Sore, jet-lagged and running on the fumes of worldwide acclaim,

Landon Donovan sprinted onto the Spartan Stadium turf last

Saturday night for the final minutes of the San Jose Earthquakes'

4-0 home win over the Colorado Rapids. Only 38 hours earlier

Donovan, the U.S.'s breathtaking 20-year-old striker, had

tearfully trudged off another field, in Ulsan, South Korea, after

Germany had ended the Americans' stirring World Cup run with a

1-0 quarterfinal defeat. But who needs R and R when you're trying

to grow Major League Soccer? "It's important for all of us to get

back here on our teams," said Donovan, who traveled on to New

York City on Sunday to make the talk-show circuit. "Everything's

just crazy right now."

Keeping it that way will be the hard part for U.S. soccer. As

difficult as reaching the World Cup's elite eight may have been,

turning the sport into a viable domestic enterprise is a far more

daunting challenge. Now that the Yanks have proved they can

compete at the highest level, what comes next? Will soccer be

like track and field, another niche sport in which Americans

excel but the masses watch only once every four years? Or will

MLS someday be the country's fifth major league, with popularity

comparable to the NHL's?

Whatever happens, nobody in MLS expects the U.S.'s World Cup

success to turn the seven-year-old league into a rival of the

NFL, the NBA and Major League Baseball. "There's no lightning in

a bottle," says MLS commissioner Don Garber, a former NFL

marketing honcho. "One of our biggest challenges is persuading

the media of what we want to become. In their minds we're

aspiring to be the NFL, but we're not. We're aspiring to pack

20,000- to 25,000-seat soccer stadiums on Saturdays. We're

aspiring to have stronger television ratings, to continue

developing top-level players and to have great relationships with

our local communities. We're not going to start filling up Giants

Stadium. This is about slowly growing the sport."

If anyone doubted that Americans could play this game, snapshots

from the Germany match provided indisputable evidence to the

contrary. There was Donovan, fearlessly nutmegging midfielder

Dietmar Hamann on the dead run and firing a screamer off the

fingertips of Oliver Kahn. There was right back Tony Sanneh,

launching himself on an 80-yard jailbreak one minute, heading the

ball just wide of the goal the next. There was midfielder Claudio

Reyna, suddenly the bold instigator, trash-talking the Germans

and starting every attack. Michael Ballack's first-half header

off a free kick from the right may have given the mistake-free

Mannschaft the victory, but it was the fluid Americans who won

over impartial soccer fans, creating more scoring chances and

responding with grace after referee Hugh Dallas failed to call a

penalty following a clear German handball on the goal line. "I'm

not [afraid] to say that we were the better team," Reyna said

afterward, and he was right.

U.S. soccer has made big splashes before--at the 1994 World Cup

and the '99 Women's World Cup--but this time a pro league is

already in place to capitalize on the buzz. MLS players filled 11

of the 23 spots on the U.S. World Cup roster and struck five of

the six goals scored by Americans. League attendance, after

stagnating for five years, had risen slightly to an average of

15,294 at week's end, a figure comparable to arena sports such as

hockey and basketball. A 22,555-seat soccer-only facility houses

the Columbus Crew, and ground has been broken on a $100 million

complex in Carson, Calif., which will include a 27,000-seat

stadium for the Los Angeles Galaxy and a national training

center.

Still, despite soccer's massive youth-participation numbers and

surprisingly good World Cup ratings--the U.S.-Germany match on

ESPN was watched in 3.8 million households, the biggest soccer

audience in the network's history, though it kicked off before

breakfast--there's no guarantee that more viewers will now tune in

to MLS games, whose ratings have been microscopic. Will enough

Americans watch to deliver the league a sizable TV contract, one

that would eat into losses in excess of $250 million over the

past six years? Not for nothing did MLS shutter the Miami Fusion

and the Tampa Bay Mutiny in January, reducing itself to 10 teams.

