December 2019, Featured, USWNT

The USWNT celebrate after winning the 2019 FIFA World Cup.

— The TYAC Team

It’s been an eventful decade in American soccer, at times turbulent and tormenting, at other times rewarding and joyous.

Outside the lines, it’s been a decade that has seen the sport experience record growth and rapid expansion professionally, revolutionary change in the way we consume the game as television audiences, and often too slow, tepid responses to structural issues by the sport’s governing bodies, including the US Soccer Federation.

On the field, it’s been a decade defined by results that run the gamut, from the highest of highs to the darkest, nearly unimaginable lows.

In the end, as US Soccer enters a new decade, there are plenty of moments from the one we’re leaving to celebrate and savor. There are also sobering ones to reflect upon and hopefully, learn from to help the American game build a better, stronger future.

Over the past few weeks, we at TYAC have discussed and debated the decade that was in an attempt to put together a list of the ten moments (or things, in some instances) that defined this decade in US Soccer.

While no list of this sort is perfect, we think we’ve struck a good balance with what follows. There are moments of pure, unfiltered joy and other moments of sobering sadness. There are surprise success stories. There are even off-field structural issues and courtroom dramas where the very soul of the sport’s future is being decided.

Above all, there are ten moments and things where the sport exploded past the imagined boundary of soccer’s small corner of the American sporting landscape and into the country’s wider imagination and dialogue.

Our list of the defining moments and things in American soccer this decade, in order of TYAC assigned importance.

Honorable Mentions:

The Justice Department FIFA raids (Brooklyn, 2015)

Clint Dempsey comes home (2014)

NWSL hits the four season mark (2016)

Budweiser NWSL Sponsorship (2019)

The LA Galaxy dynasty and the end of the Beckham experiment (2012)

Omitting Landon Donovan from the 2014 FIFA World Cup squad

And now the final ten:

10- Cascadia and the emergence of American club culture (2011)

Since joining the league in 2009, the Seattle Sounders have been an exemplary MLS franchise, with full stadiums, loyal bands of traveling fans, strong ownership and consistently excellent results on the field. The reigning MLS Champions, they remain the apple of the league’s eye and a golden benchmark for expansion teams to chase and pursue.

But the Sounders weren’t truly the Sounders until they were joined in the league by the Portland Timbers (and to a lesser extent, Canada’s Vancouver Whitecaps) in 2011.

The emergence of the Timbers, another club from a Pacific Northwest city with a unique American soccer story and youthful, free-spirited demographic well-suited to soccer, helped MLS cultivate one of its first natural, passionate rivalries.

Along with Vancouver, the three-city Cascadia Cup was formed and collectively, it showed MLS what was possible when you allow not just geography, but emergent club and city cultures, to shape rivalries.

At the beginning of the decade, only a handful of natural rivalries existed in MLS and American club soccer.

Thanks in large part to Cascadia, MLS Rivalry week is now a big deal that features a host of matches that move the needle and engage new fans, from the Hudson River Derby between New York Red Bulls and NYCFC to Los Angeles’s El Trafico between MLS royalty LA Galaxy and the chic newcomer LAFC.

In the 2020s, new rivalries, like Nashville and Atlanta and what becomes of Inter Miami and Orlando City, will join the fray, giving the league more parochial battles for bragging rights that capture the national imagination.

Neil W. Blackmon

9-John Brooks vs. Ghana (Brazil 2014)

Facing their longtime thorn in the side, Ghana, the US scored in the first minute of their 2014 World Cup campaign on a bit of magic from Clint Dempsey, sending throngs of US supporters that made the trip to rainy Natal, Brazil into raptures.

For twenty minutes, it looked as if the Americans may vanquish their World Cup demons against the Black Stars in style– and then Jozy Altidore’s hamstring gave out.

With Altidore injured and his replacement, Aron Johannsson, playing on a bum ankle, the US had little beyond Clint Dempsey in attack (US head coach Jurgen Klinsman, in another one of the decade’s big moments, had left the talismanic Landon Donovan at home), and Ghana came into and controlled the bulk of the game.

The US defended bravely, but Andre Ayew eventually leveled in the 82nd minute, and it looked as if the US would have to settle for a disappointing draw.

The Americans had other ideas.

First, Fabian Johnson made a long, menacing run and brave cross that forced John Mensah to clear for a US corner with Dempsey lurking far post.

Moments later, 21-year old John Brooks, who replaced Matt Besler at halftime, buried a perfect corner kick from Graham Zusi into the back of the net, giving the US a 2-1 lead in the 86th minute they they would not relinquish.

