, as Mia Hamm centered the ball on a fast break to Joy Fawcett, who fed Milbrett racing in from the left for the decisive goal in the sixty-eighth minute. The attendance was 76,481, the largest crowd ever to watch a women’s game anywhere in the world.

  Now that the actual game was over and the Americans were champions, a network official tried to arrange a live shot of the women celebrating. That touched off the fury of Hank Steinbrecher, the executive director of the U.S. federation, who told the official, “NBC must think the world is full of divers,” a reference to television’s affinity for women in swimsuits jumping into pools. Steinbrecher was standing up for his athletes, but he was no fool. He then made the women available for the cameras.

  Within days, the University of Georgia regained its privet hedge in time for football season. Years later, it came out that a few Georgia officials had made up the part about the nematodes. The fib helped the nation, the world, discover a charismatic band of champions.

  11

  ALLONS, ENFANTS

  FRANCE, 1998

  The French public had extreme reservations about Les Bleus. The new coach, Aimé Etienne Jacquet, did not have much international experience, having played only two matches for the French team during his career, and he stressed fundamentals more than fans wanted to hear.

  When Jacquet cut the eighteen-year-old star Nicolas Anelka—much the way César Luis Menotti had dropped Diego Maradona before the 1978 World Cup—there were calls for the coach to resign. He did not. Instead, he talked about the Michel Platini era, when the French were “the Brazilians of Europe”—silky style and skill.

  There was one major difference. Brazil had won four World Cups and France had won none. Now France was about to be the host in 1998.

  Another burning question about Les Bleus was raised by Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right political party the National Front.

  “It’s a bit artificial to bring players from abroad and call it the French team,” LePen said.

  Many of the players had roots in French-speaking countries in Africa or far-flung departments of France and were eligible for French passports. Many other federations, including the United States, recruit players for their national team, but Le Pen was uneasy with the new face of France, known as the Rainbow Warriors.

  “Our team gives you a sense of the socio-cultural mix that is France today,” responded goalkeeper Bernard Lama, who was born in Guiana and arrived in France when he was eighteen.

  It was true that many of the key players had roots outside metropolitan France, but they had legitimate rights to a French passport. Marcel Desailly, the defender with AC Milan, was born in Ghana; Christian Karembeu in New Caledonia; Lilian Thuram in Pointe-à-Pitre in the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe; Patrick Vieira in Dakar, Senegal. Thierry Henry, the fleet young striker, was born in a Paris suburb of a father from La Désirade, an island of Guadeloupe, and a mother from Martinique. Robert Pirès was born in Reims but grew up alternately wearing gear from Portugal and Real Madrid, the roots of his parents. David Trezeguet’s parents were from Argentina, where he had lived as a child; Bixente Lizarazu’s heritage was Basque; Youri Djorkaeff’s mother was Armenian and his father, Jean, who played for France in the 1966 World Cup, was of Polish and Kalmuck descent; Alain Boghossian was born in France but proudly referred to his roots in Armenia.

  Then there was Zinedine Yazid Zidane, the elegant playmaker and scorer who was born in Marseilles to parents from the Kabyle ethnic group in Algeria, who had emigrated nineteen years earlier. Zidane had played for Cannes and Bordeaux and Real Madrid and was now at Juventus. He was a native son of France, but Le Pen’s remarks raised the question, Who, exactly, is French?

/>   * * *

  In 1993, the French national team had stunningly lost its final qualifying match to Bulgaria in the ninetieth minute.

  The next morning, Libération ran the headline: “France Qualifies! For 1998!”

  That was cold, inasmuch as the host team automatically qualifies.

  Coughing up the ball to Bulgaria, rather than killing the clock in the corner, was probably a worse moment than the once tontos semifinal in 1982, when France kept attacking West Germany with a 3–1 lead, drawing sarcasm from the bartender in Barcelona.

  At least the 1982 team got to the semifinals. The only Frenchman seen at the 1994 World Cup was Michel Platini, hosting a cocktail party at the Beverly Hills city hall, to promote the 1998 World Cup.

