U.S. Men's National Team Archives - Generation Zero

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

Hal Phillips — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 15:29:21 +0000

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 [...]

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

Hal Phillips — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 16:32:25 +0000

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 [...]

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Irresistable Grant Wahl Delivers Billion Dollar Goal, From the Grave

Hal Phillips — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 22:57:33 +0000

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 [...]

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Garnacho Wonder Strike Stirs Memories of Bicycle Kicks Past

Hal Phillips — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 20:15:13 +0000

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 [...]

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Expect Change, Fireworks from USWNT Coach Emma Hayes

Hal Phillips — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 20:40:29 +0000

Color me extremely curious when it comes to USWNT Coach Emma Hayes. Her tenure as head coach of the U.S. Women’s National Team remains pending. She won’t take the helm until spring, when her season with Chelsea FC has concluded. Still, the timing of her hire drips with big-picture import, none of which has [...]

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

Hal Phillips — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 17:11:06 +0000

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, [...]

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Hubert Vogelsinger created Youth Soccer Revolutionaries

Hal Phillips — Wed, 28 Jun 2023 19:42:12 +0000

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 [...]

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

Hal Phillips — Sat, 20 May 2023 14:10:57 +0000

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 [...]

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

Hal Phillips — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 17:29:51 +0000

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 [...]

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USMNT Help Wanted: Creatures of the Federation Need Not Apply

Hal Phillips — Sat, 28 Jan 2023 16:50:46 +0000

The departures of Men’s National Team Sporting Director Earnie Stewart and General Manager Brian McBride represent a post-World Cup housecleaning, but they also underline the stubbornly clubby, insular nature of soccer administration in this country. The installation of former players to coach and direct national team programs, to head up entire federations, is not [...]

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