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For U.S. team, success at World Cup hard to define
5/1/10
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- In 1998, U.S. Soccer drafted a $50 million development plan with one goal: to make the men's national team a legitimate threat to capture a World Cup. Its target date for the project? 2010.
The World Cup in South Africa is less than two months away, and few sane people would put the U.S. on their shortlist of contenders. But that's perfectly fine with Dan Gaspar, head men's soccer coach at the University of Hartford and one of the people who helped draft what became known as Project 2010.
"When Carlos Queiroz and I were hired as consultants [on Project 2010], the first thing we did was change the objective," says Gaspar, a longtime assistant to Queiroz, including in the latter's current role as head coach of the Portuguese national team. "The objective now -- what it should be -- is to be in a position to compete in the World Cup."
To Gaspar this subtle difference reveals a lot about U.S. attitudes toward sports. "Countries such as Argentina, Italy and Brazil don't have the audacity to say, 'We're going to win the World Cup in 2010.' There's too many variables, some of which we're not in control of, to determine that kind of destiny."
Indeed, only seven countries have won the World Cup in the tournament's 80-year history: The trio Gaspar mentioned, plus France, Germany, England and Uruguay.
Often the best team doesn't win; some of the most storied teams in the game's history have come up empty, including the Dutch teams of the late 1970s and the French sides of the early 1980s. The Netherlands has never won, in fact; nor has fellow traditional power Spain. England (which invented the game, or at least codified it) and France were only able to win as hosts. Only one country, Brazil, has won a tournament played outside its home continent.
Fortunately, nobody today is expecting the U.S. to win the World Cup in 2010. Soccer has come a long way stateside, but it hasn't come that far. Yet Gaspar and other observers say the U.S. team is right on schedule, positioned for success at this year's World Cup.
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