Soccer Podcast

The podcast discusses how the U.S. won the bid for the 1994 World Cup and the skepticism surrounding it. In the 1980s, the U.S. had an underwhelming soccer culture due to a declining professional league and a focus on American sports. The lack of soccer culture led to the perception of weakness and an inability to develop talented players. Skepticism was also fueled by the focus on commercialization and the use of artificial turf in stadiums. Despite these challenges, the U.S. successfully secured the bid by making a strong case to FIFA. The bid process was seen as an opportunity to revive and advance soccer in the U.S. by boosting awareness and developing the game. President Ronald Reagan's speech was part of the pitch to FIFA. Alright, hello everybody. Welcome to our podcast titled Soccer's New Frontier, the U.S. winning the bid for the 1994 World Cup. We've got Christian here with us today, Taylor, Eve, Trey, and Carter. Alright, so we're going to talk about how the U.S. secured the bid and the skepticism surrounding the U.S.A. being the host of this World Cup and how this changed soccer following the World Cup. Yeah, during this time period in the 1980s, the U.S.A. had quite an underwhelming culture when it came to soccer and there were many different reasons behind that. The main one was that there was a really diminishing soccer professional league in the States. At the time, the league was the NASL, the North American Soccer League, and it was teetering towards extinction. There was about 24 teams in 1980 in the league and big stars like Pele, Johan Cruyff had played in the league. And in 1982, there was just 12 teams with no signs of improvement. Yeah, it was like cut in half. Yeah, in just a two year span. Cut in half. I can cut these breaks out. Do you want to go? Yeah, sure. A few of the, okay, there we go. A few of the reasons that led to the collapse of the NASL were overexpansion, heavy amounts of team financial budgets being used on player salaries, so they were just spending way too much money on the player salaries themselves, not putting money into the league. A lot of the owners were really just focused on the business aspect. They wanted the money. A lot of greedy rich guys that wanted the money. They didn't care about soccer like most of the people in the United States. The focus was heavily on American sports like baseball and football. In the United States, even basketball too. We see that throughout the United States history, soccer wasn't a big thing ever. And we finally were able to get some traction going with the 1990s before World Cup. To touch on the player salaries, I want to go back to that because we know in today's game, like that's a huge amount of like where the spending is with all the clubs. That's where they spend most of their money. I think the difference here is just, you know, the NASL didn't have the money coming in. They're spending the money on other players. They weren't getting the money from the revenue. They didn't get the attention that like sports like baseball and football were getting in the States, which just really hurt them and it brought them down real fast as we can see. Totally. Okay. Where are we at right now? I think the next page. Another factor. Sorry, I just coughed too. Alright. So now we're talking about... Just the top of the next page. Page four. It's more about culture. Okay. You can touch on the national team game. As we mentioned before, there's a big lack of soccer culture in the States. We were perceived as weak by other nations. Just recently the United States failed to qualify for the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, which we had bid for as well. And now we just ambitiously wanted to host the World's Greatest Sporting Tournament. They had failed to qualify for the World Cup in 40 years. They went 40 years without playing in the tournament. So it almost seemed like this bid or the one in 86 and the one for 94 was almost like a last-ditch effort to save the sport or try to get something out of it because they had nothing going. Yeah. And another common opinion from those outside the U.S. was just that they had an inability to develop and train talented players. And you saw that in those teams being unable to qualify for big tournaments. We still see that today even. The most famous player from the United States now, Christian Pulisic, isn't even one of the top players in the world. And he's coming from one of the biggest countries, one of the most dominant countries in the world. Yeah, I mean, you look at the U.S. men's team today and they have not been succeeding. I mean, they're losing to teams that 10 years ago they would have crushed. So yeah, to prove that point, I mean, Christian Pulisic, Tim Weah, I think that's his name, some of those top players, you're not even hearing their name anymore because compared to other people, they're just not that big anymore. Sorry, are we moving forward to talking about the... Commercialization. Okay. Let me just... What time are we at? We're five minutes down. Okay, good. Probably a minute and a half, two minutes of random. Yeah, okay. Probably three minutes of talking. Okay. Do you want to take the... Are we at... We're starting at the middle. We're just doing the... Another reason for skepticism. Yeah, another reason for skepticism. I'm like lost, you guys. Oh, right here. Yeah, there. Okay. Okay, so yeah, all right. Another reason for skepticism was that there was a heavy focus on commercialization in soccer. So as we previously mentioned, soccer in the U.S. was more about money than the sport itself. There was a lack of a national sense of pride for soccer in the United States. So in terms of infrastructure, I