The Long Game: U.S. Men’s Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts

“The ascent of the American men is something akin to a sporting miracle,” writes sports journalist Schaerlaeckens in this thorough debut history of the U.S. men’s national soccer team. The team formed in 1916 and finished third at the inaugural FIFA World Cup in Uruguay in 1930 (its best result to date). American soccer struggled over the next several decades, however. As Schaerlaeckens explains, the sport had a “foreignness” that pushed people away, while attempts to create a sustainable professional league were thwarted by low attendance and financial troubles. The country hosted the 1994 World Cup, which helped elevate the sport and made celebrities out of players like Alexi Lalas and Cobi Jones. The U.S. Soccer Federation later began investing in youth development with a soccer academy in Bradenton, Fla., which produced some of the program’s current stars, including Tyler Adams and Christian Pulisic, who led the team out of the group stage at the 2022 World Cup. The team is entering the 2026 World Cup as an “ascendant program, hoping to summit sometime soon,” Schaerlaeckens writes. He vividly chronicles the tumultuous journey of American men’s soccer by placing the team’s recent rise in the context of decades of institutional disorganization and on-field struggles. Fans will find this a boon. (May)