USMNT Archives - Generation Zero

Listen Up, U.S. soccer fans: Generation Zero now Available via Audio Book

Listen Up, U.S. soccer fans: Generation Zero now Available via Audio Book

By Hal Phillips|2024-05-22T14:02:33-04:00May 22nd, 2024|GZ blog|

The audio version of Generation Zero, the best-selling U.S. soccer history from author Hal Phillips, is now available via Amazon, alongside its print and eBook editions. Published by Dickinson-Moses Press and released in July 2022, Generation Zero: Founding Fathers, Hidden Histories & The Making of Soccer in America details the game’s unlikely modern ascent, during the 1970s and ‘80s, after a century of false starts. Featuring period imagery from USMNT photographer Jon van Woerden, GZ is the definitive account of [...]

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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|2024-02-16T11:47:33-05:00February 16th, 2024|GZ blog|

During the late 1980s, as super powers went mono, mullets were fashionable and iconic walls came crashing down, it was perhaps easy to miss the internationalization of American team sport. Yet this phenomenon took shape all through this era, step by step, forever changing big hunks of the U.S. sporting landscape in the process. Prior to this eventful period, fans here in The States followed teams and leagues on a purely domestic basis. In large part, we still do: Our [...]

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Emma Hayes Will Preside over Massive USWNT Change. Expect Fireworks

Emma Hayes Will Preside over Massive USWNT Change. Expect Fireworks

By Hal Phillips|2023-11-28T14:48:06-05:00November 20th, 2023|GZ blog|

Color me extremely curious when it comes to Emma Hayes’ pending tenure as head coach of the U.S. Women’s National Team. 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 anything to do with pay equity (though it IS diverting to note that, because she will make exactly the same as her USMNT counterpart, we ‘ve learned that $475,000 [...]

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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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Dr. Rose, Abdul & the Cheeseburger Sub to End All Cheeseburger Subs

Dr. Rose, Abdul & the Cheeseburger Sub to End All Cheeseburger Subs

By Hal Phillips|2023-01-11T19:08:44-05:00January 11th, 2023|GZ blog|

In the pages of Generation Zero and here on the book’s companion site, we’ve spent a good deal of time and space examining exactly when, how and by whose efforts American soccer came of age. Before GZ was but a twinkle in my eye, I engaged with these important questions in an altogether different way when Dr. David Rose called my office, out of the blue, with a question: You remember that time we watched that World Cup game together, [...]

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USMNT Progress Plan: Keep Crowd-Sourcing Roster Development. In Europe

USMNT Progress Plan: Keep Crowd-Sourcing Roster Development. In Europe

By Hal Phillips|2022-12-30T15:08:18-05:00December 19th, 2022|GZ blog|

When America plays host to the next World Cup, alongside Mexico and Canada, it will likely field the most talented men’s squad ever trotted out by the U.S. Soccer Federation. And yet, to hear many American soccer fans tell it, our competitive place in the world game remains shamefully uncertain. Ambiguity, it seems, is a poor fit for cultures accustomed to hegemony. Internationally, futbol observers do agree the U.S. has finally amassed a bumper crop of young, potentially game-changing talent. [...]

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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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