Alan Rothenberg Sold 1994 World Cup as Can’t-Miss Event
Alan Rothenberg said the 1994 world cup had to feel like a big event Americans could not miss, and that was the point of the push that followed when he took over the US Soccer Federation in the summer of 1990. He was working from a portable cabin in Colorado Springs with six full-time staff.
Rothenberg in Colorado Springs
Rothenberg said the federation had not been professionally managed and was essentially a volunteer organisation. His answer was to make the tournament feel unavoidable rather than remote, because the United States was four years from hosting after beating Brazil and Morocco for the right.
“My vision, if you will, all surrounded that. The inspiration was to convince the American public that this was an event they couldn't miss.”
He added, “And if we do that, we'll be successful in creating a lot of enthusiasm and, ultimately, big attendances and large revenues.”
USSF and FIFA
The road to that point was uneven. FIFA’s decision to award the World Cup to the United States drew derision because of American apathy toward football, the domestic game had been without a top-flight league for half a decade after the demise of the NASL, and the national team had missed nine of the previous 10 World Cups.
Rothenberg also inherited strained relations with FIFA after a botched American application to step in and host the 1986 finals when Colombia withdrew. FIFA asked him to run so he could step in and take over preparations for the 1994 tournament.
He said, “So we really embarked on a non-stop effort to promote the World Cup as a big event.” That effort later fed into a wider shift: more than three decades later, football had overtaken baseball for the first time to become the USA’s third-most loved sport in a recent survey by The Economist.
World Cup 1994 legacy
The 1994 tournament helped start the rise of football’s popularity in the United States, and Rothenberg’s pitch shows how narrow the margin was between skepticism and scale. He was trying to sell a World Cup to a country that had not yet made room for one.
