Charlie Stillitano, then a teen-age star on the pitch in New Jersey, still remembers the moment — seeing some of the sport’s most famous players performing before more than 75,000 in the pouring rain at the Meadowlands.
“I thought soccer had made it,” he said.
It was the late 70s.
A few years later, the Cosmos, the NASL and seemingly the sport itself, had died.
Stillitano, who became an All-American player at Princeton, the venue director for Giants Stadium for the 1994 World Cup, the first employee of the MetroStars in MLS, a noted promoter, organizer, thought leader, media star and now part-owner of a Serie A team, joked about the long road the sport has traveled in this country during a panel Thursday morning at the Global Game business summit at the Prudential Center.
“It’s fascinating,” he told an audience of a few hundred. “I’ve always been pushing this boulder up the hill for what used to be 10 years — then 20 years, then 30 years — it’s changed dramatically.”
The sport has never been in a better spot in the U.S. — or in New Jersey.
That’s been evident this week, when crowds of 75,000 or so (battling oppressive heat) watched the two semifinal matches of the FIFA Club World Cup — and will do again Sunday for the final.
The event, of course, is just the warmup for next summer, when the 2026 FIFA World Cup comes to North America.
Stillitano — and fellow panelists Steve Parish (co-owner, Crystal Palace FC), Lex Chalat (executive director, Soccer Forward) Bruce Revman (co-manager NYNJ 2026 World Cup Host Committee) — detailed the growth of the game during a panel discussion led by Darren Rovell of CLLCT Media.
Stillitano joked that FIFA brought a handful of people to the U.S. before 1994 World Cup —back when soccer was still a curiosity in this country.
This week, FIFA will have up to 1,000 representatives at the Club World Cup final.
Revman, who has been working on the planning with co-manager Lauren LaRusso, said the region is ready for the scrutiny — and that the host committee embraces the possibilities.
“Soccer has a different kind of DNA, and we never lost sight of that when we started this process,” he said. “What we are striving to do is make sure that the rising tide raises all boats.
“It’s really important that we take this global game and make it local, that this region feels it in every way possible.”
Chalat, who runs an organization that was launched last year by U.S. Soccer to grow the game in new ways, said ensuring that the moment reaches every community is key —noting how the 1994 World Cup created MLS.
“It’s a very different time now, and with that, means there are very different opportunities for what we can do at the grassroots and community level for the game not only in this country, but globally,” she said.
“Since 1994, the amount of people playing the sport has doubled. But who is playing the sport and what’s the access look like, and what’s the inclusion look like? That’s what Soccer Forward is really trying to make the most of for next year.”
Parish said the Premier League is a great example of how growing your community grows your entity.
The Premier League has become the top league in the world because it embraced a willingness to welcome investment from overseas.
“I think it’s been one of its strengths, whether it’s in terms of bringing in talent, which has helped us grow our media rights or investing in infrastructure,” he said.
“At the end of the day, we’re a relatively small country, and the Premier League is punching massively above its weight globally in terms of interest.”
Stillitano feels soccer in the U.S. is on the same growth plan.
He has seen it in the growth of his soccer show on Sirius — which has ballooned from a one-hour show (with former Cosmos star, the late great Giorgio Chinaglia) to a 24-7 network.
He has seen it in a fan base that embraces not just national teams but clubs of all levels and from all leagues.
And he has seen it in the way soccer has grown from the NASL and the Cosmos, a pop-culture phenomena that crashed and burned, to a World Cup in 1994 that mainly attracted immigrants and their kids to what it has become today — a sport that is embraced by the mainstream.
“Did I expect it to be this way? No, I did not,” Stillitano said. “I was hoping it would get to this point.
“It’s a real sport in America. It’s always been a real sport in the world, but now in the United States, it’s a real sport.”
