In the summer of 1994, when the United States hosted a World Cup, it had no professional league to show for. The national team was patched together from ex-collegians and journeymen. Organisers quietly fretted over ticket sales. The world’s most popular sport was, in America, little more than a suburban Saturday morning ritual.
When the World Cup returns to American soil 32 years later, it arrives to a landscape so altered it barely resembles the one it helped create. Major League Soccer (MLS) has grown into a 30-team enterprise, with 22 clubs playing in purpose-built stadiums and average attendances of 20,000.
Sunil Gulati, former US Soccer president, told Al Jazeera in a recent interview, “If you said in 1994 that MLS would be a 30-team league with soccer-specific stadiums and 20,000 crowds — not in our wildest dreams.”
The transformation started with a piece of backroom diplomacy. FIFA president João Havelange, made clear that awarding the 1994 World Cup to the USA came with a condition: a professional first-division league would follow.
It was a remarkable concession for a country that had already watched several professional leagues collapse. The North American Soccer League (NASL), which briefly featured stars like Pelé and Franz Beckenbauer in the 1970s, had folded in 1984. The sport’s foundation in the US rested almost entirely on youth participation — by the early 1990s, an estimated 18 million Americans played football at some level, yet the pyramid had no apex.
“FIFA recognised a long time ago that, for the sport to grow internationally, it had to be successful in the US,” Farrukh Quraishi, a Tampa-based administrator who played in the NASL, told Al Jazeera. “This is a huge and wealthy market. Now, you look at who is buying clubs in MLS, and it’s a who’s who of NFL owners.”
The 1994 tournament proved the skeptics wrong on attendance, drawing a record 3.59 million fans across 52 games. Two years later, MLS kicked off — Havelange in attendance at the inaugural game in San Jose.
What followed was gradual, then sudden. Football-specific stadiums began appearing in 1999. International stars — David Beckham, Thierry Henry, Zlatan Ibrahimović, and most recently Lionel Messi — chose MLS as a destination rather than a retirement home. Private equity and NFL ownership groups began acquiring clubs. Today, the US Soccer Federation sanctions 127 professional teams across men’s and women’s divisions.
Gulati added that eighteen of the world’s 50 most valuable clubs now play in MLS — a statistic he called ‘extraordinary’.
Yet underneath the gleaming stadiums and billion-dollar valuations, a quieter argument persists.
Eric Wynalda, who had 106 appearances for the US national team, believes the infrastructure has outpaced the ambition. He was blunt in his recent interview with Al Jazeera: “Facilities do not create ability. We need more focus on a competitive environment to develop players. We tell them winning doesn’t matter and then wonder why they can’t win.”
Most American players in MLS earn the league’s minimum salary of $80,622 annually, and only two US nationals ranked among the top 40 highest-paid players in the league last year. Wynalda’s proposed fix — introducing promotion and relegation — remains controversial, and the league’s closed franchise model makes it unlikely in the near term.
Former US international Alexi Lalas, working now as a Fox Sports commentator, was more measured. He said, “Soccer still isn’t king in the US. But it’s part of the palate, and certainly part of the landscape when it comes to this generation.”
