After the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team’s disappointing exit at this year’s home World Cup, you might be asking yourself: Why isn’t the USMNT more successful? Like seemingly everyone with World Cup Fever this summer, Nashvillian Desmond Armstrong has some thoughts on how the U.S. men can improve their standing globally.
But unlike most of the talking heads on TV and at your neighborhood bar, Armstrong has practical experience in the American youth soccer landscape — and he suited up for the U.S. at the 1990 World Cup in Italy.
“We need rec programs across the country that have basic standards,” Armstrong tells the Scene one morning at TashTea Cafe near his home in Antioch.
Armstrong’s winding journey to the USMNT is indicative of the difficult path to high-level soccer American kids face. If he and his parents hadn’t moved from Washington, D.C., to the Maryland suburbs, Armstrong says he might never have played soccer in the first place.
“My drive has always been: What can I do to help other kids that might have talent to make it?”
It’s expensive to play just about any sport at a high level in America, but it’s especially true when it comes to soccer. It costs thousands of dollars per year to play competitive travel soccer, which is increasingly the only way to get noticed by professional scouts. And that makes truly elite training a suburban endeavor.
“Had we not moved, I wouldn’t be playing soccer,” Armstrong says. “I might have done something else in sports, but not soccer, and I wouldn’t have had a chance to go around the world.”
In 1986, following a successful college career at the University of Maryland, Armstrong took the only path available at the time for Americans looking to play professional soccer domestically — he joined the Major Indoor Soccer League. Between the folding of the influential North American Soccer League in 1984 and the inaugural season of Major League Soccer in 1996, there was not a top-flight pro league in the country.
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Thanks to his performance for the MISL’s Cleveland Force, Armstrong earned his first call-up to the USMNT for the 1987 Summer Universiade in then-Yugoslavia. A successful outing there led to a spot on the 1988 Olympic squad for the Summer Games in Seoul, where Armstrong solidified himself as a mainstay for the USMNT. It was around this time that the U.S. was awarded hosting duties for the 1994 World Cup. Host countries are automatically given a spot in the tournament, but to be prepared to compete at that level, the program desperately needed to qualify for the 1990 World Cup — something the USMNT had not done in 40 years. It was a nearly impossible task for a country without a top-flight pro league.
“That was a lot of pressure,” the National Soccer Hall of Famer says.
It came down to one final match, on the road in Port of Spain against Trinidad and Tobago. With Armstrong watching from the sideline due to an ankle injury, his teammate Paul Caligiuri scored the “shot heard ’round the world” to clinch the USMNT’s spot in the 1990 World Cup.
On June 10, 1990, Armstrong became the first African American to play for the U.S. at the World Cup.
“It was surreal,” Armstrong says.
Although the first match resulted in a 5-1 loss to Czechoslovakia, the team earned respect from the entire football world following its second match — a showdown with the hosts, Italy, at the famed Stadio Olimpico in front of more than 73,000 fans.
“We’re on the bus, traveling through Rome,” Armstrong says. “Everything’s shut down. People are in the streets leading into the stadium. It’s unbelievable.”
The U.S. would ultimately lose 1-0, but it was far from the bloodbath most expected. Armstrong helped hold star Italian strikers Gianluca Vialli and Salvatore Schillaci (the latter the top scorer at that year’s tournament) scoreless. The match was a turning point for soccer in America.
“They were all top players,” says Armstrong of Italy’s all-star team. “We lost 1-0, but we established a modicum of credibility.”
Armstrong ended up playing every minute of all three U.S. matches during the Cup, and it put him on the national radar. After a brief stint with Luton Town in England, he got a call from his agent saying the legendary Brazilian club Santos was interested in signing him.
“I said, ‘Are you serious? Get me a ticket. I’m out of here.’”
No American had ever signed a professional contract in Brazil, much less for the team known for perhaps the greatest soccer player ever — Pelé. When he arrived at the airport in São Paulo, Armstrong was swarmed by media members. His translator? Pelé’s son Edinho, who was on the team at the time and knew English thanks to his father’s time in the U.S. with the NASL’s New York Cosmos.
More than 30 years later, two of Armstrong’s sons, Ezra and Dida, play professionally here in the U.S. That’s thanks in no small part to what Armstrong and his teammates accomplished.
“It’s a far cry from when I came up,” he says of the modern youth soccer landscape.
But there’s still work to be done. After helping guide hundreds of local kids with FC Nashville Heroes and East Nashville Soccer, Armstrong believes he has a solution to some of America’s biggest soccer issues.
His pitch? Instead of families shelling out top-dollar fees for travel teams — organizations that often have a monopoly on quality local fields — when their child is young, have them play in recreation leagues until it’s time to specialize. And that’s preferably around high school age. The quality in local rec leagues can vary, so Armstrong is running a pilot program with Metro Nashville Public Schools, forming a partnership in which everyone benefits. The clubs — with licensed coaches like Armstrong — can train the kids on the fields at schools, which are rarely used outside of school-sanctioned matches.
“Let’s improve their skills, and let’s make it competitive right in the city of Nashville,” Armstrong says. “You don’t have to go to Memphis. You don’t have to go to Knoxville. You don’t have to go to Chattanooga to play a team that’s only as good as a team that’s right down the street.
“We already have an infrastructure,” he adds. “I want to start here in Nashville.”
