By Fred Delkin

 What the vast majority of the world’s sports fans call “football” took its current form in merry old England in the middle of the 19th century, and within a few years the far flung outposts of the British Empire established what we Yanks call “soccer” as a worldwide athletic obsession.  Now we’re about to witness the 16th staging of the World Cup, the tournament that determines which of 32 national teams will earn planetwide bragging rights. 

Historians tell us today’s game was devised from mob football that saw several hundred players per side course the length of an English town, with a wake of broken windows, arms and legs.  The English Football Association was formed in 1863, and rules were born.  Athletically inclined men of the day chose between Football and Rugby, with the latter initially more popular.  English football and rugby were combined as the antecedents to American football, with the latter defined by rules adapted in 1906 for 
college play.  Soccer continued in the U.S. with club and company teams formed by immigrants.  Meanwhile, overseas, the game spread like wildfire, undoubtedly due to the fact it required little equipment or sophisticated training.  Soccer became an Olympic Games sport in 1908 and hasn’t looked back anywhere on the globe outside North America.

World Cup born

The World Cup tournament was born in 1930, with 13 national teams competing in Uruguay.  The home team won.  

In subsequent Cups, European and Latin American teams have shared dominance.  This year France is seeded first as the defending champion.  The remainder of the top 10 seeds, in order, are Argentina, Brazil, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Mexico, Germany, England and the United States.  U.S. soccer visibilty was virtually doused in the mid-‘80’s, as a popular major pro league (the Portland Timbers were a winning member) collapsed from unsound investment in highly paid foreign stars.  As the game became popular in American colleges, hopes were high for the ’98 U.S. World Cup squad, but our stalwarts finished dead last in the 32-team field (an embarassment compounded by our national women’s team winning the third World Cup tourney for the distaff side in 1999, amid feverish U.S. television coverge). 

Heavy reliance upon the development of the college game is now paying player dividends for the U.S. national team, leading to a string of wins in international play and a current world ranking of 13 by the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA).  There are no less than 203 national teams ranked by FIFA, with the British Carribean protectorate of Montserrat the lowliest.  There are six FIFA geographic regions: Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, Oceania (Pacific) and North & Central America (the latter including the Caribbean).

USA second in region

The American World Cup squad finished tied for second with Mexico in regional qualifying play, behind Costa Rica…yet the U.S. team counts four straight wins over Mexico.  These three teams made the Cup field.  Regional playoffs, not FIFA rankings, are the determinant as to who makes the 32-team Cup tournament.  Three highly ranked elevens, Colombia, Netherlands and Yugoslavia, failed to qualify this year.

European sides dominate the qualifiers, with 15.  Africa placed six teams, South America five and Asia, three.  This Cup marks the debut of Asia as a host region, with  Japan (38), Korea (41) and China (52) representing that continent, and all Cup games being contested at Korean or Japanese venues.  The U.S. begins play in Group D, which includes Korea, Portugal and Poland (33).  Our team’s first match, vs. Portugal, should indicate whether our side has any future in the tournament. U.S. matches on 6/10 vs. Korea and 6/14 with Poland will find the U.S. heavily favored according to FIFA ranking.

Veterans are few

Only three U.S. squad members are Cup veterans.  Goalie Kasey Keller was an all-American at the University of Portland and a native of little Lacey, WA.  His teammate, midfielder Claudio Reyna, has international credentials, his father having been a pro soccer star in Argentina.  Reyna glittered at the University of Virginia and has played professionally in Germany and Scotland (note that the proliferation of professional soccer around the globe has meant that most World Cup teams are populated by boys who play for pay…Keller has been a star for several years in England).  Forward Cobi Jones, a collegian at UCLA, and American major league pro player,  is the other U.S. Cup veteran.

If you think the March Madness of the American NCAA basketball tournament encourages office pools and pre-event betting, you can up the ante ten or one hundred fold for World Cup tourney wagering.  As a guide to figuring out what may happen in current Cup play, be aware of these facts:

1.  Multiple cup winners include Brazil (4), Italy & Germany (3), Uruguay &  France (2) and one apiece for Argentina and England.

2.  Host region teams winning include Uruguay, Italy, England, Germany & France, so you may expect Japan & Korea to play above their heads

3.. Best dark horse candidates include Paraguay, Ireland & Cameroon

4. A loss in preliminary rounds does not prevent a team from moving on

So, go ahead, bet the farm and join me in anxiously awaiting the start of the real football season this fall.

© 2002  Oregon Magazine