Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, June 24, 1990                   TAG: 9006280485
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: E-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: RONALD BLUM ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: FLORENCE, ITALY                                LENGTH: Long

HEAT IS ON FOR U.S./ SOCCER TEAM'S BIG STEP COMES IN '94

No pressure, no expectations, no hopes or dreams of winning it all. The players just wanted to show they belonged, take their lumps and leave with their heads high.

Four years from now, that won't be good enough. Cameroon, Czechoslovakia win quarterfinal games. E7 Four years from now, there will be expectations. Four years from now, there will be pressure. Four years from now, the majority of American sports fans may even care about what their team does.

Four years from now, the World Cup is coming to America. Already, the push is on to take American soccer to the next level, wherever that may be.

"We've said all along the challenge in the U.S. is unique," coach Bob Gansler said after his team left for home with an 0-3 record. "You have an extremely difficult set of circumstances."

In the rest of the world, soccer is king. In the United States, it's exercise for suburban youngsters and the children of immigrants.

When U.S. goalkeeper Tony Meola walked down the street in Italy, he was mobbed for autographs and pictures. When the former University of Virginia standout walked through Kennedy Airport in New York, he was just another American tourist returning home.

Werner Fricker, the president of the U.S. Soccer Federation, has dreams of changing that, dreams that boggle the mind.

"In 15 years, in 20 years, soccer in America will be bigger than the NFL, bigger than baseball," he has said many times.

Such talk brings some strange looks. Soccer bigger than the NFL?

But Fricker seems to believe it. He went out and got the 1994 World Cup for the United States because he is confident the tournament can jump-start the sport. But Europeans already are joking that there won't be a competitive U.S. team for the American fans to watch in four years.

Gansler knows how far behind his team is. He said that's why the American offense looked so dull at times.

"If we come out with our guns blazing, we're going to be shot down," he said. "We're not at that level. We can't play wide-open because they will beat us at that."

So what's going to change in the next four years?

First, several Americans probably will sign with European clubs. Forwards Peter Vermes and Chris Sullivan and midfielder Paul Caligiuri were the only players on this team with substantial European experience.

A Dutch team wants to sign midfielder Tab Ramos. A Belgian team is interested in defender John Doyle. Caligiuri is talking with four Italian clubs. Midfielder John Harkes, another former UVa star, and Meola also have hopes of playing abroad.

"It has to be the right situation," Gansler said, sounding as much like a den mother as a coach. "They have to be careful. They have to play."

Caligiuri signed with West German powerhouse Hamburg after getting his degree at UCLA, but didn't get into a game. Murray signed with a European team a few years ago, but didn't play much. That's what Gansler is trying to avoid.

"The situation has to be right, and that's difficult to ascertain," the coach said. "The questions are how genuine the interest is and how good is the chance you will be a player and not a practicer?"

There is some fear that Americans will be a fad because it was their first World Cup team in 40 years. Some clubs might want to sign an American as an attraction, soccer's version of a circus sideshow.

Players see Europe as the promised land. There was a feeling on the team that the experience gained in the World Cup put the players a class ahead of other Americans, and that there's not much left to learn back home.

"I don't think there's a guy on the team who couldn't get a job in Europe," Murray said.

He's more confident than most. Francesco Rocca, Italy's assistant coach, scouted the Americans before the World Cup. He liked some of what he saw, but was cautious.

"John Harkes is a great worker and could probably find a place on an Italian first-division team. I also feel strongly about Bruce Murray and Peter Vermes," Rocca said.

"I think Caligiuri, Meola and Murray have the best chance of any Americans in the Italian League," said former Italian player Stefano Tacconi.

But there's another danger in all the good players going to Europe. It would drain the top talent from whatever American pro league emerges.

"Instead of sending your players to foreign teams, it would be better to consolidate your progress by trying to raise soccer to the level of football, basketball and baseball now in the United States," Rocca said. "A good professional league would attract foreign coaches who would welcome the chance to work with your younger players."

For the past two years, the USSF has signed most of the national team's players to contracts. America is, in effect, a country with only one major professional soccer club - its national team.

Fricker talks about having four or eight national teams playing international competition in the next four years. He also talks of a national professional league run by the USSF. But such plans are not new.