'I called him two hours after the 2002 World Cup final in Tokyo and left a message on his cell phone saying, 'How do we reconcile those two views without me having to commit a felony on you?' So we're working on that.'

Such optimism might seem a little far-fetched in view of the team's odds of 80-1 to win in Germany this time.

The Allahabad-born Gulati, who moved to the US with his parents when five years old, is an economics professor at Columbia.

He is credited with being one of the principal architects behind a period in the game's history where it has enjoyed phenomenal growth in the US.

Major League Soccer is merely a decade old and yet is producing world-class players, while from a business perspective Gulati claims the sport now commands net assets of about US$110 million.

Yet while he is bullish about prospects for 2010, Gulati is reluctant to take the fifth-placed Fifa ranking for the US team seriously ahead of their group E matches in the tournament.

'Bookmakers and the folks who make or break their money on predicting these sorts of things don't have us as favourites against the Czech Republic or Italy, and they're usually the better predictors of success,' he said, adding the US should be more accurately regarded as being in 'the top 20'.

While interest in Arena's side is never going to oust the likes of Barry Bonds from the front pages of American newspapers, the success of the team in reaching the quarter-finals in Japan and South Korea in 2002 has gone some way to reassure disenchanted mainstream audiences the country is capable of being competitive.

Likewise, losing to the US in football is decreasingly being seen as an upset.

Which is just as well, because if football is to match the high profiles of basketball, baseball and the NFL in the US, the national side are going to have to get closer to the pinnacle of the game.

Take a cursory glance at what is happening at a grassroots level and this doesn't seem like such an unreasonable request.

Football is truly exploding 12 years on from the US hosting the tournament, with about four million children playing in amateur leagues around the country.

The challenge that lies before Gulati is how to sustain this interest and prevent traditional American sports involving the use of hands, not feet, take precedence as children grow up.

'This issue of what I call connectivity is an important one,' he says.

'How do we get an under-eight kid who is playing in Central Park on a Sunday afternoon to understand, appreciate that there's any connection between what he or she is doing and what Landon Donovan will be doing in the tournament in Germany?

'That's a hard one. [Children] don't identify in the same way as they might if they were following Barry Bonds' home run quest or as if they were following Tom Brady's touchdown passes at the Super Bowl.'

The absence of an icon which could provide US soccer with its homegrown equivalent to David Beckham or Ronaldinho is also pivotal.

While the chances of Donovan being given an opportunity to step into this role against the likes of Italy and the Czech Republic this summer remains to be seen, other potential candidates include the 22-year-old Eddie Johnson.

Having made it to the top of the game via the deprived inner-city circuit as opposed to the more traditional picture of privilege that is associated with the sport in the US, being black has made him marketing gold in the minds of those looking to create role models.

In contrast, the women's game has produced icons that have been far more successful, yet this in itself has become something of a double-edged sword. US women's team player Mia Hamm enjoys the privilege of being a household name, having won two world championships, starred in various TV commercials and having a Nike building named after her. Yet her presence has arguably also helped reinforce the stereotypical view in the US that football is still primarily a women's sport.

'I don't think it's viewed primarily a women's sport,' says Gulati. 'We'd like a few more Mia Hamms that are known as well on the men's side as well on the women's side.'

He argues the US is still in the early chapters as far as writing its footballing tradition goes. 'The example I always give is that almost all of us were swimmers when we were kids but very few of us go and watch a swimming event where we're paying for it.

'Tradition takes time and we don't have tradition at a spectator level for this sport. I think we will, but I don't think it'll be in six weeks after doing well at the World Cup or not doing well. We're getting there. We'll show [on Monday] 12 against the Czech Republic that the men's side of things is very much alive and thriving in the US as well.'