Eddie Lewis on USA Soccer’s World Cup Legacy & What It Takes to Win in 2026 | Mac Engel

It's soccer, not football. Sorry. Mac Engel, Fort Worth star telegram, Ingle Angle podcast here on the sunset lounge, stolen water media. It is June 2026, which means we are finally, finally, finally here for the twenty twenty six world cup. There has been so much buildup, so much pregame hype, such a lead in such a long runway for this event. The only other thing I can think of that can compare to this is not an Olympics, but really maybe the release of the movie Top Gun Maverick. And I don't say that at all sarcastically. I mean that because if you remember when they made Top Gun Maverick, Tom Cruise put it on like an Australian good morning news show or something. And so from that moment on, there was all this anticipation for the return of Maverick and the movie Top Gun, the franchise. And that went years and years and years and years. And then they finally get the movie done and they can't release it in 2020 because of COVID. That's what, that's when they were going to release Top Gun Maverick. So then Tom Cruise convinces the studios not to release it to streaming. Unlike what they did with one of the James Bond movies, the James Bond movie with Daniel Craig was supposed to be released in theaters that summer. But then they finally just said to heck with it, we'll just put it on streaming and deal with it. Tom Cruise convinced the studios, let's hold this. So they had to sit on a finished movie for two years so they could have a traditional theatrical release. And it was great, but the buildup and the lead in lasted forever. Same thing here for those of us who live in the markets where world cup matches are being staged and played. Oh my God, we have been bombarded with world cup, world cup, world cup. And you're just thinking, yeah, they ever wanted to play this? And yes, the answer is yes. The twenty twenty six world cup has started and it is a hell of a lot of fun. I've seen a lot of sporting events in my life. And I went to the Japan Netherlands match at Arlington Stadium in Arlington, Texas on Sunday. And it was great. It's it's as good. As a sporting event as I've ever attended. And me, it rivals any great college football game played here in The United States. It's better than any pro game, you know, NHL, Stanley Cup finals. It's better than any of that because unlike those fan bases which are supporting professional teams, this obviously has this is about representing your country and the traditions and the customs of those fan bases in Japan and The Netherlands is just fantastic. And the closest thing that I've seen is maybe Texas A and M versus Texas in football, Tennessee versus Georgia in football, Penn State versus say West Virginia, Michigan, Ohio State, those kinds of football games because the atmosphere, the atmosphere and the fans. Made the game. They made the day. They were just phenomenal. And I got to got me to thinking about is as great as the morning and the afternoon in the match and the match itself was was great. It was just great. It got me thinking about fan bases and fans here in The United States. And as I get ready for another United States men's national team World Cup match, It made me, it reminded me that of all the fan bases that I've ever had the pleasure to deal with. And I say that sincerely in my twenty five plus years of doing this, there is no more insufferable group of fans, not Dallas cowboys fans, not Nebraska cornhusker fans, not Georgia bulldogs, Indiana basketball, Kentucky basketball, Texas longhorns, all of them, all of them are in second place to The United States soccer fan. And here s why. They know more than you do. And because they do, that allows them to be the smartest person in the room. Who s the most annoying person that you meet? The smartest person in the room who acts like they re the smartest person in the room. It s a little bit different if you know that person has multiple degrees from multiple Ivy leagues, then you can at least yield to them and say, yeah, you are the smartest person in the room. Good for you. If their knowledge is about a ball crossing a line, then I think that changes the dynamics of the conversation and relationship somewhat, because ultimately that's what we're talking about. There's one reason why soccer is the most popular game in the world by a wide margin, still over basketball is because soccer is the least expensive sport in the world to play. All you need is a ball. You don t need a net. You don need a goal. You don need referees. You don need fancy shoes. You just need a ball. You can play it on pavement, you can play it on the middle of a highway, you can play it on sand, you can play it on grass, you can play it on turf, you can play it on hardwood, you can play it on carpet, you can play soccer anywhere. And that's how it became the most popular sport in the world. Every other sport, you add costs to it. Basketball, you need a goal. Maybe not an expensive one, but you need one. And just by that fact alone, if you attach one more dollar to it, then you've unintentionally excluded somebody from potentially playing in it. Soccer needs none of that. You just need a ball. And the beautiful part of it, It's just so easy. It's just about a ball off of a foot, potentially a head crossing a line. That's it. That's it. And these idiots who sit there in these pubs and watching the beautiful game, telling the rest of the world, you don't get it. I was here before you were, you're not welcome. Go fuck yourself. Be more like the Canadian hockey fan. The Canadian hockey fan has a lot in common with the self righteous, self important American soccer fan. Because they