FLORENCE, Italy: Imagine the Super Bowl.

Multiply it by 31 days. Add 22 teams. Exchange hearty provincialism for heady nationalism.

Factor in 160 more countries who care about the outcome, and an additional couple billion television viewers.

What have you got?

The 1990 World Cup in Italy.

It begins today in Milan when defending champion Argentina and fragile superstar Diego Maradona play African longshot Cameroon.

The tournament concludes 52 games later July 8 in Rome’s Olympic Stadium, with the host country favored to be involved in that game.

In North America there may be folks who believe the Olympics are the biggest sports event in the world. On this side of the Atlantic, there is no question what ranks as No. 1.

“Every country in the world is interested in who wins the soccer championships,” Czechoslovak coach Josef Venglos said, matter of facitly.

“That’s why it is the most important event in sport.”

Soccer engenders global passion unlike any other athletic event. It is a simple game almost universally played or understood, whether a person lives in the First, Second or Third World.

Only soccer prompts an avowed English hooligan like Stephen Scarott to tattoo the name of his favorite team, Nottingham Forest, on his lower lip and try to slip into Italy under an assumed name so he can raise hell at England’s games on the island of Sardinia. Only soccer sends a reporter to a renowned witch doctor in Nairobi, Kenya for a prediction on the winner. (Italy according to Abu-Bakr Omar Sharif).

And only soccer can inspire national elation or depression on the turn of a single goal.

“I’m not sure Americans will really understand the rest of the world until they become a soccer playing nation,” former US national coach Alkis Panagoulias said.

For the first time in 40 years the United States will get a firsthand look at the World Cup phenomena,

A young and inexperienced American team qualified for the elite 24 nation field, coming out of the world’s weakest soccer playing region, that covering North and Central America,

The US had to struggle even then needing and getting a 10victory over little Trinidad and Tobago in Port of Spain, Trinidad last November.

The United States is the longest shot (up to 650 to 1) in the tournament according to odds posted in legal gambling parlors.

“We know we will be underdogs in every game,” U.S. coach Bob Gansler said.

The first U.S. game is Sunday here against Czechoslovakia.

The Americans hope to gain at the least, experience in the event; the U.S. will host the 1994 World Cup, guaranteeing its team another berth.

Italy is the favorite to win the tournament but the enormous expectations of its fans may prove crushing.

Other nations with realistic chances to win the 11 pound solid gold champions trophy are Brazil, Holland, West Germany, Spain and the Soviet Union.

Article extracted from this publication >> June 15, 1990