By Mike Woitalla
Soccer America Magazine

Five of the players who saw action for the USA when it clinched a World Cup ticket with a 2-0 win over Mexico were veterans of a U-17 World Cup.

Does that mean we will be seeing, as we watch this year's American team at the U-17 finals in Peru, the future stars of the full U.S. national team? Maybe. Maybe not.

Claudio Reyna, who captained the team against Mexico, played at the 1989 U-17 World Cup in Scotland, where the United States downed Brazil, 1-0.

It marked the first U.S. win over Brazil at a world championship at any level and Brazilian coach Homero Cavalheiro said after the game, ''The United States deserved to win today. They were better as a team; they were better individually.''

Yet Reyna was the only player on the U.S. roster who ended up contributing to the full national team. He's the only one still playing pro ball.

The four other U-17 vets from the Sept. 3 Mexico game — Landon Donovan, DaMarcus Beasley, Oguchi Onyewu, Santino Quaranta — were on 1999 and 2001 U-17 World Cup squads.

Bobby Convey, who played in other qualifiers, played on the 1999 team, which finished fourth, and Eddie Johnson played with Quaranta in 2001, when the team exited in the first round.

The last three U-17 squads, beginning with the 1999 team, were part of U.S. Soccer's Bradenton residency. In the pre-residency era, the 1993 team reached the quarterfinals in Japan, but the most successful player from that squad, John O'Brien, saw no action in the tournament. The 1995 squad had Tim Howard, and Taylor Twellman led the attack in 1997. Neither squad reached the second round.

The current U.S. team, under Coach John Hackworth, opens play Saturday against North Korea and will try to become the fifth U.S. team to reach the second round in 11 appearances.

Hackworth's squad will ultimately be judged years from now, when we see how far its players progress. But we will be able to see in the coming weeks — Fox Soccer Channel and Galavision are broadcasting the tournament — how the skills of the young Americans stack up against their international counterparts.

We'll be watching whether the United States has defenders who can dribble, pass well and contribute to the attack. We'll look for players who can control the rhythm of a game, attack creatively and outplay, not merely outrun, their opponents.

We hope we'll be seeing young Americans who, down the road, we would pay to watch play.