were there before, everybody else. And they can sit there and say, this is our game. Instead they open up the doors and say, more than merrier. We want people watching this game and learning how to do it. That's what the attitude of the American soccer fan should be about soccer, to make it bigger. Because anybody my age, I'm over 50 and now I look 49, but anybody my age will sit here and tell you they can't believe where soccer is in The United States today, because all of us are old enough to remember when soccer in The United States was just something that kids played. That's it. You played it as a recreation at the local YMCA. And that's, that was the extent of soccer's popularity here in The United States. There was no viable professional sports league. High schools obviously had it. Some colleges played it. Like there was a run where Indiana university was phenomenal in men's soccer. Like that was their thing. But the idea that we would host a world cup, the idea that, that in, let's say, let's say 1992, the idea back in 1992, that The United States would have a competitive men's national soccer team participating in world cups. Ridiculous. The idea in 1992 that The United States would become the class of women's soccer globally. No. Didn't didn't even exist. That stuff that wasn't done yet. Women's high gain women's competitive sports for teams in colleges was still really pretty kind of in the first quarterback then. Quarter back then. In 1992, the idea that The United States would finally have a viable, secure, stable, thriving, growing professional soccer league? Ridiculous. The idea in 1992 that The United States would have a, I would say growing with a chance women's professional soccer league, absolutely preposterous. It's utterly ridiculous back in 1992 that all of these things would come to fruition and exist here today in 2026, where we are hosting our second world cup, second world cup. And I gotta tell you as much as FIFA sucks, as much as FIFA sits there and owns, monetizes, and screws over the cities that host these matches, the fans that spend God knows how much money to attend them, I get it. I get it. Japan, Netherlands was the very first world cup match I ever attended. And the price I paid to win after I won the lottery to, to, to buy two tickets. Gotta tell you it was worth it. It was really worth it. And I would go back. Shout out to the Dutch. The Netherlands knows how to throw a pre game better than anybody else I've ever seen. Shout out to the blue Samurai. The fans of the blue Samurai that's Japan. They, they know how to party. They know how to drum. They know how to clean after themselves. That was the best atmosphere I've ever seen for a sporting event. And it's not even close. I've gone to Texas a and m Texas football. I've gone to the red river game between Texas and Oklahoma. I've seen God knows how many other sporting events and this, that, and the other. And I will say without a, beyond a shadow of a doubt, top three was a world cup match. I I am, I was totally into it. Like this was amazing now. And I would say it wasn't just the fans. The game itself was great. It was a two two game and then in a two two draw. Normally I hate ties, but this one, this one was great. The whole afternoon was great. The morning was great. Yeah, it was ridiculously expensive and I don't like FIFA and all that other stuff. The fact that we are here today with soccer doing as well as it is in this country, all we, you have to remind yourself where it was. There was a lesson that NHL commissioner Gary Bettman taught me once in his office in Manhattan. Was interviewing him and he said something to me that I can still hear in that New Yorker's tone of his, We compare ourselves to ourselves. It's a very important life lesson. If you start worrying about judging yourself against others, and in this case, the National Hockey League is comparing itself against Major League Baseball or the National Football League, then you're going to lose. But if you're comparing yourself against yourself and where you were, and in this case, where soccer was thirty years ago compared to where it is today, It's an amazing success. And my guest for this episode is a big part of that. You may not know Eddie Lewis, although if you are an American soccer fan, NMLS, you know, his name played at UCLA from 1992 to '95. He's a Southern California kid. And then he eventually joined the United States men's national team. And he was a part of the two thousand and two United States men's team that won a knockout game. That means it's an elimination game. They defeated Mexico in 2002 to advance to the round of eight in that two thousand and two world cup. That is the last time The United States has won a knockout game. And actually he had an assist on a goal scored by Landon Nunavon. I still can't believe that that's the last time The United States won a knockout game. He was drafted originally by major league soccer in '96. He spent four seasons there. And then, then he did something at a, at the time that very, very few American players did. And that is he went over the pond to play in the first division in. In England, he played for Fulham for 02/2000, 2002 played at Preston north end from 2002 to five leads United from five to seven, and Derby County from seven to eight. Came back to The United States to finish his career with the LA Galaxy of MLS. Since he has retired, he's gone on to be very involved in all levels of soccer, including now something that he's developed called TOCA, T O C A, social, which is a training and youth, training and youth system, game rather for soccer, rooted around how he taught himself how to play soccer, which involved ironically