NUREMBERG, Germany — It is the players you feel for, the veterans who have spent a decade or two chasing an elusive dream, firm in the belief that one day, surely, soccer's World Cup trophy would be held high by an American.
It will not come true in the near future.
That dream died here Thursday as the U.S. lost to Ghana 2-1, eliminating the American team from the World Cup, just as it died four years ago in South Korea, and four years before that in France.
As a nation we are still learning to play what Pele described as "the beautiful game." Not beautifully. Not as well as others yet, true, but better than we once did. There was a 40-year gap between the U.S. appearance in the 1950 World Cup in Brazil and the 1990 World Cup in Italy.
It was a black hole, a lost generation.
But since 1990 the U.S. has qualified for the World Cup five times in a row and even reached the quarterfinals in 2002, spurring hope for this year's team.
Had the U.S. won Thursday, it would have played world champion Brazil in the tournament's second round. And that game, against the magical Brazilians, regardless of the result, would have edged soccer in the U.S. in the right direction -- closer to the sports it strives to match, closer to football, closer to baseball, closer to basketball, in public opinion.
The audience would have been huge, the interest immense.
Instead, the nation now turns its attention elsewhere. In the ESPN age there is always something else: the NBA draft comes next week, in July NFL training camps open, and baseball's pennant races will soon heat up.
But soccer in the U.S. suffers from more than only a lack of public attention. Most of America's best athletes continue to head for the NBA, Major League Baseball and the NFL where the financial rewards are far greater.
Another problem is that in the four-year cycle between World Cups, the U.S. team doesn't play enough strong opponents in Europe, or in South America, against Brazil and Argentina. They tend to stay in their region and play Guatemala, Costa Rica and Panama, teams that are not good enough to raise the level of their competition.
Fortunately, the American soccer dream constantly reinvents itself, springing up with each season, when youngsters from New Jersey, just like Claudio Reyna, or from North Carolina, just like Eddie Pope, or from Illinois, just like Brian McBride, first step onto a soccer field.
