But Thursday's failure is akin to a town being bypassed by the railway lines of yore. The missed opportunity to accelerate the growth of the sport is immense. In all likelihood, soccer in the U.S. will ultimately reach all the promise that hosting the World Cup held. But the game has now been forced to embark on a 5,000-mile detour, and not for the first time. The job of everyone connected to the game remains difficult, and is perhaps harder...
Alas, for Gulati, this defeat will probably be his legacy, which given his longtime service to the game is -- in some ways -- highly unfair. But that is the nature of being Goliath, even for the diminutive USSF president. The defeats are the only things people remember.
