‘Where on earth are we?’: The story of the USMNT at Copa America ’95

Ask any knowledgeable fan what the greatest upset victory in the history of U.S. men’s soccer is and you’ll likely get the same answer: the 1-0 victory over England in the 1950 World Cup. In so many ways, it is the correct answer. It remains one of the greatest upsets in the history of sport.

In 1995, though, the USMNT earned a result that feels more shocking than any other aside from that defeat of England — more than the upset of Colombia at the 1994 World Cup, or topping a then-unbeatable Spain side in the semifinals of the 2009 Confederations Cup or the victory over Brazil at the Gold Cup in 1998.

In the aftermath of that 1994 World Cup on home turf, a squad of veterans and upstarts traveled to the Copa America in Uruguay. Their run to the semifinals of that tournament is among the USMNT’s best-ever performances in meaningful competition. And along the way, they did something truly incredible: they defeated global power Argentina 3-0.

That Argentina squad was stocked with some of the world’s greatest players: Diego Simeone. Gabriel Batistuta. Javier Zanetti. But on a rainy winter night in Paysandu, Uruguay’s fourth-biggest city, the U.S. shocked the footballing world. It was their first victory on South American soil since that England upset in Brazil 45 years before and their first victory over a South American opponent on that continent since 1930.

Not that anyone back home was watching any of it.

“It was a historic result,” says Steve Sampson, the team’s head coach at the time. “It’s under appreciated, and I really believe that it deserves its place in history as one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of U.S. soccer.”

The USMNT’s historic upset over Argentina at the 1995 Copa America almost never happened.

The USMNT, in fact, very nearly never went to the tournament at all.

A year earlier, the World Cup was held in the United States for the first time, and it had been an unqualified success.

To this day, that tournament remains the most well-attended World Cup ever, and the nation took a genuine interest in the U.S. team. Sponsors, for the first time, had also taken an interest in the game of soccer in the United States. Gone were the days when former USSF president Werner Fricker “would charge team trips to his personal credit card”, remembers former USMNT goalkeeper Kasey Keller. The federation, which had at times felt like a threadbare collection of volunteers, finally had money to spend.

They did not want to spend that money on players, though. For years, Americans had played international matches for a pittance, and sometimes for free. They were lured to camp by the prestige of a cap and a sense of responsibility to proselytize the game of soccer in the United States. In 1995, as Copa America drew near, U.S. Soccer approached its players with a new bargaining agreement.

“It was a really, really sh—ty deal,” said then USMNT forward Eric Wynalda, who was playing for German Bundesliga side VfL Bochum at that time. “It was always the tactic of the federation to divide and conquer. They offered us a deal that basically said if you had zero to 10 caps, you wouldn’t get paid anything at all for an appearance. Eleven to 25 or something, you get $500 and so on. Guys who’d been with the team for a long time, guys who had 50 caps or more or something, they got a ton of money — maybe it was $5,000. They essentially tried to pit the veterans on the team against the newcomers.”

Current USMNT manager Gregg Berhalter was one of those newcomers, a 21-year-old playing in his first major tournament. Having been capped for the first time in the fall of 1994, Berhalter, who went on to have a distinguished career with the U.S., would’ve been among the unpaid.

“The players were fighting for everyone to get paid equally and I was a big benefactor of that,” said Berhalter. “Part of the new collective bargaining agreement (we pushed for) was we all got paid the same — whether we had 100 caps or two caps. The players from that generation, guys like Tab (Ramos), and Alexi (Lalas) and Marcelo Balboa, they were really fighting hard for the rest of the group.”

On the team’s flight into Uruguay, Lalas, John Harkes and a handful of other senior players gathered for an impromptu meeting at the back of the plane. The team had long considered striking and had even discussed it a month earlier, before participating in the now-defunct U.S. Cup. Copa America, they’d decided, seemed like a more opportune moment to make their voices heard.