feel like many of the fields in the stadiums around the U.S. had turf instead of natural grass, and that goes for around the world. There was an extreme hatred of it, of artificial grass in these stadiums around the world, which led, because of these issues, many of these main arenas having artificial turf was cause for concern in players and fans and teams. Yeah, most of the NFL stadiums had started to transition into the artificial turf for their playing surface, which was a big deal for soccer players because they did not want to play in artificial turf. That goes back a long time ago. They liked playing on the grass. Yeah, I mean, turf is, I mean, it's more so known to cause a few more injuries than grass does, and soccer is just a grassroots game. A lot of these guys grew up playing either on grass or dirt. They never grew up with turf. Which is funny today because, like, when I play soccer, I love the turf. Yeah, I do too, right, and most of the fields I feel like I played on were turf fields. Yeah, so with those reasons in mind, those were the cause of a lot of skepticism around the potential of the United States hosting the World Cup, and their biggest competition in the bidding process for the 1994 World Cup was with Morocco, and we actually have a quote from the Moroccan football delegation who said, it pretty much sums up the view that most likely was quite popular amongst other countries around the world regarding the U.S. hosting the World Cup, and the quote reads, The United States does not need such competitions. They already have so many. All right, ready to hit the transition and move on? Yeah. All right, now that we've talked about the, oh shoot, hold on, I'm sorry. I gotta, I gotta think about this for a second. Well, we'll be just talking about the lead up and potential of them getting it. Now that we know about the skepticism about the United States potentially receiving the bid for the World Cup, as we move forward, we'll begin to talk about the bid process itself for the U.S. in the 1994 World Cup. Yeah, I think firstly with that, we must look back a few years and reference the fact that FIFA had already rejected the USA bidding for the World Cup once before. It came in the year 1983 where the U.S. had bid for a chance to win the 1986 World Cup, and they had failed. They had lost out to Mexico, who obviously is someone that they've had a long history of competition with, so it was kind of a gut punch to the U.S. Right, it was a lazy bid as well. I mean, they didn't really like go for it. They didn't try. They didn't submit a whole lot to FIFA to really convince them to get the tournament. They just kind of put their name in the pot, but it was really never going to be drawn. Steven talked about what hosting would do to the U.S. Yeah, why the U.S. decided to bid. Yeah, I'm just trying to think of how we can transition to the U.S. Well, I guess if I was U.S. and I saw that we were losing fans and losing funding and we needed something to just kind of like kick start soccer again, I would want, I mean it boosted awareness and buzz around the sport within the country, but it could also, and it did develop and advance the game in the U.S. Right. Because it was lacking, and they needed that. There's no greater ambition, I think, in soccer than to try and host the World Cup as a country, especially for a struggling country, in terms of having that culture in place, having a fan base, having even financials to run a domestic league. The opportunity to host the World Cup was really attractive to those within the U.S. who really wanted to promote soccer into being a powerful sport with the likes of football, baseball, and basketball. Yeah, we even saw that when South America hosted the World Cup in 2010. That's when we saw how big of a deal it was for them. Of course, it's not going to be as big of a deal for the United States. It's not as big of a soccer country, but this definitely propelled us into the city. Well, now we're hosting one in 2026. Right, 2026, yeah. I think you meant South Africa. Yeah, South Africa. Oh, my God. Shoot. It's okay. It's all right. Same difference. We'll do a little audio clip over that and say Africa. Africa. Wait, I need my voice out, and then just have it say South Africa. All righty, so you want to talk about the pitch? Yeah. Well, to start, the U.S. learned a lot from the 1986 bid that got rejected. They took a lot away from that, and they knew, like, the approach that they had to give FIFA. This time around, like, it couldn't be some lazy agreement, right? It had to be, you know, set in stone. It had to be, like, a real thing. It had to make it seem real, like they actually wanted to host this and that they deserved to host it. So in doing so, they gave a 22-minute speech to FIFA, accompanied with a two-minute President Ronald Reagan message. I can't see that. I can go ahead and read it. Yeah. Yeah, so with President Reagan's pitch to Joël Haverland, the president of FIFA at the time, it was a really big thing to have, you know, such a prominent political figure show his support for the U.S. hosting the World Cup. We have a little excerpt of the pitch itself that the president gave. We'll go ahead and read the first couple paragraphs. Dear Dr. Haverland, the United States of America would welcome the opportunity to serve as the host country for the 1994 World Cup soccer tournament. First-class stadium, hotel, transportation, communications, and other necessary physical facilities already exist within the United States to stage the tournament in a manner befitting its rich history and tradition. Our country has had considerable experience in hosting successful major international sporting events, with the 1984 Olympic