13-07-2025
America's soccer dad has some advice for the White House
When the United States last hosted the men's soccer World Cup, Bill Clinton was president, the country did not have a professional league and its national team had competed in the tournament only twice in the previous half-century. Just five years earlier, the sport's governing body FIFA had snubbed an American bid to be the emergency host for the 1986 tournament.
The man at the center of the nation's soccer breakthrough was Alan Rothenberg, an attorney at the politically well-connected Los Angeles law firm Manatt who helped organize the 1984 Olympics there. As president of the U.S. Soccer Federation, he served as chair and CEO of the 1994 World Cup and led the organization through a match four years later against Iran — a geopolitically contentious face-off that Rothenberg has called 'the mother of all games.' (He was also a founder of Major League Soccer and chair of the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup.) He has since advised FIFA through multiple tournaments including the 2002 World Cup hosted by Korea and Japan, the first to be played across national borders.
Now, as the U.S. gears up to host the World Cup again, this time with matches being played in 16 cities across the U.S., Mexico and Canada, Rothenberg is watching from the sidelines. The 86-year-old has written a memoir of his soccer career, entitled The Big Bounce: The Surge that Shaped the Future of U.S. Soccer, to be published next year. But for now he has some advice for Andrew Giuliani, whom President Donald Trump has appointed to run the FIFA World Cup 2026 Task Force. A novel organizing structure, Rothenberg warns, could leave cities and states empty-handed.
