There is a theory that it is helpful to play the best team first, before the all-stars learn to play together. According to the FIFA computer, Portugal was the Americans’ toughest opponent, ranked fifth in the world while the United States was ranked thirteenth, South Korea thirty-second, and Poland thirty-eighth. What did these rankings prove? The French team that trudged off the team bus was ranked first in the world.
For the match with Portugal in Suwon, near Seoul, Reyna was injured, and Arena held out Mathis because of lack of conditioning. Instead, he sprung Donovan, which may have been the plan all along.
The match began better than anybody could have imagined. Four minutes in, John O’Brien scored after the Portuguese keeper collided with a teammate in the goalmouth.
At twenty-nine minutes, with Donovan putting pressure on the keeper, a Portuguese defender deflected the ball into his own goal—shades of poor Escobar of Colombia in 1994.
At thirty-six minutes, McBride converted a chance, giving the United States a 3–0 lead, but the United States let Portugal back in by surrendering a goal in the thirty-ninth minute. In the second half, at the seventy-first minute, Jeff Agoos—finally playing a World Cup match after his past frustrations—allowed an own goal. The United States held on for a 3–2 victory, which was perceived as one of the great upsets the United States had ever perpetrated, right behind the 1950 victory over England.
The United States now had three quick points against the fifth-ranked team, but next it had to play the host team in Daegu. The entire nation had come to idolize Guus Hiddink, the Dutch coach of the South Korean national team, and just about everybody was wearing a red T-shirt that said “Be the Reds!”
“No host nation has not gotten into the second round, right?” asked Eddie Pope, the American defender. He was right.
Mathis, back in the lineup, scored in the twenty-fourth minute, and Friedel gave the Americans a huge lift when he saved a penalty kick in the fortieth minute. The United States was still ahead in the eighty-second minute when Ahn Jung-Hwan, a dynamic second-half substitute, rose above Agoos and Friedel, the leaper who could have played basketball for UCLA, and tied the match. Given the energy flowing between the host team and its fans, the U.S. players said they had done well to draw. Privately, they knew that Ahn’s goal had rendered them vulnerable.
On June 14, the United States played Poland in Daejon, while a simultaneous match was held in Incheon between Portugal and South Korea. Poland, whose players made a living all over Europe, had not advanced to the tournament since 1986. For some reason, the United States often seemed to play better against more artistic southern European squads—Spain, Italy, Portugal—than against more physical northern and eastern European teams (Czechoslovakia and Austria in 1990, Romania in 1994, Germany in 1998).
This was the case again in 2002. Poland scored in the third, fifth, and sixty-sixth minutes for a 3–0 lead that put the Americans in deep trouble. Under the rules put in after the disgraceful waltz in 1982, the scores of the simultaneous match were not displayed in the stadium, but in the age of the cell phone and the laptop, the Americans were well aware that Portugal and South Korea were playing a scoreless draw that would eliminate the Yanks.
However, in distant Incheon, the referee had tossed out two Portuguese players by the sixty-sixth minute, so there was hope. Four minutes later, Park Ji-Sung scored to put South Korea ahead. Back in Daejon, Donovan scored in the eighty-third minute, essentially a meaningless goal, as the United States lost, 3–1. The team waited out South Korea’s 1–0 victory that put the mighty Reds and the wobbly Yanks through to the second round.
“This is a very good day for U.S. soccer,” Friedel said, after giving up three goals. “This was also a very lucky day for U.S. soccer,” he added.
Three days later, the Americans would play their regional pals from Mexico, not in thundering Azteca or some sleety pitch in the American heartland but down the road in Chonju, a neutral site.
* * *
One upgrade was noticeable about American soccer in 2002—the traveling supporters known as Sam’s Army. Mark Spacone and John Wright of Buffalo, New York, had had such a good time at the World Cup in America in 1994 that they went to France in 1998 to cheer on the U.S. team, as wretched as it was. Although Sam’s Army welcomed dues-paying members, anybody wearing red was welcome to flock around them at games, with drums and flags and chants.
