What to expect from the U.S. team as the World Cup approaches

Geoff Bennett:

Well, we are just weeks away from the first men's World Cup on U.S. soil in more than 30 years. There's great anticipation around it, plenty of complaints about high prices and questions about how the U.S. team will fare with the home field advantage.

The squad was finalized earlier this week with a 26-man roster for the first match on June 12.

Christian Pulisic, U.S. Men's National Soccer Team:

We care so much. And, yes, it means a lot to us. We want to do our best to represent this country best we can. And, yes, the nerves are there. You get the excitement. You feel those jitters. And now that we're here, hopefully, we can just try to live in the moment and do the best we can.

Geoff Bennett:

For a preview of the men's prospects, we are joined now by veteran soccer writer Leander Schaerlaeckens. He's the author of the new book "The Long Game: U.S. Men's Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts." He's also a columnist for The Guardian.

Leander, I got to say, the book subtitle is extraordinary.

Thank you. Thanks for being with us.

So let's start with the basics, where this U.S. men's team stands right now. What are the realistic expectations?

Leander Schaerlaeckens:

I think if they make it to the quarterfinals of this World Cup, they will have done very well. And that's not a thing Americans always necessarily like to hear that making it to the last eight means that you have succeeded.

But you have to consider that there's 211 countries that have national soccer teams. Only eight of them have ever won the World Cup. And the tournament's been expanded to 48 teams. So for the U.S. to get to the quarterfinals, they have to not only survive the group stage, but they have to make it through two knockout round games.

And in all of their history at the World Cup, they have only won one of those. So that would make it a successful tournament, I think. But to add on to that, what's also important here is that the country cares and that they move the sport forward in a significant way, the way the 1994 World Cup did.

And so that means not only doing well on the field, but kind of catching the country in a soccer fever and to really bring them along and to really get them to invest in this sport, and really help it break into the mainstream long term.

Geoff Bennett:

Well, who are the players that casual fans should keep an eye on and why?

Leander Schaerlaeckens:

So you had Christian Pulisic there in the little clip. He's the star of the team. He's really interesting because, for decades, American soccer on the men's side has been waiting for this sort of breakthrough player who can really help push into the mainstream and become an American star.

And now a player comes along who can potentially do that in Pulisic, except he has no interest in fame whatsoever. He's not into doing press, into doing media. It's very painful to him. He's an introvert. And so that's kind of ironic in a sense.

Another player who I think American fans are going to learn a lot about is Weston McKennie. Like Pulisic, he plays at a major club in Italy. He's this really cheery, goofy Army brat who's incapable of being serious until the games start. He can play anywhere on the field, has played just about anywhere but goalkeeper for Juventus in this past season.

He's going to be a big weapon for them. There's just interesting characters up and down this field. There's players who grew up in the Netherlands and in Germany and in England to American fathers who offer really interesting accents to the locker room. There's guys from the borderlands, like Ricardo Pepi, who, when he was a teenager, had to make an agonizing decision of whether he was going to play for Mexico or play for the U.S.

Two of the U.S. goalkeepers are really interesting. Matt Turner, when he tried to get in the college soccer, couldn't get any team to look at him. He sent out hundreds of tapes and e-mails to college programs, until Fairfield University finally took a chance on him, and then he made it to the Premier League, and he was the starting U.S. goalkeeper at the last World Cup.

The other goalkeeper, Matt Freese, is the son of a famous neurosurgeon who pioneered gene therapy. And even though Matt has a degree from Harvard, he's sort of an underachiever in his family because they're all scientists and they have Ph.D.s and they work in tech and finance. And here he is slumming it in professional soccer.

(Laughter)

Geoff Bennett:

Slumming it.

Well, tell me about the coach, Mauricio Pochettino. He's known for his unconventional methods, his intense style. What should folks know about him?

Leander Schaerlaeckens:

So, Pochettino is a world-class soccer manager and the kind of manager that the U.S. has really never had before, and then they were only able to get because they had a World Cup on home soil.

He's from Argentina. He's coached some of the biggest clubs in European soccer. He's an interesting character. He's very affable. He's very pleasant. He also believes that keeping a tray of lemons in his office will absorb negativity. He believes that he can read the auras of the players and use it to kind of channel their performance and figure out who's going to play well.

So he's a really compelling character as well, but he's got them believing. And he offered the team this hard reset that they needed 18 months ago and got them back on track. And it's looking promising under him.

Geoff Bennett:

Let's talk about the criticism around this tournament, the high ticket prices, the expensive lodging and transportation, concerns about attendance in some cities. What happened? How did this event that was meant to build excitement for the sport all of a sudden become inaccessible to so many fans?

Leander Schaerlaeckens:

Well, the thing you have to appreciate is that FIFA came to North America because it understood that this is where it was going to make the most money.

And it has done everything it can to just suck up every bit of cash that it possibly could. So, whereas previous World Cups would be run basically by the domestic soccer federation, this time around, FIFA set up headquarters in Miami. They rented some space in Trump Tower, although what I hear is nobody's ever there and it was really done more for political reasons.

And they just made sure that they managed every bit of the cash flow of this tournament. And so ticket revenue, they keep. Broadcast revenue, they keep. Sponsorship revenue, they keep. Even concessions and parking, they get to keep.

And basically they left the local markets that are putting on these games, 16 in all of North America, 11 of them in the United States, to deal with the expensive stuff, transportation and security and putting on the fan fests, all of which are really hard to monetize.

So what's happened is that these markets have had to find other ways of paying for this stuff, rather than have to put the cost on the taxpayer. And that's why you're seeing these stories of $150 train tickets and inaccessible games in all these different ways.

And that's on top of the ticket prices, which are extraordinary, because FIFA has basically argued, look, we're bringing 104 Super Bowls to your country and we're going to price them accordingly.

Geoff Bennett:

Leander Schaerlaeckens, really enjoyed speaking with you.

His new book is "The Long Game," with the subtitle "U.S. Men's Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts."

Leander, thanks again.

Leander Schaerlaeckens:

Thank you.