It’s a safe bet that the American Olympic hopefuls won’t have to dodge flaming seat cushions this time around.
For the first time in history, the U.S. men’s team doesn’t travel during qualification play for the Olympics.
The Americans are the host. And they have taken the tournament to the self-proclaimed Sweetest Place on Earth, also known as Hershey, Pa.
The prospect of overdosing on Milk Duds and Almond Joy replaces the usual qualifying hazards of altitude, smog and unpurified water.
Moreover, as host, the United States wasn’t required to play in a preliminary phase, as it had to for the 1992 Games, when it needed 10 matches to book a ticket to Barcelona.
(Bruce Arena’s 1996 team skipped qualifying altogether as host of the Olympics themselves.)
The rigorous qualifying journey of the 1992 team coincided with the Olympics’ switch to an under-23 format. Coached by Lothar Osiander, the squad traveled to Haiti, Panama, Honduras, Canada and Mexico City, where it beat the Mexicans at 7,800 feet during record-setting smog.
That qualifying experience undoubtedly helped develop fortitude among that team’s members, such as Claudio Reyna, Joe-Max Moore, Brad Friedel, Mike Lapper, Chris Henderson, Alexi Lalas and Cobi Jones.
The team before them, also under Osiander, with the likes of John Harkes, John Doyle, Steve Trittschuh and Hugo Perez, qualified in dramatic fashion. It won a home-and-home series with Canada by winning the second leg, 3-0, to overcome a 2-0 deficit. It dodged flaming seat cushions in San Salvador in a 4-2 win.
The current team boasts more young players with pro experience than any U.S. squad before it. It won’t have to face the rigors of the road. But it will have to prove itself in just three games.
If it doesn’t, Hershey will be a very bitter experience for U.S. Soccer.