Sports fans of a certain age will remember a time when the World Cup was a complete afterthought in the U.S. In 1986, the last time the USMNT did not play in a World Cup, U.S. sports fans weren’t pondering which team to root for in that summer’s tournament in Mexico after the USMNT failed to qualify for the ninth consecutive World Cup.
Instead, sports fans were wondering about the first-place Boston Red Sox’s World Series chances and if the Chicago Bears — one of the most dominant Super Bowl winners ever — could repeat. Soccer was a sport lost in the wilderness in the USA. Fast forward 32 years, and the soccer culture in the U.S. is totally different.
The USMNT’s first World Cup failure since the mid-1980s is considered a sporting catastrophe. Once a perennial contender along with Mexico for premier team in the region, the U.S. finished behind the likes of Panama and Honduras in qualifying last year.