Generation Zero Archives - Generation Zero

Requiem for Match of the Day (and The Sanctity of Unspoiled Endings)

Requiem for Match of the Day (and The Sanctity of Unspoiled Endings)

By Hal Phillips|2026-03-14T10:30:26-04:00February 14th, 2025|GZ blog|

There’s a wonderfully prescient exchange in Whit Stillman’s 1990 film, “Metropolitan,” wherein the know-it-all main character is interrogated on all the works of literature he can’t stop referencing. “You don’t have to have read a book to have an opinion on it. I haven’t read the Bible either,” he reveals, by way of defending himself. “I don't read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelist's ideas as well as the critic's thinking.” Befitting [...]

0

Why the Mainstreaming of U.S. soccer & The Dream Team Share a Movement

Why the Mainstreaming of U.S. soccer & The Dream Team Share a Movement

By Hal Phillips|2026-03-14T11:04:15-04:00February 16th, 2024|GZ blog|

During the late 1980s — when super powers went mono, mullets were fashionable, and iconic walls came crashing down — it was easy to miss the internationalization of American team sport. Yet this phenomenon took shape all through the first Bush Era, step by step, forever changing big hunks of the U.S. sporting landscape. The Mainstreaming of U.S. Soccer first took cultural hold in 1989; two years later the modern U.S.-Mexico rivalry was officially joined. The Global Era of American [...]

0

Irresistable Grant Wahl Delivers Billion Dollar Goal, From the Grave

Irresistable Grant Wahl Delivers Billion Dollar Goal, From the Grave

By Hal Phillips|2026-03-14T11:57:17-04:00December 11th, 2023|GZ blog|

It’s been exactly one year since Grant Wahl was taken from us, so the timing of his posthumous Paramount+ project, The Billion Dollar Goal, which debuts tonight, could not resonate more strongly with fans of U.S. soccer. That goes double for me, because this docuseries covers much the same ground showcased in my July 2022 book, Generation Zero: Founding Fathers, Hidden Histories & The Making of American Soccer. Grant was one of GZ’s first readers and in many ways [...]

0

Garnacho Wonder Strike Stirs Memories of Bicycle Kicks Past

Garnacho Wonder Strike Stirs Memories of Bicycle Kicks Past

By Hal Phillips|2026-03-14T12:08:02-04:00November 30th, 2023|GZ blog|

Garnacho’s wondrous overhead golazo against Everton on Nov. 26 reminded the world soccer community of why we find bicycle kicks so damned compelling. They remainthe most dynamic, daringly athletic maneuver in a game replete with them, and it doesn’t matter where on the pitch they might happen. Check out the images attached here. Defenders of all skill levels react similarly when someone goes up for a bike: They back away slightly, because recklessly contesting may mean a boot to [...]

0

Chapter 8 Excerpt: Bleak late ’80s brought Peak Popularity of Indoor Soccer

Chapter 8 Excerpt: Bleak late ’80s brought Peak Popularity of Indoor Soccer

By Hal Phillips|2026-03-14T12:50:47-04:00September 13th, 2023|GZ blog|

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY U.S. SOCCER FANS may not realize it — or wish to contemplate such an unbecoming reality — but for a short time immediately post-NASL, indoor soccer was the American game’s dominant professional strain. Indeed, the peak popularity of indoor soccer, and for Major Indoor Soccer League (MISL), took place during this period, even as the country’s first golden generation of outdoor talent began to coalesce. These coincidental facts, these uncomfortable truths, represent yet more indicators of a [...]

0

Hubert Vogelsinger created Youth Soccer Revolutionaries

Hubert Vogelsinger created Youth Soccer Revolutionaries

By Hal Phillips|2026-03-15T07:54:17-04:00June 28th, 2023|GZ blog|

Video evidence of the 1974 World Cup was not made available to me until July 1977. That was the summer I first attended overnight soccer camp, a veritable rite of passage for me and so many fellow members of Generation Zero, those American boys and girls born in the 1960s, then raised in the 1970s as this country’s very first soccer natives. The Puma All-Star Soccer Camp, where I matriculated three straight summers, was owned and operated by Hubert [...]

0

USMNT Photo Mystery Solved; Roman Colosseum Shrugs Off Another Narrative Poseur

USMNT Photo Mystery Solved; Roman Colosseum Shrugs Off Another Narrative Poseur

By Hal Phillips|2026-03-15T08:01:43-04:00May 20th, 2023|GZ blog|

Let’s get straight to the point: It’s a fake. Each of the above images is a clever fabrication, but the team shot — commissioned by a certain sports outfitter to congratulate the 1990 U.S. Men’s National Team (USMNT) on its history-making World Cup qualification — was not taken on site, in front of the Roman Colosseum, during Italia ‘90. This admittedly minor historical ruse was confirmed by national team veteran John Stollmeyer (front row, second from left) in early [...]

0

Women’s World Cup 2023 May Reveal New Balance of Power

Women’s World Cup 2023 May Reveal New Balance of Power

By Hal Phillips|2026-03-15T08:09:38-04:00May 5th, 2023|GZ blog|

[Posted May 5, 2023] From the moment women’s international soccer formalized itself, during the 1980s, The American Way has prevailed. This not-so-controversial historical judgment has traditionally held water on the two fronts that matter most: In the competitive crucible, the U.S. Women’s National Team has proved the finest side in the world for more than 30 years. It has won four of the eight World Cups contested since the tournament was launched, in 1991. The USWNT also claimed four [...]

0

Only Now Recovering from ‘Berhalter Fatigue’? Time to Buckle Back Up

Only Now Recovering from ‘Berhalter Fatigue’? Time to Buckle Back Up

By Hal Phillips|2026-03-15T08:15:21-04:00March 27th, 2023|GZ blog|

My own case of Berhalter Fatigue kicked in around Dec. 17, 2022 — a day before the World Cup final, 10 days into the Berhalter-Reyna Family Barbecue, and two weeks after Holland dumped the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team (USMNT) out of the tournament. The tawdry nature of Berhalter’s unprecedented bust-up with the Reynas could not be fully understood until last week, when the U.S. Soccer Federation released its third-party report. No one emerges unscathed from this full and [...]

0

Coach Jim Gabarra Preaches the Virtues of Balance, All Year Long

Coach Jim Gabarra Preaches the Virtues of Balance, All Year Long

By Michael Conant|2026-03-15T08:50:57-04:00January 16th, 2023|GZ blog|

Screenshot {SJ Editor: Hal Philips recently published “Generation Zero: Founding Fathers, Hidden Histories & the Making of Soccer in America.” This is an example of what you will read in the book. Highly recommended! By HAL PHILLIPSWhen Jim Gabarra competed at the highest levels of American soccer—and he did so both indoors and outdoors—players and coaches gave little thought to their transitions from one setting to the other, and back again. What’s more, during the late 1980s and [...]

0