enough, a tennis ball while he was at UCLA. This interview is not video. It's just audio only, but please welcome my guest, great guest, Mr. Eddie Lewis. Eddie, take me back to when you were a kid, late '80s, growing up in Southern California, and you're playing soccer. We hear all of these different stories now, and most of them are pretty critical of how the youth soccer system is today for American kids, and specifically how expensive it is for American families. You became a great player at UCLA. What was your training like to get to that point as a kid? Yeah. Well, I think kind of the beauty of this whole thing was the reality was my lack of kind of exposure and and really starting to to take soccer, you know, seriously as the as the the sport that I chose, you know, sort of later than than most. You know, I was always looking for new ways to to train and develop my skills in order to catch up to, you know, the players that were the top level in whatever age group I was kind of playing in. And I got to to UCLA as an outside recruit and someone that had potential but was still very raw was there that I stumbled upon this idea. We had a our locker room was inside of Poly Pavilion where the basketball team practiced. And we used to we used to watch them practice sometimes before we'd go out to training. And one time they they rolled out these smaller than kind of regulation size basketball hoops. And the idea was for those players to train on the smaller hoops than in a game that would that would make shooting on the, you know, the the the regulations as much easier. And I thought, Okay, that's an interesting concept. And I went home and and and kind of did the same thing. Well, I guess a little bit differently. But I took a tennis ball and I started throwing it against the wall in the parking garage next to my apartment and kind of controlling it and beginning to work on my skills with this tennis ball, you know, thinking the same thing. And I throw it 40 or 50 times and eventually a car would come or take the, you know, the space that was open. But after a couple of weeks, I noticed some real improvement and I thought, Okay, I'm on to something here. So, you know, they had at the time, this is kind of before the Internet. So I there was this paper called The Recycler and I ended up finding a used tennis ball machine and bought a bunch of tennis balls. And I basically would go off into these industrial parks and kind of wedged myself into a corner to kind of help retain the balls. And basically it just went from, you know, 30 or 40 times to, you know, sometimes a thousand reps in an afternoon. And I literally just saw my skills kind of skyrocket. And I caught up to to everyone very quickly and, you know, went past most of them with my ability to kind of control the ball with both feet, work on things that I couldn't work on in practice because, as an example, I don't want to I don't want to give the ball away every time I get it in practice just because I'm working on something. So, you tend to kind of play to your strengths and avoid your weaknesses. And with this new methodology, I was I was doing the opposite. I was I was just honing my skills on all of these areas that needed work because it didn't matter. And I had another replicatable rep right behind it. So, you know, fast forward, I would I would leverage that to, you know, then become a good college player by senior year, drafted into the MLS, you know, go on to have a very successful, American soccer career as a result of that. Eddie, I am sure you have heard the criticism, and maybe you are one of the critics of America's youth sports system, a system that seems to be very good at making money, but not necessarily as good at developing players. What do you think of America's, specifically youth sports soccer developmental system? Well, a sport like American football, you know, Peyton Manning was always going to be Peyton Manning because the reality is, you know, you can play in the NFL and and not start playing football until high school, technically. Right? It's a it's a very athletic sport. Other than the quarterback, there's not really a lot of technical skill required, not a lot of decision making. You know, it's very much a coach's game and you kind of just follow all orders. Soccer, if you compare it to golf, right, you can't just automatically be a great athlete and be a great golfer. Right. It takes a tremendous amount of time to develop the skills necessary to become a good golfer. You know, that's that's that's one part of the question. The other part of the question is, yeah, listen, we could we could spend the entire day talking about the inefficiencies. And, you know, in my opinion, the almost malpractice of of a lot of youth soccer clubs and the pressure to continue to make parents pay and travel and participate in endless amounts of tournaments that that aren't necessarily focusing on trying to make that player the best player they can become. But instead, you know, how do we fund this club, if you will? And, you know, it's not necessarily the club's fault in that, hey, they're a business. Take me back to when you are finishing your career at UCLA and something called Major League Soccer is starting. You're drafted in the third round by San Jose, and you start your professional career here in The United States. Was there any time when you were playing in MLS where you thought, man, I don't know if this thing's gonna make it? Yeah, I think, you know, it was very clear, even as a young person who had no professional experience, that, you know, this was a long way away from a really, you know, kind of legit professional league. I think the good news was when