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Robin Parke

AMERICA woke up yesterday to find soccer front page news - and the game that long ago captured the rest of the world may soon claim its newest convert.

   The thrilling 2-1 win of the host nation over one of the pre-tournament favourites, Colombia, was greeted with delight by the World Cup Organising Committee and flag-waving enthusiasm across the nation.

   Eagerly awaited are the final Nielsen ratings for ABC coverage of the game live but sports channel ESPN has already released figures for their daily coverage which shows audiences far higher than expected.

   American players found themselves all over front pages of the nation's newspapers keeping company with the NBA players of the New York Knicks and Houston Rockets who were in a best-of-seven final play-off last night.

   America stunned the world of soccer with their fully deserved win over Colombia who will amazingly be heading for home after the first-phase games are completed early next week.

   But it was a result that pleased a nation that likes winners - and totally thrilled the organising committee.

   Alan Rothenburg, chairman of the committee and prime mover behind the successful bid to get the World Cup to the one major nation on earth that has no professional league, said: ''This is magnificent - we could not have wished for anything more.

   ''We have seen some great games already but now that America is going to go through to the next round, we will have tremendous television coverage. The ratings already have been excellent, far in excess of what was expected.

   ''With this win, America will get right behind the team and once you start watching soccer like we've been seeing, you don't turn off.''   For America's players, who have always been pictured as second rate sporting citizens in a country dominated by baseball and American football, the win over Colombia and the acclaim it has brought today was, at last, reward for their efforts.

   Captain and goalkeeper Tony Meola, in the team that did not last beyond the first phase in Italia 90, said: ''We always knew we could play good soccer and now we have shown the world. This is the biggest thing that has happened to soccer in America and it will go on from there.

   ''We're a good team, a good bunch of guys and we are winners. There was no fluke about this win and we can do it against other big teams.''   It was triumph for Yugoslav-born coach Bora Milutinovic who took Mexico to the quarter-finals in 1986 and guided unknown Costa Rica into the second phase in Italy.

   This has been a tremendously successful World Cup to date and America's success will add the one ingredient all pundits expected to be missing - local interest.

   National network ABC are now expecting top viewing figures for America's final first-phase game against Romania on Monday.

   And Rothenburg, a soccer messiah in a land that until now had shown little interest, is convinced there is much more to come.

   ''This will not be a hit-and-run business. Soccer has been putting down roots and with this World Cup and the success of the American team it is going to get big.

   ''Polls last week showed that 90 per cent of people surveyed knew the World Cup was a soccer tournament and that it was being held in America. That totally refutes previous negative polls.

   ''The United States is excited about the World Cup. And it will leave behind a legacy because 65 per cent of those polled said they would like to see a professional soccer league in America in 1995 which is when our Major Soccer League kicks off in 12 cities across the country,'' said Rothenburg.



America wakes a winner