The pioneer in an unlikely World Cup team
When Desmond Armstrong faced the media at the 1990 World Cup in Italy, the opening question he was asked wasn’t about the remarkable feat of the USA team reaching the tournament for the first time in four decades.
“Why aren’t you playing basketball?” was directed at Armstrong, then a 25-year-old defender, who was about to become the first US-born black player to represent the United States at a World Cup.
“There were no congratulations, or ‘how excited are you to be here?’” Armstrong tells BBC Sport.
“The stereotype was ‘you’re an American and you’re black, so you should be playing basketball’. Beyond the fact that Americans shouldn’t be here in the first place, why are you here?”
Days later, he would keep the prolific Italy striker Gianluca Vialli off the scoresheet in a brilliant man-marking display against the hosts at the Stadio Olimpico - a performance that marked a huge turning point for football in the United States and for Armstrong himself.
The ripples from that match in Rome are still being felt today.
Football came to Armstrong, via a television set, in suburbia. His family moved from the Southeast part of Washington DC when Armstrong was young and later settled in a largely white neighbourhood in Maryland, where he befriended a soccer coach’s son. One afternoon, the coach called Armstrong over to the television.
He was pointing to a Brazilian in a New York Cosmos jersey.
“It was Pele,” says Armstrong. “His movement reminded me of a lot of the point guards that played basketball, but he was doing it with a ball at his feet. He was one of the few black players on the team, so that connected me.”
While Pele was popularising a game he’d learned barefoot on the streets of Brazil, much of the American grassroots version was being built on privilege. Unlike the developing youth academies of Europe and South America, where clubs like Ajax and Barcelona were putting money into young talent, development in the US has long run on a pay-to-play model. Families must meet significant costs or seek sponsorship to give their children a shot at advancing - creating a system that has seldom favoured those from less affluent households.
“It’s kind of antithetical to what this game’s all about,” says Frank Dell’Apa, who has spent 40 years as the Boston Globe’s football columnist, covering the game since the days of the original North American Soccer League (NASL). “This is the simplest game with the easiest access. Everybody plays it around the world with no money, no soccer balls, no shoes. And here, we had just the opposite thing going on.”
Armstrong knows just how easily his story could have been different. “If my folks didn’t move into the suburbs, then hands down I’m not playing soccer,” he says.
The NASL going under in 1985 during Armstrong’s time as a college player limited professional pathways for him and his peers before their careers had even begun. “For me, personally, that was crushing,” Armstrong says.
He turned to the Major Indoor Soccer League to play professionally, where his performances earned him a US men’s national team debut in 1987, followed by a spot at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. “I remember being on the field, hearing the national anthem and just thinking ‘this is where I’m supposed to be’,” he says.
That same year, world football’s governing body Fifa had selected the USA to host the 1994 World Cup finals - the first time the tournament had gone to a country outside Europe or Latin America. They would be under the global spotlight.
“The US was not a factor in world soccer at all,” says Dell’Apa. “I remember Des playing a lot of games on artificial turf. It was hard for those guys. They had to fight to get into line-ups, to get a playing field, to get a stadium.”
With no elite outdoor professional league in the country, the player pool was a fragmented mix largely consisting of college, semi-pro and indoor players like Armstrong. The federation looked to work around this by securing a core group of them on full-time contracts, essentially turning the national team into the country’s professional set-up. It was an unorthodox approach, not unlike something from the Eastern Bloc playbook.
They appointed a German-Hungarian head coach named Bob Gansler. Armstrong was now among a group of young players who were handed a near impossible task: qualify for the 1990 World Cup in Italy.
It is Sunday, 19 November 1989 and the catchy staccato theme tune of ESPN’s SportsCenter plays out on American television. “We’ve got football news - we call it soccer - the rest of the world calls it football,” says anchor Bob Ley in an upbeat delivery to the camera.
The USA had secured a shock win over Trinidad and Tobago in Port of Spain to claim the final spot for Italia ‘90. So sure had the hosts been of progressing with a draw, their government had already declared the following day a national holiday.
“It was quite simply the most important soccer match the US has played for the last two generations,” Ley reads, having to spell out to American viewers the magnitude of the result.
Armstrong, who was watching from the sidelines because of an ankle injury, ran on to the pitch at the full-time whistle. “Everybody was going crazy,” he says. “We got there with no pro league in the country. Unbelievable. But everybody in America couldn’t care less.”
In 1990, racial tensions in America were on the rise. The 1989 murder of black teenager Yusef Hawkins by a white mob in Brooklyn had ignited protests and exposed a deep-seated oppression that foreshadowed the 1991 beating of Rodney King by white police officers, and the subsequent LA Riots.
Yet, black representation was cutting through the American mainstream - whether through Carole Gist making history as the first black woman to win Miss USA, or the explosive rise of hip-hop. As Armstrong recalls, artists like NWA and Public Enemy were “telling you the story of what was going on in our community through a medium that everybody was locked in on”.
Against this backdrop, Armstrong stepping on to the pitch in Italy was not just a sporting achievement. “For an African-American that started playing soccer at 12 years of age, to make it to not just the national team but the World Cup and start - you can’t even write that,” he says.
Frank Dell’Apa was at the Stadio Comunale in Florence when the US lost their first group match 5-1 to Czechoslovakia. “It was a real wake-up call for the US,” he says. “They had to realise tactically who they were and what they could do.”
That realisation would be tested at their next game against the hosts in front of a 73,000-strong crowd in Rome. The Italy side reflected Serie A’s formidable strength, featuring the likes of Franco Baresi, Paolo Maldini and Roberto Donadoni. The Azzurri even had the luxury of leaving Juventus’ world record signing, Roberto Baggio, on the bench. The Stadio Olimpico was expecting a blood bath.