“There were some tense moments,” said Lalas. “When we got to (the team’s training base in Paysandu) Uruguay, we didn’t train. We were in meetings, on fax machines and telephones. None of us were wallflowers, and there was a little bit of screaming back and forth, threats on both sides. We very much wanted to play in this tournament, but we were going to use this tournament to get what we felt was appropriate and fair.”

The federation, led by its then president Hank Steinbrecher, threatened to put an Olympic team (under-23s) on a plane to Uruguay to replace the senior group. Caught in the middle of all of this was Sampson, who had replaced Bora Milutinovic after the 1994 World Cup. Sampson, then only the interim manager, had his own stakes — Brazilian legend Carlos Alberto Parreira, along with a couple of others, had turned down the job. If Sampson could put in a decent performance at Copa America, he’d get appointed permanently.

“Looking back at it, they felt that it was time for them to stand up for themselves and ask for a greater piece of the pie,” said Sampson. “Inside myself, I felt that was the correct time and moment to do it. Because — if not then, then when?”

The federation eventually caved and the players got their deal, the basic structure of which still exists. Every player was paid equally regardless of their number of appearances. Just two days ahead of their opening match, against Chile, Sampson gathered his squad for a team talk.

“I’ll never forget what Steve said,” remembers Lalas. “When the deal was finally done and everybody agreed to it, he came back in and said, ‘Alright, f—kers. You made your point. You got what you wanted. Now it’s time to live up to this. If you feel that you guys are worth this, now go show it on the field.’”

Sampson remembers their arrival in Paysandu well. The team flew into the capital Montevideo, about four hours south, and took a bus from there. Winding through the backroads of the Uruguayan countryside, Sampson was seated next to assistant coach Clive Charles. The two peered out the window and took in the landscape — the stray dogs, farm workers and mountainscapes that would be their surroundings for the next several weeks.

“I just remember thinking, ‘Where on earth are we?’,” says Sampson. 

As the bus pulled up to the team’s hotel, though, the U.S. felt right at home. Hundreds of locals had turned out to greet them. Some were draped in the American flag, while others sported the denim-washed jersey the U.S. had worn in the World Cup a year prior. Lalas, Wynalda and the rest of the group carved a path through the crowd, stopping to sign autographs or take photos with their newfound fanbase. 

“Uruguay wasn’t going to be playing there (in Paysandu), so we became their adopted team,” said Lalas. “There was a curiosity about us. The front of our hotel was a glass pane, and people would just gather and stare in at us, like (we were) zoo animals. The hotel wasn’t exactly first-class, and it didn’t have a restaurant in it. So, every night, we’d walk the five or six blocks to a restaurant and this throng of fans would escort us there, and then walk back with us afterward. It was great, honestly.” 

The tournament’s organizers had placed the U.S. in Paysandu in large part due to their opponents. The town, which at the time had about 50,000 residents, sat just over the border from Argentina, and the U.S. had been drawn into a group alongside Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. CONMEBOL knew that games in the far-flung locale would be well-attended on the presence of Argentina alone.

The U.S. had participated in the 1993 Copa America, in Ecuador, and had been manhandled. Two years on, even after a surprising run to the round of 16 at that home World Cup, the USMNT was also largely viewed as fodder in the group. Argentina was in transition following the end of the Diego Maradona era, but remained an elite side. Bolivia, led by future MLS legend Marco Etcheverry, was up-and-coming and had qualified for its first World Cup in 44 years the year before.

Very quickly, it became clear the U.S. had come to play.

They opened group play with a surprising 2-1 victory over Chile. Wynalda scored both goals, including a stunning free kick from 25 yards. The U.S. was dominant through midfield and in defense in its second match against Bolivia but struggled to find the back of the net, undone by an Etcheverry wonderstrike.

They entered their final group match against Argentina needing a win or draw to advance — though even a two-goal loss, depending on other results, could put them through. 

Some mythology has been created around a pair of events that supposedly happened on the day the U.S. met Argentina in Paysandu. Both involve legendary Argentinian players. 

