News Focus
- Alan Rothenberg transformed the USSF from a volunteer group into a professional body within four years
- The 1994 World Cup remains the most attended tournament in history with 3.6 million tickets sold
- Major League Soccer launched two years after the tournament, building on its success
- Football has recently overtaken baseball to become America’s third most popular sport
- Extensive Premier League television coverage has accelerated the game’s growth in recent decades
When Alan Rothenberg accepted the top job at the United States Soccer Federation in 1990, he inherited an organisation run like a local charity. Just six full-time staff worked from a small portable office in Colorado Springs. Yet this tiny team faced an enormous deadline: hosting the world’s biggest sporting event in just four years’ time.
Rothenberg brought valuable experience from the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. He understood that Americans love grand spectacles. His strategy involved packaging the 1994 World Cup as essential entertainment rather than just sport.
Many people thought his plan would fail. When FIFA chose America to host the tournament, critics laughed. A Brazilian official famously remarked that giving the World Cup to the USA was like taking the World Series to Brazil. The country’s professional league had died five years earlier, and the national team had failed to qualify for nine of the previous ten World Cups.
Rothenberg refused to listen. Six months before the opening match, he held the tournament draw in Las Vegas. He turned a normally boring procedure into a glamorous showbiz event featuring Barry Manilow and comedian Robin Williams. Williams entertained the crowd by deliberately mispronouncing FIFA general secretary Sepp Blatter’s name as “Sepp Bladder.”
The opening ceremony continued this Hollywood theme. Television star Oprah Winfrey presented the show, which included singer Diana Ross taking a penalty kick as part of a musical act. She missed the goal, but the entertainment worked. Fans purchased tickets in record numbers.
Over 90,000 supporters filled the Rose Bowl in Pasadena to watch Colombia play Romania in an early group match. By the end of the tournament, organisers had sold 3.6 million tickets. This makes the 1994 World Cup the best-attended edition ever held. The American team reached the knockout stages after defeating Colombia, achieving their first World Cup victory since 1950.
This triumph persuaded businessmen to invest in a new professional league. Major League Soccer started in 1996, two years after the World Cup finished. The early seasons included unusual rules like shootouts to decide drawn matches and countdown clocks. These American-style innovations disappeared after the national team surprised everyone by reaching the 2002 World Cup quarter-finals in Japan and South Korea.
Football now ranks as America’s third favourite sport, recently passing baseball according to research by The Economist. Roger Bennett, presenter of the popular Men in Blazers podcast, believes extensive television coverage of the Premier League has driven much of this recent growth. English top-flight matches now reach millions of American homes every week, building upon the foundation that Rothenberg’s 1994 tournament established.