Jun 13, 2026 5 min read

The first op-ed I ever wrote for the Observer-Reporter was about the World Cup being in the United States in 1994. At the time, soccer was struggling for acceptance and I was trying to help grow the game.

I fell in love with soccer since I was introduced to it in seventh grade, back in the early 1970s. I have played, coached, refereed and been a fan ever since, though arthritis and two knee replacements ended my active participation. Soccer, known in Brazil as Jogo Bonito (or the beautiful game), takes very little equipment, can be played almost anywhere, and is the most popular sport in the world. I was hoping soccer would be one of America’s major sports as well.

One of the great things about soccer is that regardless of what language you speak, if you have skills, you can find a pick-up game almost anywhere. For example, I took some time off from college to do an internship at the Wilson Quarterly in Washington D.C., so I lived there for a few months. This was before the internet, so I went to a local soccer shop to ask where I could find a place to play. They put me in touch with the Annandale Boys Club, which was a very strong youth soccer club.

Since this was before people built indoor soccer facilities, you played wherever you could; in this case, we played in the basement of a department store in a meeting room with a vinyl tile floor, an 8-foot drop ceiling, where we had to move tables and chairs to clear a place to play, and the brick columns supporting the floor above were just obstacles you played around.

John Stollmeyer, who played for the national team, participated. He was born in Pittsburgh but played his youth soccer in the hotbed of Northern Virginia, and was playing for Indiana University (with whom he won two NCAA titles) at the time, so the quality of the games (in spite of the odd “field”) was quite high.

While I was in college, I was ineligible to play for a year (because of NCAA rules regarding transfers) so while I practiced with the team, on weekends I played for the Portuguese Club in Philadelphia (the assistant coach was Portuguese). The team was in a league made up of ethnic teams (Germans, Ukrainians, Jamaicans, etc.), so there were often two languages spoken on the field, and I usually didn’t speak either. After the games the club would provide a Portuguese dinner at the club. The team was an important focal point for the community, and a great way for me to see how some communities valued soccer.

A different assistant coach, who was German, put together an indoor team to go back to play in some Christmas indoor tournaments in his hometown (Goettingen). There I got to experience true soccer culture. We stayed at the club’s dormitory. In addition to soccer, the club also had tennis and a restaurant. Soccer clubs in the U.S. at the time were lucky to have their own field.

Prior to the 1994 World Cup, soccer had been struggling for acceptance. My father, who was a talented three-sport athlete in college (football, basketball and baseball), was disappointed that I gave up American football to play soccer. He (like many) thought soccer was a “sissy” sport. He finally came to one of my high school games when I was a senior and we were living in Louisville, Ky., playing against our arch-rivals from New Albany, Ind. During the game, I caught an elbow to the face and was knocked unconscious. When I came to, I had no idea what happened. My younger brother was walking me up and down the sideline, and I kept asking him what the score was. I went back in the game (this was before concussion protocols) and scored the winning goal. My father started to come to the games after that.

In 1994, I took my oldest son (who was 3 at the time) to the first U.S. game, against Switzerland, in Pontiac, Mich. When we got there, I became concerned that American fans would be outnumbered by Swiss fans, a fear fostered by the massive Swiss flag (held up by two large cranes) just outside the stadium (there was no comparable show of support for the US team). The Silverdome was a domed stadium, and when the Swiss scored first, the noise was deafening (the Swiss fans bring cow bells to the games, which added to the din). It was an inauspicious beginning. Not long after, Eric Wynalda scored on a beautiful free kick, and the noise from the American fans was twice as loud as the Swiss. I knew then that we’d be all right.

We went on to get out of the first round (which was a bar host countries were expected to clear), and lost to the eventual champions Brazil, 1-0, in a hotly contested game (with a red card for each team) in the next round.

The U.S. had proven that we deserved to be in the tournament and that we were quite capable of hosting.

Kent James, of East Washington, has a doctorate in history and policy from Carnegie Mellon University.