409: Alexi Lalas and Marcelo Balboa, USA, Panini World Cup France 98

Much as I loved growing up in Lewisham, I occasionally have moments of wishing I had spent my formative years across the Atlantic. The vast majority of my favourite bands and musicians hail from the US. I actually quite like baseball. But then I think about the sheer geographical scale of the country and the terrifying concept of being governed by a racist, misogynist cretin and I quickly disavow the idea – at least Britain’s racist, misogynist cretins aren’t suggesting we mainline Dettol…yet.

Perhaps even higher up the list than fear of governance by a reprehensible moron is the idea of growing up in a country where football means a protracted interpretation of rugby league.  Despite the fact that the USA hosted the FIFA World Cup in 1994, a tournament that sparked my lifelong obsession, the game has never truly established itself across the pond and, whilst the MLS has made major strides in the last decade, men’s football sits behind NFL, basketball, baseball and ice hockey in terms of engagement amongst the US population. The women’s team is bloody brilliant and enjoys impressive nationwide support. More on that another time.

The USA men’s team had acquitted themselves well in their home tournament beating Colombia in the group stages and narrowly losing to eventual winners Brazil in the second round thanks to a solitary Bebeto goal. What was so impressive was the fact that the majority of the squad was drawn from college sides due to the lack of an established professional league. Four years later it was a very different story. A fully professional side, with players scattered around major European leagues, topped their qualifying group and set off for France with ambitions to improve upon their 1994 performance.

There was always a prophetic element to the 90s Panini sticker albums in terms of who earned the most real estate. The company seemed to know who was going to underwhelm audiences ahead of the tournament and assigned such teams a solitary page with two players sharing a sticker. For France 98 the USA and Jamaica shared the same indignity as Bolivia had endured in 1994 and were relegated to the one page. Hence why we see the central defensive pairing of Alexi Lalas and Marcelo Balboa side by side in the sticker above looking more like members of Pantera than members of their nation’s National Soccer Hall of Fame.

With 96 and 127 respective caps for the USMNT such a billing seems unfair for Lalas and Balboa. Both men played a significant role in raising the profile of ‘soccer’ in the US and Lalas impressed in his two seasons in Serie A with Padova during the league’s peak in the mid-90s. However, both men were nearing the ends of their careers by France 98 and the USA struggled badly in a tough group. A respectable 2-0 defeat to reigning European champions Germany was followed by a shocking 2-1 loss in a politically charged match against Iran. Their miserable tournament was ended with a 1-0 defeat to Yugoslavia. Throughout these matches only Balboa was given game time and that was just nine minutes in their, ultimately meaningless, final fixture which seems like poor treatment for two legends of the game.

By the time the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea came round a lot had changed for the USMNT. Lalas retired straight after France 98 while Balboa played his last game in 2000 in a considerably less dramatic draw with Iran. The US impressed in 2002 beating Portugal and Mexico on their way to the quarter-finals where they were denied victory over Germany due to a shocking refereeing decision and a solitary Michael Ballack goal. Whilst football still sits in the Europa League spot of US men’s team sports a significant amount of progress has been made and much of this is down to the efforts of pioneering stars like Lalas and Balboa, two of the countries first footballing rockstars.