Howard’s heroics to ‘Dos a Cero’: US men’s World Cup campaigns ranked
The US men have been to every World Cup so far … aside from the last one, the 1938 edition, and every single one between 1950 and 1990.
Some trips have been momentous occasions that propelled the sport in the US forward. Some passed by a country that ignored soccer for a generation or three. And some may bring about traumatic memories, in which case American readers may be advised to skip down to No 6 or so.
Here’s how the US men’s World Cup excursions rank, in reverse order.
10) 1934 (first round)
Blink. You missed it. The secondever World Cup went with a straight knockout format, and the US men were well and truly knocked out, losing 7-1 to the hosts, Italy, in the opening game. The US barely mustered a team for the occasion and their participation was limited to a whirlwind four days: meeting Pope Pius XI, winning their firstever World Cup qualifying match (4-2 over Mexico) in front of Benito Mussolini, and being thrashed by the hosts.
9) 1998 (group stage)
It was all going so well. The US had acquitted themselves nicely at the 1994 World Cup on home soil before record crowds, defying the expectation that the tournament would flop in a soccerindifferent country. They went on to beat Argentina at the 1995 Copa America and Brazil in the 1998 Gold Cup too.
Then it all fell apart. Internal dissent. Inexperienced internationals inexplicably added to the roster. The exile of “captain for life” John Harkes. And bizarre tactics – the 3-6-1 formation spawned the satirical magazine ThreeSixOne, its name an homage to British magazine FourFourTwo.
The US went winless in France, including a 2-1 loss to lightly regarded but highly motivated Iran in which the team frequently rattled the woodwork. On the bright side, the sportsmanship between the two teams despite the political undercurrents won plaudits. One small step forward for USAIran diplomacy, one giant step back for US men’s soccer, which would start to endure taunts that contrasted the men with a US women’s team who were eagerly grabbing the spotlight.
8) 2006 (group stage)
A team full of 2002 World Cup veterans, most still in their prime. Bruce Arena, the mastermind of 2002, still in charge. A convincing run to first place in Concacaf qualifying that included a dos a cerowin over Mexico.
But the Czech Republic overwhelmed the US in the group-stage opener, winning 3-0. A brutal, bizarre game with Italy followed, with the US winning respect in global soccer for a resilient 1-1 result and winning respect from mainstream US media who saw Brian McBride’s bloody face, the product of a Daniele De Rossi elbow, and realized soccer players are a bit tougher than they thought. A win over Ghana would have sent the US to the knockout rounds, but a couple of blunders yielded a 2-1 loss.
7) 1990 (group stage)
Look, they made it, OK? And the euphoria of Paul Caligiuri’s “Shot Heard ‘Round the World,” a long-range looping effort in Trinidad that ended the US men’s 40-year period in the World Cup wilderness, couldn’t be undone by a predictable early ouster in Italy.
Czechoslovakia ran over the US 5-1, with Caligiuri scoring the lone goal for the newbies. A 1-0 defeat to Italy was a bit of a moral victory, but the team departed with a 2-1 loss to Austria despite playing against 10 men for most of the game. But getting there ahead of hosting in 1994 was the most important part. To ask more of a team with scant professional experience would have been a bit much.
6) 1950 (group stage)
If we’re ranking World Cup games, the 1-0 win over mighty England, who had finally agreed to play nice and test their mettle against the rest of the world, would be near the top. After all, no other game has been made into a feature film starring Patrick Stewart. (Alas, it introduced many historical inaccuracies that weren’t present in the book, and it was a box office bomb.)
But it’s difficult to rank the 1950 World Cup higher than the tournaments in which the US advanced past the group stage. In Brazil, they didn’t come close, with a 3-1 defeat to Spain and a 5-2 loss to Chile sandwiching the victory over England.
Still, the US led most of the way against Spain, and it’s hard to argue with that famed win over England. It would be another 44 years before the US won another World Cup game. (Well, 41 – the US women won it all in 1991, though that was technically called the “First Fifa World Championship for Women’s Football for the M&M’s Cup.”)
5) 1994 (round of 16)
Facing global skepticism, the team, the organizers and the ticket-buyers delivered when the World Cup came to the US.
Blending US-based players with a few Europe-based pros, colorful coach Bora Milutinović got the most out of an underrated group. Eric Wynalda, sent off in 1990, scored a brilliant free kick to forge a 1-1 tie with Switzerland, earning the US men their first point in 44 years.
Next up: Colombia, one of the tournament favorites. The US scored first on an own goal by Andres Escobar, who was murdered soon after returning home. Then Tab Ramos, one of the brightest of a generation of US schoolboys, slipped a pass to Earnie Stewart, born and raised in the Netherlands, for a clinical finish. The 2-1 result gave the US the points they would need to advance.