Brooks, who admitted to TYAC prior to the tournament that he was “surprised to have made the team”, looked almost stunned to have scored, running around in a zig-zag pattern with arms pointed to the sky in disbelief.

It wasn’t quite Jimmy Valvano running around looking for someone to hug, but it is a goal celebration forever a part of collective US Soccer memory.

It would be disingenuous to suggest it’s been all downhill for US Men’s Soccer since, but this moment– and the raucous celebrations it sparked in Natal and at home– was one of the high-water marks for the US Men’s program during this tumultuous decade.

Neil W. Blackmon

8- US Men’s Olympic qualifying failures: 2012 and 2016

When taking inventory of where the US Men’s program is as a new decade dawns, one common refrain is that there is a “lost generation” of talent between the Donovan-Dempsey-Beasley era and the hope of the Pulisic-McKennie-Adams generation.

No better illustration of the lost generation and the lack of US development depth this decade exists than the two US failures to qualify for the Olympic games.

The 2012 failure under Caleb Porter was written off, a product of quirky FIFA scheduling and the compressed qualification tournament format.

Besides, the federation as a whole bounced back quickly.

The USMNT streamrolled their way through the final round Hexagonal in World Cup qualifying and all told, 2013 was one of the best years in USMNT history. That- and some of the great moments that came with it- like the shorthanded qualifying draw at Azteca and the Snowclassico– gets forgotten by what came next in Brazil, including the survival of a Group of Death.

Alas, the 2016 failure was a more serious sign of systemic problems with the federation’s youth programs.

Jurgen Klinsmann, serving as both senior national team head coach and US Soccer’s technical director, called qualifying for the 2016 Rio Olympics “the most important and first priority in US Soccer” in the summer of 2015.Playing in a soft and forgiving region like CONCACAF, Klinsmann’s goal seemed modest.

Instead, the United States lost 2-0 to a middling Honduras on home soil in October 2015, forcing them to play a talented Colombia team in a two-leg playoff the following spring. The US played bravely in that playoff, but ultimately Andreas Herzog’s team fell 3-2 on aggregate to Los Cafeteros, meaning the United States went an entire decade without playing a minute of Olympic soccer.

These failures, a byproduct of a lack of top-end talent, a cohesive and coherent tactical approach and underwhelming on-field performances, “trickled” up to the senior level, and certainly impacted US depth- or the lack of it- in the 2018 World Cup cycle.

Jon Levy

7- The NBC Premier League Contract

NBC Sports coverage of England’s Premier League made soccer accessible to the mainstream of American sports fans, ushering in not only a growth in real numbers watching the sport, but a lifting of stigmas associated with talking about soccer.

NBC began airing the Premier League in 2013, showing on average over 30 matches a season on over-the-air NBC broadcast affiliates and somewhere near 200 games a season on cable. NBC’s coverage has been intelligent, eschewing the anti-intellectual drift in some sports coverage and helping to grow the fan base and soccer cultures in the United States.

NBC, a major broadcast network, committing to soccer opened the door for increased coverage later in the decade, especially from the likes of FOX, and recent interest from corporate sports conglomerates like Turner Sports and CBS is directly traceable to NBC’s willingness to take the leap.

A decade ago, soccer was still a sport many American broadcast executives either ignored or viewed as throw away programming. Now, it is increasingly big business, and among the most fiercely competitive sports in terms of broadcast bidding wars.

— Kartik Krishnaiyer

6- Atlanta United and Soccer down South (2017-present)

So it was, in the winter of Atlanta’s sporting discontent, in the aftermath of the greatest sports failure in the city of sports failure, that Atlanta United burst onto the MLS scene.

One month after the Falcons incredible but somewhat entirely predictable Super Bowl collapse against the New England Patriots, Atlanta United took to the field at historic Bobby Dodd Stadium.

When Atlanta was awarded an MLS franchise, it was a decision met with widespread skepticism from the American soccer media intelligentsia.

“Atlanta is a terrible sports city, with poor fanbases that won’t care,” one wrote. “Soccer isn’t college football. It won’t make down south, and MLS will soon regret this misguided piece of expansion ambition,” another bellowed.

At TYAC, Atlantan Neil W. Blackmon saw it differently, writing for TYAC and Atlanta Magazine in January 2017:

“Atlanta United may not have the greatest franchise name, but what they lack in imaginative branding they will make up for with a brilliant front office, a proud owner and a passionate city. Atlanta, a young, beautiful, growing city of transients, has cultural markers and a demographic that will welcome a sport as diverse as the city. While other franchises suffer due to Atlanta’s being a city of transients– why would a lifelong Mets fan who moves to Atlanta for better weather and cheaper housing, for example, switch allegiances to the Braves– Atlanta United will benefit. Soccer is still new in America and growing, and transients that want to claim a bit of the Atlanta sporting landscape as their own will embrace this team, its engaged owner, and a smart front office that is putting together a quality team. Soccer won’t just make it down south, y’all. It will thrive.”

