Roger Bennett: It's July 1994, two men are lounging by a hotel swimming pool in Orange County, California. They're both part of the US Men's National Soccer team that they spent weeks being cheered on by the whole country, competing in the biggest tournament on the planet, the World Cup. After a respectable showing, they'd been eliminated by the mighty Brazil. Now, here they were, by the pool, a bit dazed because it was all over.

Eric Wynalda: We were all wondering where does our future lie? What are we going to do?

Roger Bennett: That's Eric Wynalda, the team star striker. The United States plucky showing at the '94 World Cup had changed how he and his teammates were now seen. Before the tournament, only a few American soccer players had truly been able to earn a living as professionals, but now, American players were the world's hot new fad. Many were headed overseas, to Italy, to England. Eric would be heading back to Germany to play with a club team and become part of a culture that actually worships soccer players, but remember, there were two guys at that pool. Eric Wynalda and Steve Sampson.

Eric Wynalda: Steve was our assistant coach at the time. I had known Steve through my collegiate experience. I liked the guy, and I was worried about him to a certain extent. He looked-

Roger Bennett: -looked worried because?

Eric Wynalda: Well, because I know what my story is. I'm going to get on a plane and go back to Europe. I wanted to know what his aspirations were. My question to him was, "What happens to you now?" His answer was, "I still love coaching, and I wanted to do that."

Roger Bennett: Steve Sampson wanted to be a pro coach, really. He had less than two years experiences and assistance on the national team. He never had coached or even played at the professional level, but more than that, he was American. It was ludicrous. This is American Fiasco.

[music]

Roger Bennett: This is American Fiasco. The show that serves as a reminder to be careful what you wish for by that hotel swimming pool because you might just get it. I'm Roger Bennett.

Steve Sampson: Are you okay?

Roger Bennett: I'm great. I couldn't be better.

Steve Sampson: Okay, perfect.

Roger Bennett: I'm with Steve Sampson.

Steve Sampson: I see.

Roger Bennett: It's a pilgrimage. I'm sitting with the Steve Sampson at his office in San Luis Obispo, California. Tell me about your background. Your playing career ended with a torn cartilage.

Steve Sampson: That's correct. That's amazing that you even know that.

Roger Bennett: I've got a PhD in Steve Sampson. I come genuinely, so giddy.

Steve Sampson: I was a recent graduate of Stanford University with a Master's degree. Lo and behold, got an offer to go and work at UCLA as assistant coach. I was making a sum total of $1,250 for the season. I lived on a friend's couch and use three chest of drawers for all my belongings and--

Roger Bennett: All your worldly goods fit into three drawers.

Steve Sampson: Absolutely everything and maybe a bag or two that were thrown around their living room, which I'm sure they didn't enjoy, but that's what you have to do in order to get those kinds of opportunities.

Roger Bennett: Those kinds of opportunities, meaning college head coach, a yearly salary of around $42,000, and a chance to win the NCAA Men's Soccer Coach of the Year Award, which Steve accomplished in 1989. From the point of view of the rest of the world, being the best college soccer coach in America was a bit like having the best teeth in England. Let's be honest, the competition wasn't exactly the stiffest. Now, Steve had a friend, Alan Rothenberg, a lawyer, and sports entrepreneur. Around the same time, Alan was running for president of the US Soccer Federation.

US Soccer, that's the organization that oversees the game in its various forms across the country. Youth leagues, the Olympic team, Men's and Women's National teams, if a ball's being kicked, US soccer overseas it. Rothenberg took Steve out the night before the election, which he won, and asked him a question just like Eric Wynalda would years later by the pool.

Steve Sampson: "Stevie, what do you want to do?" Laughingly, seriously-- not seriously, I said, "Alan, oh, I want to be the national team coach."

Roger Bennett: Right then and there, Alan made Steve the national team coach.

[music]

Roger Bennett: I'm kidding. Of course, that's not what happened.

Steve Sampson: They made me a special assistant to the chief executive officer.

Roger Bennett: An office job.

Steve Sampson: It was an office job, but a very important office job.

Roger Bennett: If I were to paratroop back into that time, and said, "You will be the US coach at a World Cup before you know it," would you believe me?

Steve Sampson: No. No, of course not.