Red was not such a good choice of color in 2002, since every single person in South Korea was wearing a Reds shirt, so part of Sam’s Army switched to blue. Even fans have road uniforms.
For the Portugal match, Bill Starling from Tyler, Texas, and his son, Jeff, from Dallas, had been in the stands in Suwon, wearing blue. Jeff Delp of Atlanta, and his brother, Shawn, from Los Angeles, were there, both in red, with Jeff wearing a floppy red hat straight out of Dr. Seuss.
“I didn’t think we’d have that many fans,” said DaMarcus Beasley, the most observant of the players. “It’s great to hear them.”
In decibels, the individual American fan probably measured about one-third of other national fans, but they were trying. They also had idealistic rules of the road, much like Deadheads following the Grateful Dead—do not take a seat away from somebody who has paid for it; let little children stand up front; don’t behave destructively.
Sam’s Army—and World Cup crowds in general—were a different animal from club supporters, the Ultras and skinheads of Europe. Because the World Cup is a universal event, relatively affluent fans from all over the world attend, bringing the joy and scruples of tourists and pilgrims. Sam’s Army tried to yell like the Dutch or bounce around like Koreans or just look good, like the Brazilians. But like its team, Sam’s Army was a work in progress.
Heading into the knockout round, the fans could take heart from the reality that the United States was drawing close to its longtime tormentor. Mexico still ruled in Azteca and had an all-time record of twenty-eight victories, nine losses, and nine draws against the United States, but the Americans had won four straight matches on American soil.
The Mexican team still played with intimidation for all past insults and incursions. Also, Mexico does not lack for well-off fans who can afford to travel for a World Cup match, but Sam’s Army had passports and dollars and outfits and banners, not to mention lung power.
Arena had to revise his lineup because of injuries and a yellow-card suspension to Frankie Hejduk, the muscular and fiery back known as Frankie Yellow Card. “We won’t have any trouble finding two guys who want to play,” Arena said of his back line. He dusted off Gregg Berhalter, who had played for Energie Cottbus in the former East Germany, and sent out five midfielders, deputizing Reyna to play on the right side, to cut off the Mexico passes and to counterattack down the right side.
The captain responded with the game of his life. Reyna was a conservative midfielder, at his best distributing the ball and closing down the center, but against Mexico, his team needed more from him. In the eighth minute, Reyna took off down the right side and crossed the ball to Wolff, who diverted the ball to McBride, who scored from twelve yards with virtually no coverage.
The Mexican players lost their edge immediately. They had never seen the United States play like this. The experiences in the Hexagonal had toughened the Americans and many of them had learned to be more aggressive while playing overseas. One example was Tony Sanneh, the right back, whose father had come from Gambia to the United States. Sanneh said he learned in the Bundesliga to take what the opponent gave you, much like Paul Caligiuri, the hero of Trinidad in 1989.
Years later, Sanneh told me that as he ran down the right sideline against Mexico that day, he heard a teammate shout, “Tony! Stay back!”—the traditional by-the-numbers approach that holds back American players. Sanneh claimed he shouted “F—— you!” over his shoulder, as he attacked. He was not a big name in the United States, but fans back home suddenly learned his name from his big-time romps down the right side.
The Mexic
ans were so flustered by the new American aggressiveness that they made a substitution in the twenty-eighth minute, apparently to raise the intensity. The United States got lucky early in the second half when John O’Brien touched a Mexican corner kick with his right hand, and Mexico screamed for a penalty kick, but the referee did not call it. Later, O’Brien did not deny he had touched the ball but said his arm was pushed by a Mexican player.
In the sixty-fifth minute, O’Brien played a ball on the left side to Eddie Lewis, who centered it high to Donovan, who scored on a header for a 2–0 lead.
The Mexicans, so accustomed to dominating the Americans, particularly in Azteca, were a long way from home. They collectively lost their minds, and the game turned nasty, with the referee issuing five yellow cards against the United States and five against Mexico. In the eighty-eighth minute, Rafa Márquez head-butted Cobi Jones in the jaw, a cheap shot not worthy of a captain. Márquez was tossed with a red card, and Mexico spent the final minutes shorthanded, chasing the ball. The Mexicans had been publicly depantsed, in perhaps the most satisfying victory the United States had ever achieved against them.
