ABSTRACT
Werner Fricker, ex-head of the US Soccer Federation (USSF) is the man who helped secure World Cup ‘94 for the US against poor competition from Brazil and Morocco. Adidas are a USSF ‘marketing partner’ for World Cup ‘94 and the only equipment manufacturer on the sponsorship slate. In this potentially huge new market for soccer and its products in which Nike and Reebok are kings and Pepsi a ‘troublesome’ soft drinks competitor, Adidas and Coke have aimed to make a considerable World Cup killing. Indoor soccer, in the shape of the Major Indoor Soccer League (MISL), was widely promoted by US sports entrepreneurs in the 1980s as the means of solving the ‘culture gap’ between an ‘entertainment’ orientated US sports audience and an alien, difficult to market foreign import. American soccer’s development in terms of excellence is unlikely to be assisted by the fact that many of its top US players are white, middle-class and committed to further education.