[music]

Roger Bennett: Now, here's something you've got to understand. At that time in America, only foreign-born managers would be considered for the national team coaching job. They had training. They had the experience that they gleaned from coaching overseas, that it granted them the skills you needed to be a top-flight manager, PR, motivational strategy, human psychology, sports science, crisis negotiation, data analysis. Here, soccer was still so green in the US. Coaches hadn't acquired any of that. Plus, there was a mystique to foreign coaches that Americans revered.

Bora Milutinovic: Every game, you'll learn something, or the game is so exciting. You'll never know how--

Roger Bennett: One such coach was Bora Milutinovic. He is from Serbia, near the specialty, which was to take underperforming teams and turn them into overachievers. That was all relative, of course.

Speaker 5: The Mexican crowd won the game over, and it is.

Roger Bennett: Just ask Mexico or Costa Rica, Bora coached them both.

Speaker 5: Costa Rica rocket.

Roger Bennett: Neither of those teams came close to a final, but they also didn't humiliate themselves. The US had hired Bora to spend that same alchemy at the '94 World Cup.

Alexi Lalas: It was this strange way that he talked to you that ultimately did make sense-

Roger Bennett: Alexi Lalas.

Alexi Lalas: -but you had to go in a lot of weird ways in order to get there. I liken them to this mixture of both Yoda and Yogi Berra.

Bora Milutinovic: [foreign language] I've always said it's important to know how you win [foreign language] and when you win.

Marcelo Balboa: You walked in, "My name is Bora, B-O-R-A, Bora.

Roger Benett: Marcelo Balboa, a defender.

Marcelo Balboa: "You put your shoes on, just like Germans do. Right foot, left foot, it doesn't matter. You put them on, and you tie them. You put on your socks the same way. You put on your shorts the same way. Now, why can't you do that on the field and compete with them?"

Roger Bennett: Now, as much as US Soccer fell under the thrall of Bora's idiosyncratic methodology, or maybe because of it, it began to feel uncomfortable that his coaching staff was 100% European-born. There needed to be an American on this staff, someone who could be their eyes and ears, someone who was already in the organization, a company man. Wait, I think we all know a man who fits that description. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Steve Sampson became one of Bora's assistant coaches for the next two years.

Steve Sampson: The times that you learn the most from Bora isn't necessarily on the field. It's when you're having dinner with him, and he brings out the board, and all of a sudden, he's got all the pieces, and he's making drawings on the board. You're saying, "Well, what would you do in this situation?" You could be right 1,000 times over. The reality is, is that he would come up with a scenario where you were wrong. There was literally getting a doctorate degree in football with one of the top coaches in the world.

Roger Bennett: Bora drilled into the Americans, a particular mentality.

Marcelo Balboa: Slow the game down, control the game. When you get your chance, you have to capitalize on it, and that's what we did.

Roger Bennett: As a defender. Marcelo Balboa's job was to repel oldcomers and Bora's strategy that prioritized his position.

Marcelo Balboa: Our system was simple. Our system was move the ball. If you have to clear the ball, 60 yards of the field, clear. If you got to put it out of bounds in the parking lot, put it in the parking lot. Eventually, they're not going to shift, you're going to find a gap, and we exploit it.

Roger Bennett: Minimize risk.

Marcelo Balboa: Always. There's no risk. You cannot take a risk.

Roger Bennett: It was with this strategy, take no risks, safety first, second and third that ultimately brought the team on what Bora promised, reasonable success at the '94 World Cup. The US hadn't been humiliated. They'd made it past the first round. For Bora, that was mission accomplished another notch on his belt, which meant it was time to move on in search of his next turnaround project, but he'd left the team with a taste of victory. Now US Soccer wanted to do in the next World Cup What Americans do in every sport, apart from soccer, which is win the whole damn thing. First, they did need a new coach.

Hank Steinbrecher: I interviewed Carlos Queiroz, a very famous Portuguese coach to the national team, Sporting Lisbon, Carlos Alberto Parreira, a winner of a World Cup.

Roger Bennett: Hank Steinbrecher was US Soccer's Secretary-General at the time.

Hank Steinbrecher: We were going to go around the world and try to hire the best coach that we possibly can.

Roger Bennett: You were going after the big dogs.

Hank Steinbrecher: We were going after the big dogs.

Steve Sampson: Then, I get the phone call asking me if I would be willing to be the interim national team coach.

Roger Bennett: What made Steve Sampson the ideal interim then?

Hank Steinbrecher: He was there.

[music]

Roger Bennett: He was, essentially, available.

Hank Steinbrecher: He was available at the time when we needed it.