  France had achieved some glory in le foot, including a dashing championship in the 1984 European tournament—when it was the host—but some teams peak for the Euros and regress two years later. The World Cup is a different animal.

  After four World Cups, I still had not seen the host country win, or even reach the championship game. Quite frankly, I did not pay much attention to the French team going into 1998, partially because past French squads had seemed a trifle soft but also because my colleague Chris Clarey, of the International Herald Tribune, who had married a French woman, lived in France, and spoke the language, was keeping an eye on Les Bleus.

  I was going to focus on Our Lads during group play and commute to other matches from Paris. My wife and I had lived in France for a month here or there; we have French friends and consider it one of the most beautiful countries in the world. We rented a flat from an American editor in a quiet neighborhood on the Right Bank, arrived one tranquil holiday morning, chatted with the Portuguese concierge, and immediately felt at home.

  After the vastness of the American World Cup, this tournament was the right size. My credential got me on all trains, plus any metro or bus in any host city, which was handy, since the American team was based outside Lyon. Far outside Lyon.

  After their somewhat accidental foray into the round of 16 in 1994, the Yanks were starting over. The peripatetic Bora Milutinović had moved on to coach Nigeria, and the United States had promoted his assistant, Steve Sampson, a Californian with an open smile who had learned to speak Spanish quite admirably. Whether Sampson could coach soccer at the World Cup level was another question.

  There were already signs of dysfunction as the Yanks revealed their training camp—a château deep in the Burgundy countryside. Sampson said he chose the retreat in the name of togetherness, but it turned out to be a rural version of the asylum in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, with Sampson playing the role of Nurse Ratched.

  This was the first U.S. team in the World Cup since Major League Soccer had gone into operation in 1996 under Commissioner Doug Logan. The new league had a mutual-ownership plan that kept salaries low while young Americans learned from international ancients like Jorge Campos of Mexico, Carlos Valderrama of Colombia, and Roberto Donadoni of Italy. The ten teams in MLS drew an average of 17,406 fans per game to see homegrown stars like Tony Meola, Tab Ramos, and Brian McBride.

  Other Americans found the competition and salaries were much better overseas. Kasey Keller was tending goal in England. Claudio Reyna, who had been injured in 1994, resumed his career in Germany.

  Another stalwart was John Harkes, who was under the impression that Sampson expected him to lead the team into the future. His was the handsome face of America; he was a border collie yapping at his mates on the field, who had scored vital goals in the English league and led the Yanks onto hostile fields during qualifiers.

  Days before the trip to France, Harkes was stunned to discover that he had been dropped from the squad. Just like that. There were whispers that Harkes had been breaking curfew and questioning Sampson on the field. Others suggested that Sampson had to make room for Reyna’s talent in the midfield, which made no sense because Reyna’s subtle style did not demand favoritism. Harkes’s disappearance touched off discontent as the Yanks were dropped into the vineyards of Burgundy.

  Ever since 1998, I have been describing the Château de Pizay as a rustic survivalist hideaway for a reality show about athletes who need to bond. That was the impression I retained, perhaps because of the stir-crazy athletes I encountered within. However, in 2012 I looked up the château on the Web and discovered this:

  Château de Pizay, 45 minutes from Lyon and 30 from Mâcon, in the heart of Beaujolais country, was built between the 11th and 15th centuries and is the ideal spot for a truly peaceful stay.

  Château de Pizay Hotel - Meetings - Vineyard & Spa Resort is located between Brouilly and Morgon, in the middle of 80 hectares of its own vineyards, and is one of the great wine estates in the region.

  The Estate brings together the finest wines in the region: Beaujolais Rouge, Morgon, Régnié, Beaujolais Blanc, Brouilly Château de Saint Lager.

  The entire production is made into wine, aged and bottled at the Château. It is aged in cellars which can be visited on appointment.

  Winner

  Certificate of Excellence

  2012

  Château de Pizay

  On the Web, the resort is obviously a classic château, like Versailles or dozens in the Loire Valley, with crisscrossing walkways and topiary and handsome gates keeping out the riffraff—perfect for a romantic getaway for a couple slipping out of Paris for le weekend. This is not some humble gîte, a few feet from rumbling trucks on a national highway. Sampson had seen the château the year before during an inspection trip and loved its elegance and seclusion. But I missed the charm of the château because of the paranoia and ineptitude of that failed mission in 1998.