Argentina manager Daniel Passarella very clearly felt he had the group locked up by the time of the match against the United States. Argentina had put in two strong performances against Bolivia and Chile and entered the game already qualified for knockout play. The stakes, though, were still massive for Passarella’s side: Argentina needed a victory against the U.S. to secure the top spot in the group, which would allow them to avoid mighty Brazil, World Cup winners the previous summer, in the quarterfinals.

Perhaps underestimating the plucky Americans, Passarella started with a few of his key players on the bench, chief among them Simeone. The famously intense midfielder was none too pleased about it. As the squads assembled in a hallway for warmups, Simeone turned his ire on Wynalda.

“He kept saying, ‘C—a tu madre’ to me,” remembers Wynalda. “‘Mother f—er’. Over and over again. He said, ‘You’re s—, all of you are s—.’ I finally lost it, grabbed him and told him, ‘We don’t give a s— who you guys are.’ I made it very, very clear to him that we were here to play. A few other players intervened and just kind of dragged us apart.”

Maybe more than any other player in U.S. Soccer history, Wynalda is a vivid storyteller, and sometimes the details of those accounts feel fluid. But others there that day back his account. 

“The Argentinians are not stupid,” says Sampson. “They know who to pick out on the team, they know who to intimidate and whose skin to get under. And ‘Waldo’ was definitely one of those players. But those things just motivated him even more.”

The USMNT may have been Paysandu’s favorite sons by the time the Argentina match rolled around but on that day, the stadium was awash with light blue and white (Argentina’s colors) — full of Argentines who had made the 45-minute journey across the border from the capital, Buenos Aires. It was not an atmosphere that bothered anyone on the U.S. team — even home matches, in those days, felt like road ones for them, with American stadiums full of immigrants supporting the (on paper) visiting team. 

During the 1994 World Cup and before it, the USMNT frequently focused on being defensively sound. Head coach Milutinovic had been brought in largely to keep the team from embarrassing itself on home soil and his game plan — a conservative approach focused on defensive prudence and the occasional counterattack — did just that. But those performances left many U.S. players wanting more. In Sampson, they found a coach more willing to take risks. And that day against Argentina, he rolled out an attack-minded 3-5-2 and encouraged his players to push forward.

And they did. From the get-go, it became clear the Argentines were unprepared.

In midfield, the U.S. was dogged, winning nearly every 50/50 challenge, and their opening goal came from an unlikely source.

A staple on the USMNT in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Frank Klopas had made the 1994 World Cup squad but was, by all accounts, on his way out of the program after a series of knee injuries. But his teammates had rallied around him. Mike Sorber, another key U.S. player of the era, remembers Klopas not only for his goal against Argentina but also for his off-field contributions.

“At the hotel, every day, guys would get a cappuccino, a latte, whatever,” says Sorber. “We just kept a running tab, we put every single thing we bought on Frank Klopas’ room bill every day. When it came time to check out, Frankie had a $2,000 coffee bill.” 

Sampson believed in Klopas as well and had included the 35-year-old in his starting XI. In the 20th minute, that belief paid dividends. Klopas, now head coach of MLS’ Chicago Fire, ran onto a deflected pass and hammered home the opener. His teammates mobbed him.

“We all had such a strong belief in Frankie,” says Wynalda. “We knew he needed to be on the field. It didn’t hurt that we just spent five days playing backgammon with him at the hotel.”

Eleven minutes later, midfielder Cobi Jones collected the ball at the near sideline and headed towards the endline, swiveling around his defender and sending in a low, driven cross. Lalas saw the build-up and made a near-post run. His sliding, point-blank finish doubled the lead. By the end of the half, the U.S. had started to win over the pro-Argentina crowd, with some Argentine fans offering the U.S. applause as they filed into the locker room.

“Tab and I are sitting next to each other on the bench,” goalkeeper Keller recalls, “and we’re basically joking with each other — like laughing to each other — about basically winning 3-0 and dropping Argentina to second place and forcing them to play Brazil. The biggest conversation going into that game was that if we didn’t lose (2-0 or worse), we’d be guaranteed to go through.”