Roger Bennett: As an Englishman, allow me to interject. Giving the national team job to a bloke who'd never head-coached a single pro game before, even on an interim basis, in a country whose soccer culture was so raw, we didn't know what we didn't know. That could only happen in America, but goddammit, I grew up watching underdog American movies; Rocky, Rudy, oh, Ralph Macchio in the The Karate Kid. Steve Sampson becoming coach was the first time I saw one of those stories unfold before my very eyes.

[music]

Steve Sampson's inherited the national team, but it still bore the imprint of the outgoing head coach, the mystical Serbian, Bora. A bloke who'd kept that team afloat by keeping it on the defense. Steve had other ideas. Suddenly, you're the head coach, no pro experience. What did you say to the players the first time you spoke to them? What was your message?

Steve Sampson: One of the things I wanted to bring to the national team was his attitude of, "We're going to attack, we're going to take risk going forward, but when we transition from offense to defense, we're going to work our tail off to defend and close down. We're going to press higher up the field and we're not going to drop in and play in a very low-pressure, compact way. We're going to take the game to the opponent."

Roger Bennett: You called it 'forward-mindedness'.

Steve Sampson: That's correct. That's the term that I use. Playing to win as a player as opposed to playing not to lose.

Roger Bennett: The American way.

Steve Sampson: The American way.

Alexi Lalas: Very quickly, I think all of us said, "Oh, thank God, it's a breath of fresh air."

Roger Bennett: That's Alexi Lalas.

Alexi Lalas: Bora micromanaged absolutely everything. For some of us, we needed that, but at a certain point, it also got to a point where we wanted to be left to our own devices. To learn it for ourselves.

Steve Sampson: Soccer is a player's game.

Roger Bennett: Steve, still interim coach, knew his influence would only go so far.

Steve Sampson: You can't call a timeout and say, "Hey boys, pay attention to this detail," or call a timeout to destroy the rhythm of the opponent. That's why players on the field have to be reactive, responsive in the moment, and react appropriately because a coach can't call a timeout.

John Harkes: Steve gave us an open-door freedom to say, "Go and express yourself."

Roger Bennett: Midfielder, John Harkes.

John Harkes: Which was great. We wanted that, we needed that.

Eric Wynalda: Steve was very hands-off.

Roger Bennett: Eric Wynalda, a man born to be a striker. The forward who patrols the opponent's goal desperate to carry the scoring burden.

Eric Wynalda: We decided, in a very tight-knit group of guys, that we knew exactly what we were capable of and we had a coach in Steve Sampson that was willing to let us do that. He was all about allowing guys to have personality and allowing us to, not to run the show, I wouldn't go that far, but very inclusive.

Roger Bennett: I know it might seem strange that a once wide-eyed boy scout, Steve Sampson, the admirer of Bora is tearing up the Bora playbook at the first opportunity. Keep this in mind, every single interim coach in the history of interim coaches uses the same old trick, whatever your predecessor did, simply do the exact opposite. If the old guy used to shout, "X-X," you say, "Y-Y." It's a simple way to prove your mettle, to differentiate yourself, make a name. Maybe, just maybe get a shot at the job and grab the whole enchilada.

Hank Steinbrecher: Steve had a philosophy which I thought was really great. He said, "We're Americans, we don't fight our battles on our ground-

Roger Bennett: That's Hank Steinbrecher, your Secretary-General of US Soccer.

Hank Steinbrecher: -we fight our battles in the other person's territory. We're a very attack-minded culture and that's exactly how we're going to play. We're not going to say, "We're a lousy team, we're going to park the bus." We're going to say, "We're as good as anybody in the world, and we're going to come out and we're going to cut down your throat." I have a son who's a Navy Seal. He wears a flag on his uniform that he's ready to die for. It represents the constitution of the United States, which is something that we're very proud of.

When you put on a United States uniform, there's a flag on your chest, right over your heart, and you need to transform yourself when you step off the touchline and onto the pitch. You need to transform yourself to perform at a much higher level and give everything that this son of mine is willing to give. We're trying to develop an American soccer culture, and Steve got that. Steve understood that. He knew what it meant to be an American playing for the American team.

Roger Bennett: Back to our story. Six weeks after Sampson had become the interim coach, it was time for the US Cup, games which are so-called friendlies, just exhibition matches. Winning here, that wouldn't help America climb the mountain of World Cup qualification, but it might, just might help Steve Sampson build a case to keep his job. If you asked the players about the US Cup, their memories default to the game against Mexico. That national team who'd savored the opportunity to torment the US in a long, lopsided rivalry.