Games and the Pan-American Games being truly the most recent examples, being only the most recent examples. We were particularly delighted to witness the tremendous spectator response to the soccer competition during the 1984 Olympic Games. With the remarkable increase in both the number of soccer participants in the United States and Americans' interest in this worldwide sport, we expect that the 1994 World Cup would be exceptionally well-received, too. Yes, I mean, they were confident. I mean, yeah, we do have, at that time, compared to other countries, had very successful transportation. Stadiums as well. Stadiums. I mean, countries didn't have the stadiums that we had. Like, we had everything in place to host the World Cup. You see that with a lot of countries who have hosted, like, most recently Qatar. Yeah, with Qatar, they had to build 10 stadiums. Even Brazil, who had a really strong soccer culture, needed to build large stadiums in order to accommodate, you know, the world stage. And then the U.S. already had all that infrastructure in place to really put them in a good position. Yeah, we also just avoided worker exploitation, like how we saw with Qatar. Not as bad. Real bad. Okay. Well, then, July 4th, 1988, Independence Day, in Switzerland, which is also the home of FIFA, they announced that the United States bid for the 1994 World Cup had been selected and that the U.S. would host the tournament. Yeah, this was a big event for soccer in the United States. It's funny, too, because the original selection date wasn't going to be on the 4th, but they rescheduled it and they moved it to the 4th, and I think once the U.S. saw that, they're like, there's no way they're not going to take on that. Yeah, and then July 4th. All right. So I think that we wanted to put this in here just because we think it's important. Jim Trucker, press officer for the World Cup of 94, he said that when they said we had it, I knew our sport was reborn and I knew our country was in for a treat beyond anyone's wildest dreams. So I think that that just goes to show how important this was for the U.S. and how they needed this. For sure, to rebuild that soccer culture. It was important. Now we'll go ahead and get into what some of the big reasons were for them being successful with their bid. In terms of the first one, it was just a massive financial opportunity for not only FIFA but the U.S. It was a part of the world that was really untapped by global soccer, and it was just a massive opportunity to grow the game in an area that is so commercially successful in many other aspects, not only just in sport but in culture. That was one of the main motivations behind the FIFA selection. Yeah, and I think the infrastructure, like we just talked about stadiums, transportation. We didn't really need to build much. We kind of already had it. We used our resources, what we had, to our advantage for sure. Just having places like the Rose Bowl that seats over 100,000 people, that's going to be big. When you're looking to host a massive tournament, venues like that are going to get big. And FIFA is a corporation, a big corporation like that. They want the money. They all want the money, right? So if they look at the United States, this is a huge opportunity for us. You want to compare Morocco, the second-place team in the bidding, and the U.S., everyone can look on a map and point to where the U.S. is. I don't think everyone can look on a map and point to where Morocco is, right? Everybody knows the United States, and they know, again, we talked about the stadiums and stuff like that, what they already have in place. FIFA was going to lose a lot less money because they wouldn't have to contribute to building these stadiums and whatnot. Yeah, potential for revenue is much higher. Right, yeah. Yeah, the last reason is just FIFA, they wanted to conquer the final big country. Like they were a dominant force, and they did not have the United States as one of the countries that was a soccer-dominated country. So just FIFA getting in and finally getting the tournament to the states was massive for their expansion. But it was even with all of this excitement around the U.S., especially within the bidding committee and the group of soccer fans with ties to the game within the U.S., there was high excitement with them, but the selection of the U.S. as the host nation for the World Cup was met with a lot of mixed opinions, especially around the world. And people weren't too optimistic about a country hosting the world's greatest soccer tournament, sporting tournament, in a country that just has no culture for the game in the eyes of outside nations. I think even in the states, you know, a lot of people here would look at the news and they'd see like, oh, the U.S. won the bid, and they're like, well, what does this mean? Right. Like, they know what the World Cup is, but, you know, what's the significance? Yeah, without the culture, how are you supposed to feel pride? Exactly. So with those concerns, are we done here? Are there any other players being required to play? You can read those quotes. Yeah. We can just say, like. Oh, you didn't read that yet? Not yet, no. Okay. Yeah, there was a lot of positive reactions in the states. There were quite a few negative reactions from around the world. Several journalists compared the awarding of the FIFA World Cup to the United States to, quote, holding a major skiing competition in an African country. Yeah, just referencing that, you know, soccer is just out of place in America, and that they would prefer it to be hosted by a nation that has the football or soccer heritage in place. But in general, most of the outside world, particularly in Latin America and also