FRANCE 98 – Team Detail

The USA may be playing in their sixth World Cup but soccer is still a secondary sport across the Atlantic, well behind American football, basketball and baseball. Although its national association was founded in 1913 it was only in 1994 when they organised the World Cup on their own soil that America really woke up to soccer.

It was feared that failure to qualify for France 98 might jeopardise the new professional championship, Major League Soccer, which got under way in 1996.

Surprisingly, the USA reached the semi-finals of the first World Cup in Uruguay in 1930. After beating Belgium and Paraguay they lost 6-1 to Argentina. They have since never got beyond the second round of last 16, as they did in 1994 when they lost 1-0 to Brazil at that stage of the competition.

The current team qualified by finishing runners-up to Mexico in the CONCACAF Zone. The majority of their players are involved in the MSL, often after a spell in Europe, like Alexi Lalas, who played in Italy with Padova, and Eric Wynalda, the team’s leading scorer now with San Jose, who played for Dortmund in the German Bundesliga. Only goalkeeper Kasey Keller, with England Premiership side Leicester City, and Claudio Reyna, with German side Wolfsburg, play for overseas clubs.

The Americans hope to prove a point in France but admit their lack of international experience will tell against them.