Football: US battlers winning over fans

Everton and United States goalkeeper Tim Howard, the real ace for the team, gives a thumbs up to supporters. Photo / AP

‘Soccer’ getting huge boost at home as Americans march on in World Cup

Underdog status is not one that sits well with American sport but this US side are battling through a World Cup that sparkles with far more gifted teams. The masses back home are converting to "soccer" in their millions as if a new obsession has been born in the land of baseball, basketball and American football.

Until now football (soccer) has advanced by stealth. Now, there is lift-off. Coach Jurgen Klinsmann's US reached a last-16 tie in Salvador next week despite losing 1-0 to Germany and posing a negligible threat to Europe's No1 contender. Since the former darling of White Hart Lane cannot match the talent arsenals of some of the other countries at the tournament, he is whipping up American fervour instead. Not only within his squad but across the world's most powerful nation, where teams leaving US shores are expected to dominate.

"Everybody said 'you have no chance' but we took our chance and now we move on and we really want to prove a point," said Klinsmann, who wrote to Americans urging them to skip work to watch this final Group G game. He has no choice but to disguise the comparative mediocrity of his squad with fighting spirit.

On a day when Cristiano Ronaldo and Luis Suarez both went out of the World Cup - for wildly contrasting reasons - the best supported visiting side crept through with a respectable four points and were described as "a proper team now", by Per Mertesacker, the Germany and Arsenal centre-back.

Clint Dempsey is a stalwart for them and Jermaine Jones was described as "a warrior" by Klinsmann. But Tim Howard, in goal, is their real ace. One of the English Premier League's best, Everton's keeper maintains an amazingly high standard.

The rise of football in America has been one of the great stories of this tournament, with tens of thousands packing into parks to watch Klinsmann's men on giant screens and 90,000 travelling to Brazil to see the competition live. US embassy staff claim there are three times as many American fans in Brazil as there are from any other country.

This may have been an inauspicious way to qualify for next week's second-round game but nobody in Stars and Stripes will care. Watched on Air Force One by President Obama, the US came through a daunting group schedule that started against Ghana and then Ronaldo's Portugal.

If the purist would have preferred the world footballer of the year to be in Salvador on Wednesday to continue his duel with Lionel Messi on this World Cup stage, Portugal paid the price for that 4-0 caning by Germany and went out on goal difference. Klinsmann's men fell to a Thomas Muller goal after 57 minutes and were creatively bereft in the second half, when the talent deficit was apparent.

Klinsmann scored 47 times in 108 games for Germany and guided them to a World Cup semifinal on home soil eight years ago. He was a World Cup winner himself in 1990 and has lifted America's self-image with potentially hugely beneficial effects on Major League Soccer, which needs a successful national team to hold the country's interest.

The 20,000 who packed into a Chicago park for the Portugal game were in no need of extra encouragement. A record 24.7 million tuned in to the 2-2 draw with Portugal and Hispanic channels are also reporting record viewing numbers. In New York the state governor, Andrew Cuomo, gave workers an extra hour for lunch.

What America lack in brilliance and forward power they make up for in their determination to translate the growing success of club football into international achievement. Given the playing base their recent record is good. They reached the second round in 1994 and 2010 and were quarter-finalists in 2002, when they again lost 1-0 to Germany. Their first imprint on the world game was 84 years ago, in the first World Cup: a third-place finish in Uruguay. They can claim to be reconnecting with that heritage.

Their last-16 game is likely to break the viewing figures back home again as the team shake off the mental stresses of having to negotiate their way through a group of death. Underdogs can bark. America stayed on - and knocked Ronaldo out.