Europe, just really expressed their doubt and were just kind of hostile about the U.S. They felt offended by the U.S. hosting the World Cup. They figured that this move was a political decision by FIFA, and that their only motivation was to just try to conquer a part of the world that, you know, would make them the most money or just, yeah, pretty much. I mean, there was also physical concerns, like these players having to play in the summer heat during the day. I mean, it gets hot. Texas, Florida, California, it gets pretty hot over there, so there were physical concerns as well as, like, mental health, well-being. So, yeah, moving forward, a large part of the choice to have the USA host the 1994 World Cup is only going to cost them about $500 million, which sounds like a lot, but it's not compared to what other nations have spent, like Qatar. Yeah, spending billions. With the U.S. having, you know, all those stadiums, transportation, everything kind of already in place, they just needed to really only make a few renovations to stadiums and also work on developing pitches that would be played on was kind of the main sources of their spend on the tournament. Yeah. And FIFA and the U.S. did have a massive opportunity in front of them with this tournament to really boost, like, the game of soccer and their marketing presence and their global presence. From the perspective, the mountain that needed to be climbed during the 1993 World Cup group stage draw in Las Vegas, over 500 million people tuned in to watch this, which each country that was qualified would be matched up against, but these 500 million viewers, only about 1 million of them were American. So this just kind of shows how successful the tournament needed to be in the U.S. to really get the U.S.A.'s own population into the game, watching it, but also to show everybody else in the world that the game belongs in America, soccer belongs in America. Yeah, I mean, that kind of just paints the picture of how people just didn't really care. I mean, only a million Americans, 500 million viewers, it was a big hill to climb for FIFA and the U.S. soccer confederation to make this tournament successful and to help grow the game in the country. Yeah, even putting that into perspective, the five-season Super Bowl only had 123 million viewers, which, that's a fifth of what the group stage draw, just to see what country your team would be matching up against. That's crazy. So this is the audio clip, but I think that we should move this down a little bit before we talk about the overview. Yeah. So we can start with continuing our story. We're at like 24 minutes or so. Oh, yeah, we'll be good. Yeah, I think we'll be fine. We still got a lot to do. Yeah, we can probably do about 10 minutes here. Okay. Kind of skip around a little bit. So moving forward with our story here, we're going to take a look at some of the lasting impacts that the U.S. securing the bid to host the World Cup would have on them. And first and most importantly, the winning bid of the World Cup sparked the creation of Major League Soccer, what we know today. So the MLS was founded in 1993 on the back of them, the U.S. winning the bid for the World Cup. They began play in 1996, just two years after the World Cup itself. We have a quote here that says, the creation of the league was part of a successful bid by the United States to host the 1994 World Cup, seeking to capitalize on the expected surge in football popularity in the country in the wake of its hosting of the world's most celebrated sports tournament. So a little bit on the MLS. It began with 10 teams. It's now 29 teams today with 25 of them being located in the U.S. and also three in Canada. So a really big development in just about 20 years of play. And the league has gone on to become really successful with players from many different countries. I think I read a fact that it's one of the most diverse leagues in the world in terms of nationalities represented. So it became, you know, a really successful professional league. Yeah, it gets even bigger with guys like Messi coming over. We've got some of the biggest global stars playing here now. Do we even need to talk about this next part? I was going to say we've kind of touched on the stadium, right? Yeah. So we're just talking impacts. I don't think any of that really has anything to do with impacts right now because we've already touched on it. Okay. We can, like, transition into that video now if someone can say something about that and then we can go into the overview. Like the opening ceremony? Yeah, we can say that. So now we'll take a break for it. And then we'll give the overview of the World Cup. Got it. Okay, yeah. And so we'll take a quick break for an audio clip from the opening ceremony of the World Cup. Okay. Yeah. Now someone will start on the overview. I'll give the overview. Okay. I'm trying to think. This was the first tournament with 24 teams, wasn't it? Or I could be wrong, but I think it was the last tournament with 24 teams. Oh, that could be it, too, actually. Yeah, I think they expanded after this one. I'm not completely sure, but, yeah, we can look it up. Expanded to 24 in 1982 and then to 32 in 1998. So the last one. Okay. Yeah. Just to give a quick overview of this World Cup, this World Cup consisted of 24 countries, and this was actually the last time we'd seen this 24-team format before it stretched to eight groups of four, so 32 countries. This was the first tournament we saw a united Germany team, before it was East and West Germany, as well as Russia following the fall of the Soviet Union. It's interesting to see this. England actually failed to qualify. Something to laugh about there, I guess. England hurt