“The rest of the world used to call us a sleeping giant,” said Robert Contiguglia, the nephrologist who was president of the U.S. federation. “I think the sleeping giant has woken up.”
Now the Americans would play Germany. The Americans had great respect for the Bundesliga and the country’s soccer culture; many of the Germans spoke English and vacationed in the United States. This would be a World Cup quarterfinal, not a regional grudge match.
The U.S. writers had a charter bus to take us to the match in Ulsan, down the east coast. For a while we bantered: Filip Bondy of the New York Daily News waved a yellow card when Michelle Kaufman of the Miami Herald was tardy. After nearly two hundred miles, we approached the stadium, and you could feel the energy kick in; writers get up for the big game, too.
As the German team came out on the field—Oliver Kahn with his fright mask of a face; Michael Ballack, large and sleek; Miroslav Klose, deceptively bland-looking—they seemed purposeful. This is not some leftover wartime stereotype, I hasten to add, but a respectful judgment earned from one World Cup to another. Those guys would run over their opponent; those guys would never quit.
The Americans held them off for thirty-nine minutes but then Germany gained a free kick, and Ballack headed the ball into the net.
Germany was still ahead in the fiftieth minute when the United States suffered a piece of terrible luck. Reyna put a corner kick near the goal, and then Sanneh headed it at the keeper. Gregg Berhalter stuck out his left foot for the rebound and volleyed it back at Kahn, who managed to deflect the ball as he dove to his right. Torsten Frings, a German midfielder, was guarding the left post, his left arm extended, and he deflected the ball, and Kahn dived on it, protecting it from the frantic kicks by the Americans.
After Kahn cleared it, Berhalter and his teammates pointed at Hugh Dallas, the Scottish referee, and shouted for a handball. The replay on our screens did not indicate that Frings had blatantly stuck out his arm, but his arm was clearly out there, at an angle that worked to Germany’s extreme advantage. It was the kind of non-call that affects a match and changes history. There was still no provision for instant replay, as there was in American football. Play on, the ref said.
Arena threw in all his firepower—Mathis in the fifty-eighth minute, Jones in the sixty-fifth, Stewart in the eightieth, but they could not penetrate. Raging at the non-call, the Americans left the field, and the tournament, with a 1–0 loss.
“It should have been a penalty,” Berhalter said afterward. He comes from a soccer family, is an establishment guy. “I don’t know what view the referee had,” he added. “Don’t blame it on him.”
Somebody reminded Berhalter about O’Brien’s obvious handball against Mexico.
“I’m not complaining,” Berhalter said. “You win some, you lose some.”
The players had lived out their destiny for this World Cup, and now they were headed back to Seoul. Then something happened in the media room that still gives me a chill. A small group of German reporters packed up their laptops and prepared to move on, but first they stopped by our desks to commiserate. Roland Zorn, a German columnist who used to be based in New York and speaks colloquial English, told us that the Americans had outplayed the Germans and deserved to win. His buddies nodded their assent.
“The score was 1–0,” I said. “Your guys won.”
In the ballet-critic world of soccer writing, there is a concept of the just result, which team deserved to win, based on effort and artistry. In Zorn’s considered opinion, the just result would have been an American victory. It is that kind of big-picture bond that unites professionals from different countries. I told Roland I would see him at the semifinals.
The American writers piled into our bus for the long haul back to Seoul. I remember darkness, cars speeding past in the night, our bus pulling into a rest stop so grim and oily that it could have been the New Jersey Turnpike. At dawn, we arrived at the Marriott, where my wife had juice and pastry waiting.
A few hours later, Bruce Arena held the last press conference in Seoul before everybody grabbed a flight to vacations, to Major League Soccer, to the rest of their lives. As deadpan as ever, the coach praised his players, saying they got a tough call, saying it was a good World Cup. He also reminded us that this nice run in no way meant that the United States had reached the top level of world soccer.