Marcelo Balboa: Obviously, I was super-focused, super-nervous.

Alexi Lalas: Mexico had been so dominant and for so long.

Eric Wynalda: I'd shaved my head and I looked like a very angry person that was ready for that game.

Steve Sampson: We've got an opportunity to show the world, and show the US, Mexico, everybody that we want respect, we want to win.

Roger Bennett: We want to win, but we don't win all that much in truth. Since 1934, Mexico and the US had sent their best soccer players into battle 35 times, and the US had only emerged victorious on 4 of those occasions. On June 18th, 1995, for that US Cup game, the Americans took to the field at RFK Stadium in Washington DC in front of 38,000 people. To the ears of the US players, it sounded like roughly 37,999 of those were there to cheer for Mexico. Here's goalkeeper, Kasey Keller.

Kasey Keller: Roger, we can play as the men's US national team in a lot of cities against a lot of teams and there's more support for the away team than there is for the home team.

Roger Bennett: To me, few things illustrate more perfectly the extent to which Americans did not care about soccer back then. The game was so unpopular that whomever the US played, the bulk of the fans who came out to cheer either came from those countries or had families there, and their loyalties were with the team from back home.

Commentator: This segment of the game is presented commercial-free by Mastercard. We're underway. The United States against Mexico.

Roger Bennett: The referee blows his whistle, the ball's kicked off, time for the Americans to unveil their new approach, Steve Sampson's 'forward-mindedness'. Alexi Lalas remembers the moment.

Alexi Lalas: Steve was letting us go forward, not with reckless abandon, but with a whole lot more joy and fearlessness than we had had in the past.

Steve Sampson: Our team was attacking the Mexican backline and getting in behind and creating one shot after another.

Roger Bennett: Just 174 seconds into the 90-minute game--

Commentator: -yellow cards as quickly now, the United States has [unintelligible 00:19:08]. Great chance, scores. USA [crosstalk].

Roger Bennett: The Americans had just scored in less time than it takes to buy a bugger at the concession stand.

Steve Sampson: I was literally shocked.

Eric Wynalda: This was the first time that we came into a game and we were playing with anger, we were playing with focus, and we were not going to bow down.

Roger Bennett: The ambush continued.

Commentator: Here comes Dooley. Dooley scores. USA, Thomas Dooley.

Roger Bennett: When midfielder, Thomas Dooley barreled through the Mexican defense and doubled America's lead, he was so shocked, he didn't even know how to celebrate properly. You can see him on the footage from the game. He just looks around awkwardly, charges towards the corner flag, and before he gets there, belly flops headfirst onto the turf in glee.

Commentator: [unintelligible 00:20:02] Dooley [crosstalk]

Roger Bennett: KC Keller back in the American goal had little to do but look on and wonder at the spectacle unfolding at the other end of the field. Just the great goals, great crosses. Just great play, from start to finish. It was really a complete performance against your biggest rival, knowing that you were able to shut up a crowd that you know wasn't coming there to support you in your own country.

Alexi Lalas: I vividly remember-

Roger Bennett: Alexi Lalas.

Alexi Lalas: -almost it was the fulfillment of something that we had believed for so long and yet had not been able to manifest in a single moment. This was that moment.

Roger Bennett: What went right that day?

John Hawkes: Everything.

Roger Bennett: Midfielder John Hawkes.

John Hawkes: Momentum, positive energy, belief in ourselves. This feeling that we were in the nation's capital, and there was this patriotism about us. There was this spirit. This underbelly of we were growing, whether it's right or wrong, or it's naive, but we were just like, "Bring it on. Let's go."

Roger Bennett: Hawkes' chance would come in the 36 minutes.

Commentator: Gets the pass to Cobi Jones. Wynalda, still dribbling. The shot that saved the [unintelligible 00:21:22]. The score of John Hawkes, USA leads at three to nothing.

Roger Bennett: This was a goal that I remember watching live, at home, which was then Chicago. The US, three-nil up against Mexico, with barely a third of the game gone. This was like science fiction, beautiful science fiction. I felt as astonished as a crow watching an elephant fly.