The rest of the run was less memorable. Group play ended with a dreary 1-0 loss to Romania. A red card to Brazil’s Leonardo in the round of 16 game (on Independence Day) gave the US some hope, but that foul knocked Ramos out of the game. With John Harkes already out due to yellow-card accumulation, the midfield lacked punch, and Brazil took a 1-0 win to end the party.
4) 2010 (round of 16) All together now …
“Are things on here for the USA? Can they do it here? Cross … and Dempsey is denied again … AND DONOVAN HAS SCORED!”
It wasn’t just that the goalwent viral. The reactionswent viral. This video alone has 5.4m views …
Yes, it was ‘only’ a 1-0 win against Algeria, but context is everything.
Landon Donovan’s goal put a team that thoroughly deserved a round-of-16 berth into the round of 16. A year before, the US had ended Spain’s 35match unbeaten run in the Confederations Cup. In South Africa, the US had drawn with England 1-1, then fought back to draw Slovenia 2-2. After 90 minutes against a tough Algerian side, it looked as if the US would go home to rue dubious calls and missed shots. Then Tim Howard flung the ball far into midfield for Donovan, who kept running and was perfectly placed to net the rebound off Clint Dempsey’s shot.
In the knockout rounds, Ghana eliminated the US for the second straight World Cup, winning 2-1 in extra time.
3) 2014 (round of 16)
Another Cup, another viral moment. Or 16, the number of saves Tim Howard made against a high-powered Belgian side that finally broke through in extra time for a 2-1 win, leaving the US to lament a couple of chances to pull off their biggest upset at the World Cup since beating Portugal in 2002.
Howard set a World Cup record. More importantly, he became a meme. Creative Twitter users spliced his picture into various scenes in which he stopped the Titanic from sinking, saved fictional characters such as Bambi’s mom, Ned Stark and Mufasa, and even blocked Luis Suarez from biting Giorgio Chiellini.
The memorable loss shouldn’t overshadow what the US accomplished before then, advancing out of the Group of Death with a cathartic win over nemesis Ghana and a draw against Portugal (a strong performance in which a late giveaway gifted Portugal the tying goal). Germany defeated the US 1-0, but the goal difference was kept close enough to advance the US to the matchup with Belgium.
2) 1930 (semi-finals)
How is a trip to the World Cup semifinals, objectively the USA’s best result in a men’s World Cup, not ranked first? The caveat here is that only 13 teams entered. There was no qualifying. Only four European teams could be bothered to make the journey to Uruguay.
But the US was a legitimate soccer power at the time, having had a thriving professional league through much of the 1920s – a fact conveniently forgotten by those who would inaccurately write off this team as a bunch of English and Scottish men in red, white and blue. The Yanks thrashed Belgium 3-0 and did the same to Paraguay as Bert Patenaude notched the first World Cup hat-trick, even if Fifa didn’t recognize it as such for another 76 years.
The 6-1 loss to Argentina in the semi-finals should carry a bit of an asterisk, as Argentina benefited greatly from the referee’s indifference to the fact that the game was more of a street brawl, leaving some American players without a full set of teeth, a functioning knee or an unbroken leg. In the days before substitutions, the US were barely standing by game’s end.
1) 2002 (quarter-finals)
You could say this team was unlucky not to reach the semi-finals after outplaying Germany, only to see some Oliver Kahn goalkeeping heroics and a missed handball on the goalline (off a shot by current US coach Gregg Berhalter).
You could also say the 2002 team was lucky to get thatfar, thanks to Portugal’s baffling flameout against South Korea that gave the US second place in the group despite a shocking loss to Poland. Mexican fans may also note that John O’Brien got away with a handball in the famous last-16 matchup.
But this team was a shining example of what the US could accomplish when things went right. O’Brien and Claudio Reyna were healthy, sadly all too rare. Right back Tony Sanneh also was in peak form. And the duo of Landon Donovan and DaMarcus Beasley, less than three years removed from taking the Gold Ball and Silver Ball at the Under-17 World Cup, was ready to play at senior level.
Unlike the 1930 World Cup, the 2002 edition was truly global, with nearly 200 countries involved when you take into account the qualifying rounds. And the impact in the US was immediate, with fans packing sports bars in the middle of the night to watch live and talk about the games over copious amounts of coffee at work a few hours later.
So the result wasn’t just measured by the wins – 3-2 over Portugal’s vaunted golden generation, dos a ceroover Mexico. MLS, on the verge of collapse earlier in the year, solidified and moved forward. The stodgy mainstream sports media awoke to find itself in a soccer nation. At last.