\n\tAs 1994 approached, the United States was on the verge of hosting the World Cup \u2014 but national soccer officials were terrified that the home team was about to humiliate itself on a global stage. They hired an internationally successful coach to transform soccer in the United States and, after a bumpy start that prompted pundits to wonder if this country and the sport the rest of the world knew as \u201cfootball\u201d would just never mesh, a (small) miracle happened.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe result, of course, was paradigm-shifting, and there are no similarities between the position Team USA soccer was in when the 1994 World Cup began and where we now stand as World Cup 2026 approaches. Nope. None at all.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tSummer of ’94\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n
\tEarnest and inspiring, if somewhat bland.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVenue:<\/strong> SXSW Film Festival (Documentary Spotlight) \n\tAs Dave LaMattina and Chad Walker\u2019s Summer of \u201994 \u2014 a documentary that\u2019s two-thirds focused on events prior to the summer of 1994 \u2014 wants to make clear, no matter how terrified American soccer fans are of humiliation in this summer\u2019s World Cup, and no matter how much trepidation there was regarding the early performances under coach Mauricio Pochettino\u2019s watch, things are better now. And the journey to reach \u201cbetter\u201d was bumpy and fun and packed with amusing, if not wholly captivating, characters.<\/p>\n \n\tThough Summer of \u201994 could use a few more filmmaking flourishes or one or two stronger personalities, it\u2019s still a sufficiently rousing by-the-numbers underdog saga.<\/p>\n \n\tAccompanied by Ini Kamoze\u2019s timeless \u201cHere Comes the Hotstepper,\u201d the documentary lays a quick foundation. In 1990, the U.S. soccer team had made the World Cup after a long absence, which felt like an achievement. The team subsequently finished last in its group, losing all three of its games, including a 5-1 humiliation to the artist formerly known as Czechoslovakia. At the time, the United States had no notable professional league and only a few of its players had the opportunity to play abroad in Europe.<\/p>\n \n\tThe two key solutions were to hire Bora Milutinovi\u0107, a jovially unintelligible coach with a history of reclamation projects, and to launch a nearly two-year residency training camp in Orange County. The goal was to winnow 40 players down to 22, but also to build a cohesive unit capable of competing. Not competing with everybody. Just capable of competing with SOMEBODY. It was, by American standards, unprecedented.<\/p>\n \n\tThe Summer of \u201994 directors have a carefully assembled group of talking heads picked both for their importance to that 1994 team and because of specific arcs that soccer fans will already be ahead on. That includes Marcelo Balboa, who suffered a major injury and had to undergo a miraculous rehab process to make it back to the field, and Jeff Agoos, whose purpose here definitely doesn\u2019t relate to his storytelling abilities.<\/p>\n \n\tYou can\u2019t tell the story of the 1994 team without Alexi Lalas, he of the legendary goatee and lack of filter, or goalie Tony Meola, he of the New Jersey attitude masking insecurities stemming from the Czechoslovakia loss, or Eric Wynalda, as likably unlikable as ever. You get Paul Caligiuri, representing the old guard, perplexed by Milutinovi\u0107\u2019s process, and Cobi Jones, representing the young guard, perplexed by Milutinovi\u0107\u2019s process.<\/p>\n \n\tAnd the directors have Milutinovi\u0107 and, honestly, it\u2019s a little unpleasant how much everybody wants to mock his English, but apparently letting everybody mock Bora\u2019s English was a part of Bora\u2019s process.<\/p>\n \n\tAesthetically, Summer of \u201994 is dry stuff \u2014 very basic and chronological, but accompanied by poppy \u201980s and \u201990s musical hits to add to spirit. Lots of people at the training camp had camcorders, presumably to record progress, which means that there\u2019s no lack of behind-the-scenes footage, which is nice, though it all becomes very pixelated and digital after a while. Early in the documentary, there\u2019s what appears to be animation in a vintage Nintendo style, but that never appears again, so I\u2019m not sure why it was included at all or why nothing additional was added.<\/p>\n \n\tIt all comes together in a documentary that feels like you\u2019ve seen it before, if only because it has a similar title structure and nearly identical story beats to Max Gershberg and Jacob Rogal\u2019s Miracle: The Boys of \u201980. That Netflix film, which broke very little new ground itself, benefitted from one very smart decision, which was putting all the members of that legendary hockey team in the same room at the same time for key scenes. That way, when talking heads talked about how Herb Brooks\u2019 unorthodox process made them into a family, we could see how strong that dynamic was, 46 years later. Summer of \u201994 makes all the same arguments \u2014 athletes hate coaches who love conditioning \u2014 but none of the interviews are even paired, so we\u2019re left with a portrait of a unified team told exclusively by individuals.<\/p>\n \n\tAnd although the documentary doesn\u2019t completely shortchange the World Cup games themselves, more than an hour is just the lead-up. You\u2019re left with the odd feeling that comes from Eric Wynalda\u2019s hives upstaging the actual game against Colombia, perhaps the most important in the history of American soccer.<\/p>\n \n\tUltimately, what matters most for a documentary like this is that if you\u2019re the kind of person counting down the days to FIFA World Cup 2026 in June, you watch Summer of \u201994 and cheer from your couch. I am, and I did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As 1994 approached, the United States was on the verge of hosting the World Cup \u2014 but national…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[18,117,19,17,327,176068,62590,176069,176070],"class_list":{"0":"post-390717","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-south-by-southwest","14":"tag-sxsw","15":"tag-sxsw-2026","16":"tag-sxsw-reviews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116247948439967552","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Directors:<\/strong> Dave LaMattina and Chad Walker
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 35 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n