The US national team are one of the enduring mysteries of the modern World Cup.
No one in the side plays for a club more prominent than Everton. Most have little value on the global market. The best American athletes play a sport other than “soccer”, and their typical countryman does not know the difference between extra time and added time.
Yet, for the fourth time in six World Cups, and the third in four, the US are in the last 16, leaving behind, again, a half-dozen nations with far more impressive footballing pedigrees. (Hello, Spain and England.)
To watch the Americans play is to be underwhelmed. Some speed and size, yes, but modest technical skills; limited tactical sense; a shocking lack of appreciation for the arts of diving and time-wasting.
That lack of sophistication has economic ramifications. The website thescore.com projected “current market value” for all 23 players on each of the 32 World Cup teams, and the value of the US team was set at US$77 million (Dh282.8m), leaving them 28th on the list. Cameroon and Bosnia are worth more than twice as much. Brazil, the most valuable side, at $718m, are more than nine times as valuable.
That says the football-wise world is disinterested in US players, and certainly not ready to pay them big salaries money. In truth, few Americans thrive in overseas club settings.
How, then, do the Yanks succeed in the World Cup? This is where the mystery comes in. Outsiders, watching the Americans chug around the pitch, settle on intangibles such as “team spirit” and “mental strength”, which is nothing more complicated than “they respect each other” and “will not give up easily”. More concrete concepts are at work, too.
One is the fixtures list. At many World Cups, the world’s great players arrive at the end of physically punishing seasons of football on four fronts and act as if they are keen to leave as soon as possible.
US players, especially those based in North America, have less-taxing schedules, and they are not shattered even before the first match.
American athletes also love to play for their national teams. In any sport.
What seems a burden in much of the world is embraced and treasured in the States.
And US fans do their part. Forty-seven months of every four years they pay little attention to the game, but for the World Cup, they materialise by the tens of thousands in front of big screens to watch the US play, and millions tune in to games.
They will do so again today.
The players know this, and the whole of it becomes a sort of vortex of enthusiasm that transforms 11 modestly skilled individuals into a strangely effective team.
poberjuerge@thenational.ae
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