When he declined to interrupt his summer holidays to accompany the Irish team to America four years ago, Roy Keane managed to ruffle feathers on both sides of the Atlantic by dismissing the US Cup as "a Mickey Mouse tournament", but if perception is reality, he may not have been far off the mark.
An indication of the gravity with which the hosts themselves view the proceedings, Bruce Arena, the head coach of the American side, trotted out his junior varsity team for Tuesday night's match against Ireland at Foxboro, Massachusetts. The US team which faced Ireland contained 11 entirely different players from the line-up Arena had used in subduing South Africa 4-0 the previous weekend.
When the Irish climbed to a 1-0 advantage and looked as if they might stay there, Arena did empty his bench of A team players, as Claudio Reyna, Earnie Stewart, Cobi Jones, Tony Sanneh and Brian McBride were all pressed into service as second-half substitutes.
Still, one supposes that the first question one ought to be asking here is this: if we aren't going to take the Nike US Cup seriously, how can we realistically expect anyone else to?
The Mexicans had already made a mockery of the proceedings by dispatching to Chicago last Sunday a mid-level club team called Pumas, augmented by four players with authentic international experience. This followed an unsuccessful attempt to withdraw from the tournament. In retrospect, the US Soccer Federation would have been better served had they simply told the Mexicans to stay home - forever - and invited another nation from the Western Hemisphere. God knows, there are enough of them that would have been happy to come.
In its ideal format - ideal from US Soccer's standpoint, that is - the US Cup would be defined as a four-nation summertime tournament comprising a field impressive enough to command respect but not so formidable as to preclude the US winning it. That concept has worked out better at some times than others.
In 1993, for instance, the federation managed to attract Germany, Brazil, and England to join the United States in what was seen as a dress rehearsal for the following year's World Cup. (As it turned out, only three of the participants actually made it to US '94, but that is England's problem and not ours.) The event produced near-capacity crowds in Foxboro, Washington, and Chicago, and US Soccer thought it had found the formula for success.
"I think it's a significant tournament," said Brian O'Donovan, the Clonakilty-born chief operating officer of the New England Revolution. "It's a prestigious tournament, and significant in that Ireland, the US, South Africa are all in pre-World Cup qualifying modes. These teams want to perform well."
At the same time, O'Donovan concedes that the Nike US Cup is still a work in progress. "But," added O'Donovan, "its prestige is developing - and I think it is extremely important to the development of a soccer culture in this country that it continue."
As O'Donovan has been the US Cup's onsite operative in Foxboro since the inception of the event, his bias is understandable, but the evidence suggests that on balance, Roy Keane's assessment of the US Cup may be more accurate.
In the case of this year's exercise, the selection of the participants seemed elementary. Ireland, with its enormous fan base and its availability by virtue of its non-qualification for Euro 2000, was an obvious choice. South Africa, a nation increasingly flexing its muscle in the post-apartheid era, was an eager participant. And the Mexicans, because they didn't have far to travel and because they have nearly as many immigrants, both legal and otherwise, loose on the streets of this country as do the Irish, also seemed to be a no-brainer.
Both the US and the South Africans obviously hoped to use this week's events as a shakedown cruise for upcoming World Cup qualifiers, while the Irish could be forgiven if they just hoped to survive.
It wasn't Mick McCarthy's fault that he lost 13 players from his original selection before he even left Dublin, and had five others injured in the match against Pumas - sorry, against Mexico - on Sunday. (It might also be pointed out that the Irish weren't the only team ravaged by the effects of the just-completed English Premiership season. The Americans, for instance, were also without Everton's Joe-Max Moore, who injured a knee late in the season and won't be available until later this summer.)
Just why Mexico accepted an invitation to the US Cup three months ago is unclear, but once they thought better of it, it was far too late to allow a graceful withdrawal, and FIFA insisted that they compete as agreed. The subterfuge involved in sending a club team (coached, by the way, by Hugo Sanchez, the uncle of one of the Pumas players; national team manager Manuel LaPuente remained home in Mexico) is a disgrace that should not have been tolerated.
If we Americans had our way it would be a cold day in hell, or barring that, a rainy night in Foxboro, before we invited our neighbours to the south back across the border to play soccer, but given the demographics involved, that isn't going to happen.
We do have another suggestion, however. The next time they sell a bunch of tickets for a friendly against the Americans in Mexico City, we ought to send down the Rochester Rhinos dressed up in the US team shirts, and see how they like it.
