Elder, Adam. New Kids in the World Cup: The Totally Late ‘80s & Early ‘90s Tale of the Team That Changed American Soccer Forever. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2022. Pp. 360. $34.95 hardcover and e-book.

Reviewed by Łukasz Muniowski

The US men’s national team was one of the 13 teams that appeared in the original World Cup in 1930. The Americans immediately made a mark on the competition, finishing third overall. They are still waiting to repeat that feat. Unlike the women’s national team, the American men have yet to make even the semifinal of the global tournament. In fact, as brought up time and time again by Adam Elder in New Kids in the World Cup, they had to wait 40 years to even return to the competition back in 1990. 

After making the tournament three times––1930, 1934, and 1950––the US was never able to build the structures and develop players to allow a group of 23 individuals to form a national team good enough to qualify for the World Cup. Even the popularity of the North American Soccer League and the New York Cosmos in the mid-1970s did not do much to elevate the quality of the team and the status of the sport. But in the year 1989, something changed. A team consisting of players making $20 per game with no American professional league in existence––the NASL folded in 1984––made the World Cup. 

And they made it at the cost of Trinidad and Tobago, a soccer nation if there ever was one. The islands are so devoted to the sport that the government even declared the next day a national holiday, just so people could attend the game and celebrate making the World Cup through the night. The US, however, really needed to make the 1990 tournament in Italy, especially if it wanted to organize the 1994 World Cup. Was it possible for a country where, for a couple of years, the sport barely resembled the actual discipline? For decades, it seemed that the US was the last place left uncolonized by soccer’s global appeal, as, in the US, the game remained the domain of immigrants.

In New Kids in the World Cup, Adam Elder is able to catch the spirit of that crucial time by sticking to the present tense and adapting an informal style, engaging the reader in the story. At times, he gets too deep and assumes he is dealing with an almost ignorant reader, explaining rather obvious situations and circumstances. Still, the amount of detail that he gets into and the mood that he recreates is humorous and heroic at the same time.

From the beginnings of the US Soccer Federation in Colorado Springs all the way to the 1990 World Cup, Edler takes the reader on a fun sprint through office corridors, jet bridges and soccer tunnels, putting bits and pieces from numerous conversations and articles into comprehensive dialogue, describing not only the happenings on the pitch but also the office machinations conducted by the US Soccer Federation, which operated from a six-person office in Colorado Springs. Those in the positions of power assumed that the only way to change soccer’s inferior position among American sports enthusiasts was to organize a tournament. The US could show the rest of the world it could become a soccer country, while the rest of the world could, hopefully, infect the country with enthusiasm for the game. The first American bid to host the World Cup concerned the 1986 tournament, and it was far from professional. It was only after this failure that the US Soccer Federation understood that nobody was going to hand the tournament to their country. FIFA wanted to see infrastructure, commitment, and potential. That was why the offer to host the 1994 World Cup was prepared with the aid of Henry Kissinger and was 381 pages long. That, and the issues faced by Brazil and Morocco, made the U.S. the favorites to host. 

They won, with FIFA symbolically pushing the announcement to the Fourth of July 1988. A year later, though, the national team faced immense pressure to qualify for the 1990 World Cup, as FIFA was, at the time, reluctant  to award hosting duties to countries bad at soccer. How did the US do it? What was the experience like? Pick up New Kids in the World Cup to find out.

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Łukasz Muniowski recieved his Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of Warsaw. He is the author of Three-Pointer! A 40-Year NBA History (McFarland, 2020), Narrating the NBA: Representations of Leading Players after the Michael Jordan Era (Lexington, 2021),and The Sixth Man: A History of the NBA Off the Bench (McFarland, 2021).