The wires were carrying stories that the German legends Franz Beckenbauer and Jürgen Klinsmann, with their ties to the United States, were saying that a handball should have been called on Frings.
“Whatever,” Arena said. “It wasn’t called. That’s life.”
Somebody noted that a few German players had stopped Arena after the match and told him the Americans had outplayed them.
“That’s nice to hear,” Arena said with a tinge of Noo Yawk sarcasm.
In other words: It’s a BAWL.
And on that note, the brief Golden Age of American soccer was over.
* * *
This was South Korea’s time. I had fallen in love with the country in 1988 during the Olympics in Seoul, catching the last vestiges of the old generation that had survived the wars, the elders with their bright gowns and bizarre stovepipe hats, strolling the ancient lanes of the city. I loved the passions of the Korean people, who sometimes traded punches in the national legislature, and I loved the mountains and the urban hikers and the bittersweet unofficial national anthem, “Arirang.”
Susan Chira, the regional correspondent for the Times in 1988, and her writer-husband, Michael Shapiro, had taught me to love Korea. Michael once said that Koreans reminded him of relatives back in New York. They got up close to you, they argued, they laughed, they cried. That’s why Koreans make great New Yorkers.
Fourteen years later, Seoul was still a hoot, a great city with three stadiums on the subway line. On June 4, while the Reds were holding off Poland in the southern port city of Busan, hundreds of young fans jammed into a subterranean plaza, screaming in front of a large television. When the match ended, the young people disposed of every scrap of paper, every soda can, and went their way.
The city was expanding everywhere, with young people chattering on cell phones in the subway, getting reception through the deep rock substrata under the Han.
People were friendly and tried out their English on us. In one museum, Marianne met a young woman named Juin who adopted her as an auntie; the two of them ran around town for the next few weeks.
Early in our stay, Marianne looked out the hotel window and spotted a humble restaurant next door, patronized by Koreans, sitting cross-legged at low tables, eating, waiting for buses back to the countryside. We walked past and saw them eating the same dish—roast duck, out of clay pots, with purple rice and various nuts and fruits, including plums, one of the great ethnic dishes we have ever tasted. We have never encountered the specialty in New York;
if you know where to find it, please let me know.
One sweet day, we went to the arts center nestled in the hills, away from the bad air of central Seoul, and attended a pansori concert, men telling tall tales as energetic women pound on drums. Korean rap, I called it. Very cool.
This was my sixth World Cup, and I had never seen so much pride and hope from the host nation. The psychic core of a people was on display.
* * *
Seoul was connected to the rest of South Korea by a fine rail system, with special trains back from night games. One of my trips was to the first World Cup match ever for China, coached by everybody’s good friend Bora Milutinović, now on his fifth different World Cup squad. Bora’s team had been training on Cheju Island, the traditional Korean site for newlyweds, but China’s venture would have a very short honeymoon.
Exactly thirteen years after the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, I took the train to Kwangju, itself the site of a dreadful massacre of protestors in 1980. I sat on the train next to a young stockbroker from Shanghai, who pointed out his fellow yuppies, a fashion writer, a doctor, a banker, all with electronic gadgets and stylish clothes, making me look even more shabby and outmoded than usual.
Unfortunately, China was not very advanced in men’s soccer, hanging with Costa Rica for a half and then surrendering two goals. China would finish with no goals and nine goals allowed and has not been back to the World Cup since.
That night I learned something that would serve me well for the rest of the tournament—don’t touch the wretched faux-Western food at the stadium. There was a better alternative at every train station, no matter how late: a couple of older women would be selling noodle soup for the long ride back to Big Town. These ajummas—grannies, babushkas—were more outgoing than other Asian women, with ruddy cheeks, frizzy hair, big smiles, dropping lines on me that were undoubtedly funny, maybe even bawdy, while plopping shrimp into my container. I still wonder what they were saying.
Eight World Cups Page 19