Yet MLS must continue to serve as the national team's primary

feeder system if Americans are to keep improving in the World

Cup. With commitments from its television and sponsorship

partners through 2006, the league has at least four years to

approach profitability. Here are some ways it might use the

U.S.'s World Cup performance as a springboard:

--Hold onto as many young stars as possible and market the hell

out of them. Besides Donovan, many of the Yanks' most

entertaining attackers ply their trade domestically: midfielder

DaMarcus Beasley, 20, of the Chicago Fire; striker Clint Mathis,

25, of the New York/New Jersey MetroStars; forward Brian McBride,

30, of the Columbus Crew; and striker Josh Wolff, 25, of the

Fire. While the Cup raised their profiles Stateside, it also

piqued the interest of wealthy European clubs, which will

probably want to purchase their contracts from MLS. (The league

negotiates all of its players' deals.)

Despite claiming in the past that they would do little to stand

in the way of players who want to go to Europe, MLS executives

now say they're unlikely to sell their most popular assets for a

quick buck. "Those people assuming that all our players are going

to Europe will be proven resoundingly wrong," says deputy

commissioner Ivan Gazidis, who signed Wolff to a four-year, $1.1

million extension at the start of the Cup. "In 12 months the vast

majority of this group will still be in MLS."

Beasley and Donovan are the most coveted players of the bunch,

but while Beasley has been clear about his desire to go overseas,

Donovan is strikingly ambivalent. "I don't want to go back and

sit on the bench for five years," he says. Bayer Leverkusen, the

German club that signed him at 16, banished him to its reserve

team before loaning him to MLS last year. Donovan, who led San

Jose to last year's MLS Cup, says he'll stay with the club for

the rest of this season--and maybe longer. "My experience was

pretty bad in Germany," he says, "and sometimes I think no matter

where I go, it's going to be the same way. I love my life in San

Jose."

--Take the next step in player development. The idea of bypassing

NCAA soccer to develop elite players came up, oddly enough, at

one of college sports' sacred grounds, Legion Field in

Birmingham, where former U.S. Soccer Federation president Alan

Rothenberg watched Argentina spank the U.S. 3-1 during the 1996

Olympic under-23 tournament. "Their college kids are better than

our college kids," Rothenberg remembers saying, knowing full well

that the Argentines hadn't gone to college at all. (Instead, a

handful were playing in Italy's elite Serie A.)

Thus sprang the idea for Project 2010, the USSF's bold plan to

put the U.S. in contention to win the 2010 World Cup. Since then

the onus for grooming prospects outside college has rested

jointly with MLS (whose Project-40 lets a limited number of elite

players join MLS teams while earning college tuition) and the

USSF, which established a full-time residency camp for the

under-17 national team, which in turn produced Beasley and

Donovan. But in order to widen the talent search, development--in

the form of youth and reserve squads--should become the domain of

MLS teams. "That's how they do it around the world," U.S. coach

Bruce Arena says. "If it doesn't become a reality, the league is

never going to make it."

--Get the stadiums built. "It's our biggest challenge," says

Garber, who hopes five soccer-only venues will go up in the next

five years. Having 25,000-seat facilities would allow MLS teams

to set their own schedules, control their own revenue streams and

create a demand for tickets that doesn't exist in 75,000-seat NFL

hulks. Lamar Hunt, who built the Columbus stadium, the MLS's

first soccer-only facility, says he visited every World Cup venue

to get ideas for constructing a stadium for his Kansas City

Wizards. Saying it couldn't afford it, the city of McKinney,

Texas, dropped its plans to build a publicly funded stadium for

the Dallas Burn earlier this year. Perhaps after this World Cup,

cities like McKinney will take a longer look at MLS.

