SOCCER: America's Soccer Future Continues To Improve

On the eve of the U.S. men's national soccer team's crunch qualifier with Barbados on Wednesday afternoon, the question will hang in the air — just how good is the U.S. on the world stage and how much further can the game come along in this country? "I still think we're going to be the best in the world," Chico Chacurian, a soccer Hall of Famer, said. "I don't know when, but with the way soccer is growing — the rest of the world is really shaking now. They know that American soccer is growing so fast." Chacurian brings up a good point. The current generation of American players grew up with the North American Soccer League and more and more, youth national teams are coming with players that were influenced by the World Cup of 1994, hosted by the U.S. with great success. "It's vastly improved," another Hall of Famer, Jackie Hynes, said. "There's more technique, faster, better conditioning, the fields. Everything's better. "It's inevitable that it's going to prevail in my estimation," Hynes continued. "It's going to be the premier sport. Soccer is world wide." Wednesday's qualiifer is key in every way to the U.S. men's team. Elimination from the final stage of 2002 World Cup qualifying would set the game back innumberable years. Coach Bruce Arena's job could very well come into jeopardy. A win is more than necessary - it's practically required. But Bob Gansler, the coach of Major League Soccer champion Kansas City Wizards, believes the game is right on track. "I think we've gotta be patient," he said. "I've said this about soccer in general. It's an evolutionary process. It takes time. In terms of soccer developing in this country, we're right on time." Though it may seem wide of the mark, Gansler's comments ring true. Despite decreasing attendance, MLS's overall marks in the category for its first five years of existence outweight any of the other professional leagues in the country like the NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball. "The game is here to stay," Gansler emphatically said. "The evolution is paying dividends. All the hard work that these people have been doing for years, it's bearing fruit. I think we can be optimistic, but in no way arrogant. "We gotta work on it as hard as we ever have," Gansler continued. "But the potential is there. In terms of being viable entertainment sport in this country, that's coming. We're close and it's just going to improve." Improve. That's the key word for American soccer, a sport that received barely passing recognition in 1990, when a group of college kids qualified for the World Cup, a feat that, looking back, could be regarded as one of the most impressive in recent team sports history. Improve. That's the thing that jumps out at people. "It's the speed," Chacurian said, noting the biggest difference between today's players and those of yesteryear. "Today is very much a faster game. Technically, I don't know if it's better now than it was then. Players are more speedy, more quicker." "We've made improvements," Gansler said. "For sure from year one to year five (in MLS), the improvement in the manner of the way the game is being played, it's from here (the floor) to here (the ceiling)." It's MLS that many point to as one of the biggest reasons for improvement in U.S. soccer. "It was absolutely essential that we got a pro league," Gansler said. "For our development, our coaching, everything." "The primary motivation behind MLS was that we would never be able to get up to world class without a domestic league to develop all those young players," former U.S. Soccer President Alan Rothenberg said. Rothenberg related the storyline of the recent U.S.A.-Mexico friendly, a game held in Los Angeles but "a road game" in the eyes of Gansler, among others. It was in that game, between two countries where the soccer has been fiercely contested in recent years, that a squad compiled almost entirely of MLS players led the U.S. to a 2-0 win. "To see 17 of the 18 players there being from MLS, half of them coming through Project 40 (a U.S. soccer developmental program), it kind of validated what we've been working on," Rothernberg said. "I talked to a Spanish-language paper in the area before the game," Rothenberg said. "They asked 'is that the team that played Costa Rica' and I said no. They asked 'is that the team that is going to play Barbados' and I said no. I said the real question is if that is the team that probably will be playing in 2002 and the answer is yes. And I want to see what you say tonight after we beat you." For all those that were interviewed, the best summarization came from Chacurian, who coached players like current U.S. national stars Tab Ramos and Claudio Reyna when they were working their way through the developmental system. "I think we've come a long way," he said. To see how long a way the U.S. is come will be determined on Wednesday afternoon.