the league was launched, you know, they were very intent on bringing in, you know, very well supported and, financially backed owners. So eventually you decided to make the jump and to go overseas to play in England. When you did play against those players in professional leagues, what did you see were the differences between the top end players playing professionally in that league and the top end professional players playing in The United States in MLS? I did. Mean, there were a lot of thoughts. I think very quickly I realized, well, athletically, none of these players are anything special. Certainly, there's some good athletes, but on the whole, like as an American, we're in we're in great shape there. We kind of have nothing to fear. Some areas, I actually felt like my skills were were better than a lot of the European players skills. I think the biggest difference is, and I say this kind of all the time about American soccer, is I'm really not as concerned about the players as I am about you know, the coaches. And I think it's, you know, us continuing to do a better job coaching the coaches. When I got to Europe, I felt like I was almost starting over in terms of my kind of soccer IQ. And you could argue that, you know, I played for some of the best coaches that America had to offer. As an American, did you ever feel ostracized in the locker room with the team or by the coaches? Oh, yeah. Very, very much ostracized. I think it was a big part of my generation was trying to break down this barrier that Americans could play in Europe and that they there should be more Americans playing in Europe. In fact, I think one of the greatest accomplishments of my generation and particularly in the two thousand and two World Cup was the fact that success in that tournament really kind of opened the doors for so many Americans to to come to Europe and play for top teams in Europe because of the the success of that team. But, you know, being there. Yeah. And in fact, you know, the first club I was at following the second manager that was there made very clear to me, not just to me, to me, a South African Australian player and a Latvian player, that we wouldn't ever play for the club because we don't know how to play soccer. And I thought that was a bizarre thing to say and that I would just prove that coach wrong in training. Did it work? Were you able to convince him that you belonged in the field? Yeah, it did. Did. At the end of the day, it can be viewed as motivation. Hello. It's Mike Reiner of Your Dark Companion here. Let me ask you, are you looking for something to fill the long dead air hours of your day? Well, join the Sunset Lounge DFW and Your Dark Companion on patreon.com, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. Replace those sad, slow hours with sports, pop culture, music woven into interesting conversations. So step inside the green door, have a seat at the bar, and get in the groove with those shows and so very much more. Eddie, you are a member of a team that still holds the distinction of being the last group, the last United States men's national team to win a knockout match in a World Cup. That was 2002. It's 2026. Are you in disappointed or in disbelief by the fact The United States hasn't been able to at least replicate that achievement since then? I mean, they're different, and I wouldn't say I'm I'm disappointed. You know, I think it's fair to say I'm frustrated just because I don't want to be part of the team that, you know, had the most successful run-in the World Cup. Right. That's just too long ago. And we were making, you know, so much progress and in some ways, you know, it's a different time. But yeah, I'd like nothing better than, you know, in the next six weeks to be dethroned by a U. S. Team that, you know, has gone farther than we did in the quarterfinals of 2002. I am sure you have heard this either criticism or observation of the state of United States men's national team soccer, is that the lack of success on the biggest stages is ultimately because we allegedly do not send our best athletes to this sport, that they play different sports. And that if those athletes who are doing as well as they are in basketball or football or baseball played soccer, the results would be different. Do you believe that? I it's I think the reality is if yeah, like the rest of the world, if every athlete was just focused on, you know, becoming a great soccer player, there's there's no doubt that would continue to strengthen the pool. I mean, soccer in general, and I think, you know, Spain's a good example when they won the World Cup. It's definitely not a sport that's you have to be a fantastic athlete. Messi's a good example. So what would qualify as a successful World Cup for The United States here in 2026? Well, you know, mean, I know there's been a lot of, you know, talk and criticism of this, you know, particular squad. But, you know, benefit of the home field advantage and, you know, everything else, I think they have to get you know, I'm sure they'll get out of the group, but I think they have to get to the quarterfinals. They add in the home field advantage, which is a huge, a huge help. I think that's a reasonable that's assessment. Eddie, thank you so much for your time here today. Is there anything that I didn't ask that you want to make sure you want to throw in? No. I mean, the only thing is obviously here in Dallas, and we have, you know, Toka Toka Soccer and Toka Social are, you know, important, you know, businesses that we have and are and are kind of celebrating the World Cup. So I'd love to to get the opportunity to to plug them or even a mention at some point. Eddie Lewis, everybody. Enjoy the World Cup.