A Good Place to Start

Some form of football or soccer was first played in the territory comprising the United States as long ago as the early 1600's, in the Jamestown settlements of tidewater Virginia. These games, however, and the related games that took place in countless forms across the colonies and states for the greater part of the next three hundred years, bore little resemblance to the modern game as we know it today. In fact, the rules of the game were so different in the past that historians of both soccer and gridiron football count the contest between Princeton and Rutgers in November 1869 as the first recorded intercollegiate game using rules resembling the modern game(s) for both sports.

That fabled game in New Jersey (Rutgers prevailed by the score of 6-4) was actually more similar to rugby and modern soccer than it was to modern American football. The game was contested on a field conforming to the London Football Association's 1863 rules, with a field measuring 110 x 70 meters, a 24-foot wide goal, and movement of the ball allowed by all parts of the body - the ball could be kicked or batted, but not thrown.

While soccer and American football have clearly taken divergent paths since that date, it was not always the case, however, that soccer played second fiddle to the sport that is now the preeminent sunday religion in many parts of America. At the turn of the 20th century, only baseball was well-established as a professional sport in America. Soccer was popular amongst the dense immigrant communities up and down the Atlantic coast, with a particular concentration in the swath of civilization running from Boston, Massachusetts to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The development of soccer in the United States took a further jump in 1913 when the United States Football Association (known now as the United States Soccer Federation or USSF) was formed and accepted for membership with FIFA. One of the USFA's first actions was to create an official national championship tournament (known now as the Open Cup), open to any team that wished to enter. First contested in 1914, this championship is third to the World Series and the Stanley Cup Finals as the longest running team sport tournament in America.

The early national championship tournaments were dominated by semi-professional traveling squads from booming industrial towns such as Fall River, Massachusetts, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and communities in the greater NYC metro area. Two of the more well-known squads, Bethlehem Steel and the Fall River Rovers met in the national finals three years running, 1916-1918.

Teams such as these were made up of a mix of American players and immigrants largely hailing from England, Scotland and Ireland. These teams, to whom soccer historians credit with developing the first incarnation of the "American" style of play, generally utilized the direct and unimaginative long-ball style of play that continues to so often be denigrated by critics of the game as it is played in the UK today.

Unfortunately, it appears that the "American" style has developed only slightly in the eighty some-odd years that have passed since descendants of Northern Europeans first established a foothold for soccer in America. The USMNT, while recently blessed with speedy players who allow the team to counterattack effectively, generally relies on the same northern european style that has dominated soccer in this country for as long as the game has been played: a style reliant laregely on constant vigorous effort - particularly on defense - but lacking in the skills, posession, flair and imagination that are evident amongst players in continental Europe and South America.

To some extent, this style of play has served the USMNT well. The benefits of this style can be seen when the opposition consists of players of smaller stature such as those often seen on the USMNT's CONCACAF opponents. The larger US players are able to assert themselves physically and keep the opposition from taking effective offensive positions, and teams from the Central American and the Caribbean Islands generally lack the skill and cohesiveness necessary to prevail over such physically superior opponents.

Perhaps the single greatest success of the current American style is evident in the dominance that the USMNT has asserted over the Mexican team over the past several years. The US has repeatedly and effectively neutralized the Mexican attacking players with superior size, and the Mexicans' increased frustration levels has led them to abandon the attractive style of play they so often demonstrate in World Cup games against non-CONCACAF opposition. Recently, however, the Mexicans have seen more and more of their young skilled players snatched up by powerful European clubs and it seems likely that it is only a matter of time before Mexico learns that it must not be distracted by US tactics and assert its own imprint on the game. When Mexico does so, the USMNT is in for a tough time.

The US style is often successful against lesser-European teams as well. US fans point to shutout victories over Poland, Switzerland and Sweden in the last 6 months as proof that the USMNT is able to be successful against European competition on European soil. This success, however, while nice in the short term, means little. The USMNT should be expected to prevail in such encounters. When faced with opposition employing a similar direct style of play, the USMNT's superior athleticism should overcome the likes of Poland, Sweden and Switzerland given that the US population (and the resulting pool of possible players) dwarfs that of those three nations (38, 9 and 7 million respectively).

The USMNT has also seen similar postive results come to nought before. Those who remember the USMNT's overwhelming 3-0 victory over Austria in April 1998 will also remember that such a result was little but a memory as the curtain came down on the USMNT's appearance in France just a few short months later.

Ultimately, my intent is not simply to criticize but to question. Why has the US style of play failed to develop? Why has the US national program continued to prize the type of player who is suited to the direct style of play but who lacks the skill on the ball to match the players turned out by countries like Germany, Italk, Argentina (and even Ghana)? It seems that we should grow tired of success over relative international minnows when the USMNT is so often out-classed against the superior-skilled competition. It is this man's opinion that the American style of play has seen no real development in the past 3-4 Wold Cup cycles because those charged with assessing and implementing the technical aspects of the USMNT have too much to risk - better to achieve modest success with a style that is likely to achieve solid if not spectacular results, than to risk failure with a style that represents a dramatic change for the better.

For this reason, it will be interesting to see the style of play used by Bob Bradley and the USMNT in its upcoming high-profile matches against England (5/28), Spain (6/4), and Argentina (6/8). If the USMNT abandons any effort to control the midfield with passing and movement (as it so often does) and resorts to long, hopeful outlet play in the hope of keeping the score respectable, it will simply be more of the same. If the USMNT comes out and plays with a noticeable intent to match the skill and possession of its superior opponents it may find that doing so, even in a losing effort, is a learning experience worth its weight in gold. We shall see.