Commentator: [crosstalk] and there's Hawkes winning the battle for the loose ball. Nothing in three. I tell you, I would never have predicted three-nothing after 36 minutes of this game. [crosstalk]

Roger Bennett: The half time whistle blew and the players headed towards the locker rooms. Wynalda, exhilarated, emotional, he's boiling over.

Eric Wynalda: There are all the delegates from the Mexican Federation were coming onto the field and Hank Steinbrecher was trying as hard as he could to hold it in, but he was beaming with pride. I just went after it, just essentially said, "You know why we're beating them? Because we're better than they are." I'm looking right at their Federation.

Roger Bennett: You're looking at the Mexican Federation.

Eric Wynalda: Yes, and I'm saying, "We're better than you now. Deal with it." I remember Hank basically saying, "Politically incorrect but I'm with you kid."

Roger Bennett: The truth was right there for everyone to see up on the scoreboard. The US were better than Mexico.

John Harkes: It was just total dominance from the first minute to the 90th minute.

Roger Bennett: Any hope the Mexicans had of forcing their way back into the game dissipated in the 67th Minute.

Commentator: Wynalda had such a good game.

Commentator 2: Oh, nice onto Rena. Rena, the shot, the score. USA. Clavio Rena.

Roger Bennett: The cameras cut to the sidelines to find Steve Sampson thrusting both hands into the air with fists of triumph. Despite the gesture, he was unable to mask the look on his face. It was one of sheer astonishment.

Commentator: Jorge Campos can't believe he's had to fish the ball out of his own net four times against the United States.

Commentator 2: That's a great backflip by Dooley.

Commentator: That's it. The United States, and head coach Steve Sampson, have defeated Mexico four to nothing on a sunny afternoon here in our nation's capital. [unintelligible 00:23:42]

Roger Bennett: You, Eric Wynalda, California, after the game, you tell the media, "We have a great deal of respect for Steve Simpson, we're playing for him." Did you mean that?

Eric Wynalda: Yes. At that moment in time, I felt that Steve had embraced the role. This was a guy that at his core, could understand where most of us were coming from. He had a background in American soccer. This guy was for lack of a better phrase, one of us.

Roger Bennett: A background in American soccer, that should have been the opposite of what you were looking for back then. On paper, Steve still should never have been the head coach, but there he was. No longer the unemployed guy by the side of the pool, Steve was winning and his team was about to head to a foreign continent and take on oldcomers and smite them. It was almost biblical. Within 15 weeks, the word interim was removed from Steve Sampson's title. In a way was Steve like the placeholder that wouldn't let go of his place.

Eric Wynalda: Yes, he was tenacious as all hell.

Steve Sampson: You know when I had to pinch myself was when I went back home and I was greeted by my three young children and my wife in a home that wasn't mine, living with my in-laws, and in that moment, I said, "What the hell just happened?" I've just spent the most magnificent summer living a dream, quite frankly and to be offered to be the national team coach. Then I was able to tell my wife, "We can move back to Agoura Hills and actually buy a home now. We don't have to live with our in-laws." I can't tell you how excited I was about that and to give her the opportunity to basically say, "Where do you want to live?"

Roger Bennett: Did you know he was living with his mother-in-law?

John Hawkes: His mother in law? No. No idea.

Roger Bennett: Hank Steinbrecher, heard that he couldn't afford his own home. He moved his whole family in with his in-laws.

Hank Steinbrecher: I can believe that.

Roger Bennett: He said the day you gave him a full-time contract he walked home to his wife and said, "We can move anywhere you want."

Hank Steinbrecher: Not under the terms that I negotiated. [laughs]

Voiceover: American Fiasco is a production of WNYC Studios. Our team includes Joel Meyer, Emily Botein, Paula Szuchman, Derek John, Starlee Kine, Kegan Zema, Ernie [unintelligible 00:26:17], Eliza Lambert, Jamie York, Daniel Guillemette, Matt Boynton, Jonathan Williamson, Brad Feldman, Bea Aldrich, Jeremy Blum, Isaac Jones, and Sarah Sandbach. Joe Plourde is our technical director, Hannis Brown composed our original music.

Our theme music is by Big Red Machine, the collaboration between Aaron Dessner of the National and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. Audio with this episode courtesy of ABC Sports and NPR. For more about this story, including a timeline and more, go to fiascopodcast.com.

Roger Benett: This is Rog. If you liked this podcast, recommend it to your friends, especially your soccer curious friends who have started to fall in love with the sport during the World Cup. This podcast guaranteed to put them over the top. Courage.

 

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