For once, TYAC was right.

Atlanta United changed the game, with Tata Martino’s team playing a swashbuckling brand of attacking soccer and stadiums packed with energy and crowds as diverse as the city.

The best soccer cultures are built organically, and they are measured not just by record-breaking crowds but by conversations in cafes and flags flown from shop windows.

Atlanta United has achieved both, giving MLS a much-needed cultural foothold in the south and redefining what type of ambition MLS clubs can have, both in the players they sign and target and the trophies they set their sights on.

Perhaps the naysayers just misread it all along. They ignored decades of suburban soccer obsession and the expansive and diverse, soccer-crazed Spanish-speaking communities and the college-educated, millennial demographic who spent college weekends with the Premier League and instead, they relied on old tropes and anachronisms to guide their analysis.

Either way, soccer is for everyone, and when Atlanta United won the city’s second major sporting championship in December 2018, so was the trophy.

Daniel Seco

5- Equal pay lawsuits and an endless wave of US Soccer litigation (2015-present)

In the spring of 2016, fresh off their 2015 World Cup victory tour, the US Women’s National Team shocked the sporting world, and made national news, when five of their best players lodged a wage discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A new collective bargaining agreement- and better pay- followed- but it did not eliminate the wage complaint, which made its way through the EEOC red tape and eventually issued the US Women an order authorizing them to file a lawsuit on the issue in federal court.

In the spring of 2019, Hope Solo, one of the women involved in the original EEOC complaint, filed a lawsuit and thirty members of the USWNT followed suit shortly thereafter, claiming both wages and gender discrimination against the federation. This past November, the US Women won a critical victory, securing certification to sue as a class in an Order from a conservative jurist that forcefully rejected a host of US Soccer’s key arguments, including dubious claims- doubled down on by US Soccer this week- that the USWNT’s revenues have not outpaced the US Men over the second half of the decade.

The US Women’s lawsuits, which have a groundswell of public support and a good-faith basis in equal pay and gender discrimination law, are only the tip of the litigation iceberg for US Soccer.

Other lawsuits, from the Federation’s longstanding legal dispute with the North American Soccer League to a newer antitrust dispute with US-based entertainment corporation Relevent Sports, are also on federal dockets, requiring US Soccer’s time and expense.

The Federation reported spending nearly 9 million dollars on legal fees alone in 2019, with numbers projected to be in that range again in 2020.

As a new decade dawns, it’s fair to wonder if US Soccer spends too much time devoted to winning in courtrooms, and not enough time winning on soccer fields.

— Neil W. Blackmon

4- USWNT late game heroics and fifteen-minute hat-tricks: Rapinoe to Wambach (2011); Heather O’Reilly to Alex Morgan (2012); Carli Lloyd (2015)

Okay, okay. This is cheating. Three “moments” wrapped into one. But when one of your national teams wins two World Cups and an Olympic gold medal in one decade, you’re going to have plenty of “wow” moments. These three stick out and shine among the many.

Standing alone, any of these three moments would merit mention in the top ten and certainly Abby Wambach’s goal, from Megan Rapinoe’s exhausted and exhilarating parabola of a cross in the 122nd minute at the 2011 World Cup in Dresden, could have ranked in the top five. That’s how huge the goal was. The Americans were moments from their earliest exit from the World Cup in federation history. Instead, this happened:

The goal helped the Americans reach the final, and that World Cup was a signal of intent that this generation of American women would equal- and perhaps better- their heroes the 99ers in terms of impact and infusion of the women’s game into mainstream American consciousness.

A summer later, the Americans were again on the edge of elimination, this time in the semifinals against northern neighbor Canada, with the game looking certain to end in penalty kicks. Instead, Heather O’Reilly, or HAO, as her teammates call her, found the giddyup in the tank to chase down this errant pass and deliver a delicious cross to young Alex Morgan, who buried the chance in the corner and sent the Americans to the Gold Medal game.

We play Canada tonight and we'd be completely negligent if we didn't repost our Celine Dion'd version of @alexmorgan13's classic. pic.twitter.com/laEquhizjN — The American Outlaws (@AmericanOutlaws) October 17, 2018

It was HAO’s last signature moment for the USWNT- and probably the day Alex Morgan became a household name in America.