  The château was so remote that Sampson could mostly keep his lads away from the hordes of American journalists who had wangled the assignment to France. We were led to feel that if we tried to visit we would be bombarded by boiling oil, but one fine day in early June, the team held Media Day. When the ramp was lowered over the moat (I made that part up), Our Lads were skulking in the handsome courtyard, the look in their eyes saying, “Get me out of here!”

  Brian Maisonneuve, a midfielder from the American Midwest, was sitting outside the team wing of the château, both feet stuck in a bucket of ice, which, as I noted, “under better circumstances might have chilled a new bottle of Georges DeBoeuf.”

  Despite his very French name, Maisonneuve did not speak a word of the language. He said he had been reading an epic thriller called Les Pages Jaunes, not much of a plot but a huge cast. “I’m looking at the pictures,” Maisonneuve told us.

  Sampson held a news conference in the courtyard, explaining his reasoning for putting the team in a rural château. “We have to prepare for Germany,” he said. “I don’t want them on their feet all day shopping.” Sampson quickly added that he had planned an outing to Lyon, forty-five minutes away, and held a golf outing, at which Alexi Lalas had taken twenty-four strokes on the first two holes. (Perhaps his ineptitude at golf explained why Lalas was low man on the defensive depth chart.) Plus, Sampson quickly added, the team had first-round matches in Paris, Lyon, and Nantes, three lovely corners of this diverse country. “After they are finished with this World Cup, they will not say they did not have a World Cup experience,” he promised.

  What were the players complaining about? They had a dart board, a television with English soccer news, plus a VCR equipped with tapes of Hoosiers, JFK, and Jerry Springer Too Hot for TV. They were allowed one beer with dinner and could play cards as long as they wanted, as long as the game ended by 10:30 p.m.

  “We just came from New York, where the horns honk twenty-four hours a day,” Tab Ramos told us. “Here there are no horns.”

  At the château, the biggest excitement was watching geese waddle around the grounds. For a cohesive team, the château would have worked. For a team with issues, it encouraged problems to fester.

  Sampson was enforcing the old sporting tradition of monasticism based on the theory that enforced cel
ibacy produces more energy and combativeness. Wives and girlfriends were forbidden except on an occasional daytime pass, but it was difficult to, shall we say, conduct a conjugal visit when the players were grouped two to a room. The Italian media boycott in 1982 had begun when some journalist wrote that teammates were sharing rooms—as man and wife. For the Americans, crankiness kicked in early.

  Sampson clearly had no plans for Lalas, who had parlayed his good run in 1994 and his flamboyant persona into being the first Yank to play in Serie A, with Padova. Ramos, who had declined after being crowbarred by Leonardo of Brazil in 1994, was stewing as a spare part. And the ghost of John Harkes hovered over the squad.

  Then there was l’Affaire Régis. The U.S. federation had discovered a defender named David Régis, a French citizen, born in Martinique, playing in the Bundesliga, with an American wife. The American bureaucracy has never moved so fast to get somebody his citizenship. But first, Régis had to pass a written test, which posed a problem inasmuch as he did not speak, read, or write English.

  Pas de problème. Sampson asked Jeff Agoos to tutor Régis. Agoos had his own frustrations. He had been the last player cut by Bora in 1994 and had burned his uniform in the fireplace at the team lodge. Now, four years later, in the name of team unity, Agoos was being asked to tutor the new left back—which just happened to be Agoos’s position.

  With Agoos’s help, M. Régis now carried a certificate that he was eligible to play for the Yanks. What would Jean-Marie Le Pen think of that?

  * * *

  The United States had a nasty draw, playing two rugged European teams, Germany first and Yugoslavia third. Although the nation of Yugoslavia was being dismantled, it had plenty of talent left for its last blast. The middle opponent was Iran, with its tense political history with the United States, including the hostage crisis of 1979. Iran figured to be the easiest of the three opponents, but the intrigue only complicated matters.