Tag: Romania USA 94

‘USA 94: The World Cup that Changed the Game’ by Matthew Evans (2022)

I’ve had a pretty good life so far but I’d be lying if I said any single moment has given me more joy that Ray Houghton’s goal for Ireland against Italy in Giants Stadium on the 18th of June 1994. As a 10 year old soccer obsessed kid, the summer of USA ’94 was heaven. While my friends were in school forbidden to stay up too late, I spent the tournament at a campsite in France with my family where I played football all day and watched the World Cup all night. I didn’t miss a single moment apart from when group games were played at the same time.   It was perfect.   I say this because any book on USA ’94 is getting a 5 star review from me regardless of whether it deserves it. Thankfully USA 94: The World Cup that Changed the Game is objectively very good!

Given England’s failure to qualify, the 94 World Cup hasn’t got the same English language book treatment that Italia ’90 has with Pete Davies’ All Played Out. Even for Ireland, it lacks a classic book like Declan Lynch’s Days of Heaven on Italia 90. Matthew Evans has stepped up to fill this gap with an entertaining recap of the tournament, the politics surrounding it and the legacy it left behind on football globally and in the US.

Writing a book about a tournament without taking the personal memoir approach poses the challenge of covering 50 plus games and the risk of writing a glorified collection of match reports. Evans wisely chose to take a team centric approach, working through the various teams that reached the knockout stages and recounting their stories chapter by chapter. It strikes a nice balance of scene setting and match reports. The book is particularly interesting on the awarding of the tournament and the political backdrop in US Soccer which I was totally unaware of and has clearly benefited from Evans’ speaking to a variety of interesting people and digging up interesting sources.

Ultimately I found this book to be a very enjoyable nostalgia trip. It was a tournament of great number 10’s – Baggio, Hagi, Stoichkov, Brolin – of great defenders – McGrath, Baresi, Maldini – and of great goals. Its key moments are burned into my memory from countless replays of All the Goals of USA 94 on VHS. To relive them in this enjoyable, informative and well written book was a real pleasure.

Goals Goals Goals

‘From the Jaws of Victory: A History of Football’s Nearly Men’ compiled and edited by Adam Bushby and Rob MacDonald (2020)

‘History is written by the victors’ is one of those many quotes that gets attributed to Winston Churchill. History is written about the victors might by more accurate when it comes to sport. It’s the stories of winners that we remember and that get the most books, articles and attention.

As with every other aspect of life, 2020 refuses to follow the normal rules. So it’s only fitting that this year should see the publication of a football book celebrating those occasions when great teams fell short of their ultimate ambitions whether by bad luck, bad planning or because the team ceased to exist!

From the Jaws of Victory is a collection of essays from a variety of excellent football writers each one focusing on particular team which fell short of their ultimate goal. The essays range in style from deeply personal reflections to historical inquiry and wistful thoughts of what might have been. They range in time from Bolton Wanderers in 1953 to Steven Gerard’s slip for Liverpool in 2013/14.

I particularly enjoyed the essays that looked beyond British football including a very personal piece on the Fiorentina 98/99 team (glorious memories of Football Italia), the treble runner-up’s Bayer Leverkusen team of 2001-02, the Romanian team of USA 1994 (Hagi!) and my favourite essay on what may have been had Yugoslavia remained a single country until after USA ’94.

The quality of the writers shines through and like the best collections, the sum of the book is even greater than its parts (a testament to the editors, who are the team behind @magicspongers on twitter). Overall, this is a very enjoyable read that collectively captures some of the magic of football. As an fan of the Ireland football teams knows, its those moments of hope, just as much as the exceedingly rare moments of actual joy, that keep us coming back for more.

This is also a great companion piece to a separate essay collection published this year, Losers, which reflected on the meaning of defeat in sport.

Don’t worry it’s not just about England 🙂