This was not the first time the U.S. had shocked a global power. There was the 2-1 group-stage win against Colombia in 1994, but the USMNT was in a rare run of form in that era. They played competitively against the likes of Brazil and Germany. In June 1993, during the buildup to the 1994 World Cup, they had embarrassed England 2-0 in U.S. Cup play. “English football died of shame last night,” wrote one British reporter. “And the coffin could be draped with the Stars and Stripes.”

“Look, we were surprised to be up,” said Ramos. “But we were not in awe of the situation we were in, or of our opponent. We realized we needed another goal. At no point did we think at halftime, ‘Let’s just hang in there and hopefully we don’t lose’. That was not the mindset at all.”

Finally realizing the gravity of the situation, Passarella inserted Simeone and made a handful of other changes at halftime to try to wrest control back of the game. The now Atletico Madrid head coach took the field steaming mad and Ramos immediately crossed paths with him. As Simeone lined up in a wall during a free kick, Ramos strolled up and began jostling the Argentina players, trying to knock them out of position.

“I remember Diego looked at me and said, ‘If you don’t get out of the way, I’m going to put my elbow right into your mouth and break every single one of your teeth’,” Ramos says, trailing off into laughter. “I remember that part. I just remember being like, ‘Alright, maybe I need to get the hell out of here’.” 

Not long after, Simeone was cleaned out by defender Thomas Dooley. And then by forward Joe Max-Moore, who left an elbow in a little later than he normally would.

The third American goal came midway through the second half, from Wynalda. Against Chile in the group opener, Wynalda — who was already sitting on a hat-trick — had been subbed off at halftime. Wynalda was furious, and he had a sneaking suspicion that Sampson, who had caught Lalas and Wynalda having a few beers late into the night the evening ahead of the match, was punishing him for that.

He wasn’t. He was just managing minutes. And, late in this group-stage finale, the U.S. legend ran onto an errant ball in the box and poked it home. The U.S. was in dreamland, winners of the group. Argentina would pay for their miscalculations of the U.S., eliminated in the first knockout round by Brazil three days later. 

The shock victory over Argentina was barely seen back home, though, as it was broadcasted by fly-by-night outfit Prime Sports — and on their Spanish-language channel, to boot. Only a handful of reporters, including Soccer America’s Mike Woitalla and Paul Gardner, made the trip to Uruguay.

The U.S. went on to beat Mexico in the quarterfinals and played a tightly-contested semifinal, putting in arguably their best-ever performance against Brazil and losing by the only goal. Thrilled with the team’s performance, U.S. Soccer immediately gave Sampson the coach’s full-time job.

The other mythology surrounding this match? The presence of Maradona, then an exile from international football.

Some, like Wynalda, remember him milling around the locker room in tears. Maradona, Wynalda once said, walked up to him, grabbed his face and professed his love for the American style of play. “I’m not crying because Argentina lost,” Wynalda remembers Maradona saying. “I’m crying because, today, the Americans proved they know how to play football.” 

Some U.S. players don’t remember Maradona being there at all. “Maybe I was tying my shoes or something and I missed him,” says Ramos, with a chuckle.

Others, like Berhalter, remember him being at other games in the tournament, but never a USMNT match.

Defenders Balboa and Lalas, though, remember meeting Maradona well.

“I recall the post-game party,” says Lalas. “It was the parting of the seas. You would just see people move to the sides, and you had no idea why it was happening. And then you just see his hair between this mass of humanity, just this legend walking through.”

For his part, Balboa has some proof. In a grainy, post-game snapshot, he and Max-Moore stand beside Maradona, who looks a little dazed.

Diego Armando Maradona, among the greatest players in the history of the game, was indeed there that night, and he witnessed one of the greatest upsets in U.S. soccer history.

(All photos: Getty, Tony Quinn; design: Eamonn Dalton)