In the spring of 1996, when I traveled to Munich for a trade show, naturally I set aside a Saturday afternoon to check out a Bundesliga match. Back then, as the Allianz Stadium remained but a twinkle in the eye of some insurance CEO, Bayern Munich still played its home games at the Olympic Stadium, and so did its local/lesser rival Munich 1860. Because Germany’s Big Red Machine wasn’t in town that weekend, I settled for 1860 home to [...]

I’ve been wracking my brain all week, trying to remember the details of my last conversation with Bruce Murray. It took place December 2021, when he was gracious enough to spend a bit more time talking to me about Generation Zero — about Chuck Blazer, his Olympic Development Program days, former teammate and lifelong friend John Kerr Jr., and his time training with the Swiss club Luzern, among other things. I’ve just gone through my notes. The subject matter [...]

When it comes to Generation Zero, the late 1980s, and the contemporaneous making of soccer in America, there is no getting around the mullet. Oft mocked but never ignored, this seminal coiffure was everywhere during this period. National team defender and three-time World Cupper Marcelo Balboa summed it up best, when we spoke to me in 2018: “We wanted to leave something behind, a legacy — and I think it was the mullet. We tore it up on the [...]

In the summer of 1978, my U-14 club team undertook a two-week tour of England and Holland. On some abstract level, halfway through the Carter Administration, my teammates and I on the Wellesley (Mass.) Pilgrims already recognizes our status as American soccer pioneers. Our overseas tour only confirmed this trailblazing cred. We would eventually learn that Generation Zero, the first truly native-born cohort of U.S. soccer players and fans, was bigger, broader, more accomplished and better traveled than we [...]