Armstrong’s assignment: stop Gianluca Vialli. “Vialli was the man,” he says. “I’m going to be his shadow. I look across the field and we catch eye contact. In my mind I’m saying ‘you’re not going to get the ball’.”
A lone goal came in the 11th minute from Italy midfielder Giuseppe Giannini, and the blowout did not follow. Both Vialli and Salvatore ‘Toto’ Schillaci, whom Armstrong marked in the second half, failed to score.
“A very unimpressive Italian performance which will cause some indignation and some hostility in their press tomorrow,” said the BBC’s match commentary at full-time. It also praised the “plucky” display by the US, “who people thought had come to Rome as whipping boys but in fact have gone off the pitch with a very respectable score”.
Despite leaving the tournament after losing 2-1 to Austria in their final group game, the US had already laid the foundations for the future of American soccer. And for Armstrong, he got noticed as a defender.
The following year he spent two weeks training with Luton Town. The then First Division club were interested in signing Armstrong when he received a phone call from his agent asking if he wanted to go to Brazil. “Yeah, I want to be on the beach. I’m in England, it’s all grey skies and these guys drink tea at half-time. What club?” “Get me the plane ticket.”
Armstrong became the first American player to sign a professional contract in Brazil, where he would spend a single season with Pele’s former club. He sets the scene of the media converging on him after getting off the plane. Though he didn’t realise it in the moment, the man interpreting for him was Edinho, a goalkeeper at the club - and Pele’s son.
When reporters asked how he would communicate without speaking a word of Portuguese, Armstrong replied: “I guess I’m going to have to smile.” He had no idea the interview was being broadcast across the country and when he walked into the Santos dressing room, every one of his new team-mates had huge grins on their faces in response.
Armstrong bursts into laughter at the memory. “It was the highlight of my career because I used to watch Pele, the master in his method. Just a wonderful, wonderful experience.”
Following a season in a semi-professional US league, Armstrong ended his playing career in 1996 at the age of 31 to transition into coaching.
You can’t talk about Desmond Armstrong without mention of Jimmy Banks - or “Gee” as Armstrong affectionately calls him. Banks was the only other black player in the squad, and although he didn’t feature in the opener at Italia ‘90, he started in both remaining group games as the US looked to strengthen their backline.
Banks was diagnosed with cancer and died in 2019 aged 54, but memories of being room-mates in Italy and going to Janet Jackson concerts together are still vivid. “I’ve a lot of love towards him and our time together,” says an emotional Armstrong.
The pair met as 15-year-olds in a tournament. Both spotted they were the only black players on their teams and exchanged jerseys, becoming friends with a shared ambition of making the national team. And when they both went into coaching, they made sure their teams played each other.
Not far from the country music playground of downtown Nashville, Armstrong loads his pick-up truck with footballs and sets off for the melting-pot neighbourhood of Antioch. Wherever he stops, he is met with a pound hug. At the Kurdish cafe, it’s “Galatasaray” and “Amedspor”. At the petrol station, the Egyptian and Iraqi attendants want to talk about Mo Salah. Football is the common language here.
Through his grassroots club, he has made it his mission over the past 14 years to bring football to the city’s immigrant-rich population - driving children to games, sourcing pitches and often funding kit and entry fees from his own pocket. “There are some really talented kids over here,” he says.
Now that he has joined forces with Armada FC, where he is the director of coaching, not only does Armstrong have access to dedicated facilities, but also a better location.
Since heightened activity from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Nashville over the last year - as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown - Armstrong says members of the Hispanic community avoid travelling outside of Antioch, meaning some children had not been making it to games. “They don’t want to get pulled over in the car,” he says. “They want to drive in areas where they’re most comfortable and, in their minds, feel they’re not going to be harassed.”
At Armstrong’s youth programme, it has heightened a sense of community among parents, who set up group chats to co-ordinate lifts for children of fearful families. “If you don’t feel comfortable taking the kid out of town, we’re here,” says Maria, who is there to watch her younger brother play.
She is among a strong turnout of Hispanic family members, and a chorus of “vamos, vamos!” can be heard as they cheer on the children. “There are different cultures and it just brings us all together.”
For teenagers Abdi and Kylan, who were both scouted by Armstrong and credit him entirely for getting them into the sport, the former national team player’s pioneering status doesn’t fully register until they see photographs. “1990. Wow,” says Abdi, staring at the images of his coach in a USA kit. Kylan laughs at the retro styling: “He’s there with the tucked-in shirt. He doesn’t even have the moustache any more.”
Members of the current US team know exactly who Armstrong is, and one admiring player even has similar facial hair. “Look at you rocking that moustache, dude,” Armstrong says on a video call.
Some 4,000 miles away, Chris Richards pops up on screen, laughing as he says: “I’m trying to bring the old school vibe back!” Aged 26, the Alabama-born Crystal Palace defender is a key member of the 2026 World Cup squad, which is the most diverse a men’s national team group has ever been.
“For people that look like us, it’s taken a while to get to this point, and you’re one of the pioneers of that,” Richards says.
The centre-back is on his own mission to broaden the reach of US youth development - “so that a kid like myself would never have to leave to chase the dream”. Although the rise of funded Major League Soccer youth academies has paved the way for him and US team-mates like Weston McKennie and Tyler Adams, Richards knows the path to professionalism is not straightforward for those outside the reach of MLS hubs.
“It’s expensive to play back home,” Richards tells Armstrong. “I’ve seen a lot of kids drop out of the sport because they couldn’t afford it. Without your contribution, your bravery, your courage, I wouldn’t be here, so I really want to give you all the flowers. Your generation was probably the least spoken about, but I don’t want you to ever feel like it goes unnoticed, because we very much feel our history and it started with you.”