--Continue investing, but do it wisely. All of the steps above

will require millions of dollars, most of them presumably coming

from Phil Anschutz, the reclusive Denver billionaire who owns six

of MLS's 10 teams. It was Anschutz who brokered the $40 million

deal earlier this year in which MLS bought the U.S.'s

English-language TV rights for the 2002 World Cup, the next

Women's World Cup (beginning September 2003 in China) and the

2006 World Cup (which will be held in Germany and aired in the

U.S. during more viewer-friendly daytime hours). "Our investors

have been willing to sink a lot of money into soccer," says

Gazidis. "If we believe something makes sense, we'll do it." Now,

however, as a result of this World Cup and the possible expenses

involved in keeping top players, "we may have to face some tough

decisions earlier than we anticipated," Garber says.

--Compete internationally as much as possible. Since fans enjoy

World Cup-style rivalries, MLS should use U.S. soccer's newfound

respect to finagle invitations to the Copa Libertadores, the

South American club tournament that is the Western Hemisphere's

version of the European Champions League. (If Mexican teams are

allowed to play, the U.S. certainly deserves entry after

eliminating the Tricolores from the World Cup.)

--Fight harder for media coverage. The biggest newspapers in six

of the 10 MLS markets--Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Kansas

City and San Jose--didn't send a reporter overseas to cover the

World Cup. "Hopefully, respect for the sport will get better

after this," says Arena. "The league's had such a difficult time

getting good exposure. I hope the media recognizes that soccer

has a great future in this country."

Indeed, as the U.S. bus pulled into the team's hotel in Seoul in

the wee hours last Saturday morning and the players sang My Way

on the vehicle's karaoke machine, it was hard not to look forward

to 2006. Though Arena hasn't yet signed a new contract, it's

likely that he'll be back, leading a team composed largely of MLS

players who are younger but more experienced than most of this

year's squad. You never know who might start in Germany. Beasley

and Donovan were 16-year-old high school students during World

Cup '98.

For four years the U.S. players read and heard plenty about their

last-place finish in 1998. Let the record show that in World Cup

2002 these Yanks finished eighth, ahead of defending champ

France, Argentina, Italy and Portugal--four of the pretournament

favorites. They lasted just as long as fellow quarterfinalists

Spain and England, two of Europe's elite teams. And they came

within two games of the World Cup final. "People who say the U.S.

will never win the World Cup don't know what they're talking

about," says Beasley, a smile creasing his callow mug. "It will

happen one day, and I will laugh at Europe when it does."

For more World Cup coverage, including photo galleries, worldwide

media reaction and reports from Grant Wahl, go to

cnnsi.com/worldcup.

COLOR PHOTO: JACQUES DEMARTHON/AFP COVER INSET U.S. SOCCER WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPH BY SIMON BRUTY WRATH OF KAHN Donovan (21) and others had chances, but the German keeper held firm.

COLOR PHOTO: TONY GUTIERREZ/AP STAR IN STRIPES Though Reyna sparked a superior attack, the U.S. bid the Cup farewell.

COLOR PHOTO: GARY M. PRIOR/GETTY IMAGES BRIAN MCBRIDE, 30 Forward, Columbus Crew Best U.S. attacker in the air, he netted a pair of Cup goals and set up one more.

COLOR PHOTO: KIM JAE-HWAN/AFP DAMARCUS BEASLEY, 20 Midfielder, Chicago Fire Flashed speed and skill on the left flank.

COLOR PHOTO: AMY SANCETTA/AP JOSH WOLFF, 25 Striker, Chicago Fire Signed four-year, $1.1 million extension with MLS through 2008.

COLOR PHOTO: JIMIN LAI/AFP CLINT MATHIS, 25 Forward/Midfielder NY/NJ MetroStars Saw limited Cup minutes but is gifted.

COLOR PHOTO: MASAKAZU WATANABE/AFLO SPORT/NEWSPORT LANDON DONOVAN, 20 Forward San Jose Earthquakes The youngest player to score in this year's Cup.

"Those people assuming that all of our players are going to

Europe will be proven resoundingly wrong," says MLS's Gazidis.

Can MLS get a sizable TV contract, one that would eat into

losses in excess of $250 million over the last six years?