them. Right. Yeah. Did not qualify for it. Especially a tournament in the States as well. A couple of things that happened during the tournament. Maradona had played two games before getting a TED suspension, and his suspension lasted 15 months. That was towards the very back end of his career. The U.S. made it out of the group stage and went to the round of 16. First time they've made it that far since 1930. There was a few new rule changes, like a new penalty shootout format, and teams receiving three points for a win rather than two. Yeah, and that's something we still see today. Right. Yeah. And we tabled the rule as well. Right. Penalties didn't last, though. The run-up from half-field. That was always fun. I mean, let's see that. Yeah, that didn't stay around. The Pontiac Silverdome, the indoor stadium here in Detroit, was the first indoor World Cup venue ever and hosted a game between the U.S. and Switzerland. Interestingly enough, Michigan State actually helped grow the natural grass playing surface that was used in the Silverdome. Unsurprisingly, Brazil won their fourth World Cup. This is kind of around the time when their team was just incredibly dominant and they beat Italy in a penalty shootout. Yeah, I just watched a video on that. It was crazy to see a lot of people there. And I think it was 3-2. Yes. Yeah. Was that game at the Rose Bowl? It was at the Rose Bowl, yeah. Great venue for a World Cup win. All right, do we want to move into the end? Are we good with all that? Yeah, I think so. I think this last part is a good thing to read. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, beginning to wrap things up, the World Cup was extremely successful, both on a financial and sporting level. Provided great entertainment, interesting rule changes, some of the world's greatest stars on display, and the host nation was able to pull off something that many didn't think was possible, creating a real excitement and buzz around the fame of soccer in the USA. They really gave this country exactly what they wanted. Everything they could have gained out of this tournament, they pretty much did. It turned out to be a massive success, and we're still seeing some of the impacts that it's had. Right. Especially with sparking that interest in soccer within the country and the results of that on developing players that we see today, like we mentioned before, Pulisic, Timothy Weah, Tyler Adams are just some, to name a few. These are players that are playing in Europe's biggest leagues, on the biggest stages, and America has progressed a lot. Yeah, I think especially when you look at the youth level of just development, it's a huge improvement. I could be wrong on this, but I believe right now, I think soccer is the second most played sport at a youth level, only under baseball right now, I think. I could be wrong with that. That's got to be true. Yeah, the development is crazy. There's a whole lot more academies now than there was. They're getting these kids in the right places with the coaches and the scouting and stuff like that. We're also having 17, 18-year-olds join our national team. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah, we're starting to get where other countries are. The biggest thing about this World Cup was that it was the most profitable World Cup in history, even today. It profited $1.45 billion for the United States. That's crazy to think about. A ton of money, and to think that they only put in $500 million to host. Crazy, too, because there's a lot of World Cups that don't profit at all. They go net negative. Fast forward to today. The development of soccer in this country has led up to us having the opportunity to host another World Cup alongside Canada and Mexico in the year 2026, winning a bid and using some of the same facilities that were used in the past, which is a really, really cool thing. But overall, the 1994 World Cup played such an important part in laying the foundation for what sort of spectacle that the world's greatest tournament played in the USA could look like. Like we said, this is something we're going to see again here in a couple years. It's a really exciting time for U.S. soccer. Hopefully the team is able to rally around our new coach, Mauricio Pochettino, and the young guys are able to have an amazing tournament, too. I mean, even in 2026, we'll still have a very young team looking at a good group of players here. And as a host team, we'll see how far we can get. Can only hope. All righty. We have 33 minutes. Do we need to have one? I think we should do like a quick intro maybe. Okay. Thanks for listening. We can kind of hear you. A little bit. Okay. I'm trying to see if there's anything. Like do I literally just say, thanks for listening? I don't really listen to podcasts. Oh, I'm wondering if you put anything on that. You probably have like a pre-recorded thing. I don't know if you have anything on the grading criteria. I see my share of YouTube outros. Oh, yeah. Does it include a brief 30-second max concluding or outro segment? Okay, so we have all that earlier, but... I guess we can just say like, so today we talked about, you know, the lead-up to the tournament and the skepticism around the U.S. being host, eventually winning the bid, the impact that it had, and then just I guess we can say our names again. Damn, Christian and Trey. Carter. Okay. All right, guys, and thanks for listening with us. We've got Christian here, Carter, Trey, and Taylor, Eve as well, while we talk about how the U.S. secured the 1994 World Cup bid, how it changed our country for the better, and how we're heading into 2026 with some sort of experience under our belt. That works. Perfect. Great. And we'll just like, if you like...