Finally, Carli Lloyd’s hat trick in the World Cup final against Japan, accumulated in fifteen minutes, has stand alone top 5 staying power as well.

Lloyd was a force of nature in the knockout stages of the 2015 World Cup, a footballer at the height of her powers playing with Lloyd’s unrivaled sense of self-belief. How else to explain the last of Lloyd’s three goals, this mesmerizing, goal-of-the-decade moment from half-field?

Lloyd’s heroics buried Japan, assuring the US a third star and earning her deserved FIFA Player of the Year honors later in 2015.

— Neil W. Blackmon

3- Landon Donovan vs. Algeria- “Go, Go USA!!” (2010)

Landon Donovan’s stoppage time winner against Algeria in the 2010 FIFA World Cup created the nation’s first soccer sensation of the decade. Donovan’s counter-attacking goal expertly crafted by Tim Howard and Clint Dempsey not only won the USMNT its group, sending the team to the knock-out stages but made soccer mainstream for a time, it captured the imagination of a country.

The World Cup in 2010 was being promoted and covered by ESPN and ABC in a way unimaginable just four years earlier and as a result, Donovan became a national celebrity for scoring that goal. That was something that should have happened in 2002 or during the previous summer’s FIFA Confederations Cup, but didn’t.

Nearly a decade later, that goal is one of the most iconic moment in the USMNT’s history and a signature moment of Donovan’s career.

It also won a World Cup group for the United States for the first time, a remarkable accomplishment for Bob Bradley and the USMNT that is not appreciated enough by the masses.

2- Failure to Qualify for the World Cup (2016-17)

Many terribly wonderful post mortems on this, the most colossal failure in US sporting history, have already been written and there’s no need to revisit the chronology or how here.

What must be said is that the US failure to qualify for the World Cup out of the relatively soft regional waters of CONCACAF wasn’t, as Sunil Gulati glibly put it in the aftermath, about Clint Dempsey hitting a post late in Couva, Trinidad.

It was a failure a long time coming, a mind-numbing maelstrom of mismanagement and systemic structural deficiencies that came to a head over 12 embarrassing months from November 2016-November 2017.

Even the ultimate pragmatist fixer, Bruce Arena, couldn’t stop the bleeding. In fact, in the end it was Arena’s own hubris and the decision not to rotate his squads, which had rescued the US from a 0 point, negative 5 goal differential start to the HEX engineered by his predecessor Jurgen Klinsmann, that did the United States in even more than Omar Gonzalez’s own goal or a once-a-lifetime strike by journeyman footballer Alvin Jones.

Failure can be a great teacher, but the harsh reality is that the Catastrophe in Couva appears to have not prompted a refresh of the US program, or even significant soul-searching.

On deadline and on the worst birthday of my life, I wrote that the failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup was an opportunity to rethink our approach to soccer and development in the United States. That hasn’t occurred, a heartbreaking testament that the US appears sadly positioned to repeat these failures again– the very definition of insanity.

— Neil W. Blackmon

1-USWNT Back to Back World Cup Champions (2015-2019)

Was there any doubt how this ends?

The first championship–won in Canada– was about vengeance, a mission cast in stone from the moment the US lost in penalties to Japan in 2011.

It was also about defense, as the US backline, led by the immovable Hope Solo and the unflappable Becky Sauerbrunn, went 540 minutes between conceding goals. The US were scored upon in their opener, a 3-1 win over Australia, and then didn’t concede again until the final against Japan.

Buoyed by an impregnable back line, the US could wait and wait for the attack to find its footing, which it finally did thanks to incomparable Carli Lloyd.

As good as that team was, however, the 2019 team was better and in truth, is probably peerless.

Doubted by even their own fan base throughout the World Cup cycle, they didn’t just rise to the occasion at the World Cup last summer in France– they dominated in every aspect.

The US never trailed and led every game until the final early, a complete performance by a team that on paper was supposed to have weaknesses but on the field did not. They did that despite playing the toughest field in the history of the tournament, and playing three of the best teams in the world in succession from the quarterfinals to the finals when the Americans met- and vanquished- host France, SheBelieves Cup champion England and European champion The Netherlands.

Perhaps more important, history will remember the 2019 in a similar way that it remembers the 99ers that came 20 years before.

Not only did the US play brilliantly and dominate on the field, they were changemakers and heroes off of it, seizing their platform to advocate for larger, vital cultural issues. That they won- and played so beautifully- while fighting their own federation for equality in court- makes their triumph all the more significant and sweet.

— Neil W. Blackmon