U.S. Soccer 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|2024-02-16T11:15:13-05:00February 14th, 2024|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 Stillman’s [...]

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Irresistable Grant Wahl Delivers Billion Dollar Goal, From the Grave

Irresistable Grant Wahl Delivers Billion Dollar Goal, From the Grave

By Hal Phillips|2023-12-12T09:24:21-05:00December 11th, 2023|GZ blog|

It’s been exactly a 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 its [...]

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Like Riding a Bike: Garnacho Stirs Memories of Wonder Strikes Past

Like Riding a Bike: Garnacho Stirs Memories of Wonder Strikes Past

By Hal Phillips|2024-01-10T09:14:46-05:00November 30th, 2023|GZ blog|

Garnacho’s wondrous overhead golazo against Everton on Nov. 26 reminded the world soccer community of why we find the bicycle kick so damned compelling. It remains the 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 [...]

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Greenland to Join CONCACAF? Someone Should Warn Them

Greenland to Join CONCACAF? Someone Should Warn Them

By Hal Phillips|2024-02-29T16:09:05-05:00September 4th, 2023|GZ blog|

Welcome, Greenlandic soccer players, supporters and administrators! Your May 2022 application to join the Confederation of North American, Central American and Caribbean Association Football is duly noted here and across the diverse climatic environs of CONCACAF. Yes: The acronym is unfortunate. Perhaps because those letters had never before been thrown together, in such a poorly branded sequence, until Sept. 18, 1961. That’s when the North American Football Confederation merged with the Confederación Centroamericana y del Caribe de Fútbol. Still, [...]

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RIP, Hubie Vogelsinger: Youth Soccer Revolutionary, Icon & Enabler

RIP, Hubie Vogelsinger: Youth Soccer Revolutionary, Icon & Enabler

By Hal Phillips|2024-01-05T11:29:28-05:00June 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 Vogelsinger, [...]

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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|2023-06-29T15:53:14-04:00March 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 seemingly [...]

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Help Wanted: Creatures of the Federation Need Not Apply

Help Wanted: Creatures of the Federation Need Not Apply

By Hal Phillips|2023-02-06T16:18:19-05:00January 28th, 2023|GZ blog|

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 uncommon in world futbol. For too long, however, U.S. Soccer has promoted strictly from within. For a time, this was the only option. In 2023, in [...]

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The Rise, Fall and Latent Futbol Influence of Antonio Horacio Etchenique

The Rise, Fall and Latent Futbol Influence of Antonio Horacio Etchenique

By Hal Phillips|2022-12-08T08:59:13-05:00August 29th, 2022|GZ blog|

My dad, the original Harold Gardner Phillips, passed away at the end of August 2011, all too soon. He was only 74. I try to write about him each year, before Autumn descends, as a means of better remembering him — an act that frankly gets more difficult and less specific over time. The act of writing helps me preserve the details of his life, in my own mind. This year, what with this new book having just been published, [...]

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GZ: The Modern Creation Epic American Soccer Didn’t Know It Had

GZ: The Modern Creation Epic American Soccer Didn’t Know It Had

By Hal Phillips|2023-02-02T15:15:57-05:00July 10th, 2022|GZ blog|

Baseball has its Knickerbockers and the 19th century National League, while basketball traces its roots back to Dr. John Naismith and his peach baskets. With Generation Zero, the new sociological/sports history from author Hal Phillips, American soccer finally has a Creation story to call its own — a modern one, befitting the extraordinary growth the game has undergone since 1970, after a full century in the wilderness. Generation Zero: Founding Fathers, Hidden Histories & The Making of Soccer in America (Dickinson-Moses Press, [...]

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