the 2010 FIFA World Cup draw.
The CONCACAF qualifying campaign is long and arduous, but Bradley led his team to first place in the final hexagonal and secured the USA's sixth consecutive berth in the World Cup finals. But unlike his predecessors, the former Chicago Fire, MetroStars and Chivas USA coach has to deal with elevated expectations this time around. U.S. soccer has come a long way since Paul Caligiuri's long-range strike shattered Trinidad and Tobago's World Cup dreams and punched the U.S. ticket to Italia '90.
The successful hosting of the 1994 World Cup, the formation of Major League Soccer in 1996, the historic quarterfinals run at Korea/Japan in 2002 and the expanding profile of U.S. soccer players in Europe over the last decade or so has established a solid footprint in the beautiful game. But nothing demonstrates how far soccer has grown across the U.S. sports landscape in recent years than the criticism aimed at Bradley during the qualifying campaign.
A backhanded compliment for sure, and presumably no fun for the man in the hot seat, but it's a sign of great progress. Heading to the World Cup finals, the U.S. national team is in the position of the college basketball mid-major that has established dominance in its conference over several years, but now the fans are itching to go deep into "March Madness." With all due respect, Selection Sunday is no match for Charlize Theron, four pods and the worldwide audience the World Cup draw attracts.
Unfortunately, the pod math worked against the USA. While FIFA probably chose to punish France by omitting Les Bleus from the seeding pod, the governing body had little choice but to place the three CONCACAF teams with the four Asian nations and New Zealand to make the "magic 8-ball" work. That raises the possibility of a "group of death" scenario for the U.S., but Bradley has already been down that road in South Africa.
At the 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup, few pundits, if any, gave the U.S. a chance of advancing when grouped with Brazil and Italy, as well as African champions Egypt. The situation looked bleak when the Giuseppe Rossi-inspired Azzurri and then Brazil beat the U.S. in the first two games.
Many teams would have checked their luggage at the airport on the way to the Egypt game, but the U.S. team did not, to the great credit of the players and their head coach. Even at halftime of the U.S. game, with the Brazil-Italy result going their way, Bradley's team still needed two second-half goals to advance. The coach didn't hide that fact from his players, and they went out and took care of business. The 3-0 victory against Egypt, coupled with Brazil's 3-0 defeat of Italy, set up Bradley's finest hour on the U.S. bench, "the Miracle on Grass" win against FIFA world No. 1-ranked Spain in the semifinals.
That 2-0 win over the European champions is the main driving force behind the rise in expectations for Bradley's charges. But raising the bar is what coaches live for, and he is no exception. In 1998, his first season as a head coach in MLS, he led the Fire to an MLS Cup-U.S. Open Cup double. Like his fellow World Cup coaches, Carlos Alberto Parreira and Carlos Queiroz, he didn't have too much success with the MetroStars, but out in Los Angeles he was able to instill a winning culture at Chivas USA.
Now, on the biggest stage of all, he gets set to do the same for the U.S. national team at the 2010 FIFA World Cup. As Bradley made clear at his press conference from South Africa, the draw doesn't just establish the opposition, it's the beginning of an intense period of preparation.
"We will go to great lengths to prepare the scouting reports on our first round opponents," Bradley said. "There's going to be finishing on the details in terms of where we're staying, our needs, what we want to put together in terms of our whole training schedule leading to the World Cup."
Let the games begin.
Mark C. Young is an Emmy Award-winning freelance writer/TV producer who has covered several FIFA World Cups and Olympic Games. He is a contributor to Goal.com and also writes for the blog "No Mas."
