Pro Soccer USA’s Glenn Crooks was in Frisco, Texas, Saturday for the National Soccer Hall of Fame inductions of Sunil Gulati and Abby Wambach and interviewed both after the ceremony for the latest episode of On Frame.
Gulati was the president of U.S. Soccer from 2006-2018. Gulati was blamed, in part, after the USMNT failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup in Russia with the loss at Trinidad and Tobago.
“Listen, that comes with the job if you’re in charge,” Gulti said. “That was a painful experience. We win together and we lose together and I’m in charge of the organization and we lost a critical game. So did Italy. So did Chile.”
Wambach, the all-time leading goal scorer on the international level, grew up in the Rochester suburb of Pittsford, N.Y. She is the youngest of seven children with four brothers and two sisters. While the brothers prepared Wambach for battle playing street hockey on the cul de sac where they grew up, it was her sisters who shaped her mentality.
“I realized later in life that my sisters were the one’s that actually gave me my courage – my brothers just gave me the opportunity to learn it and to develop it,” she said.
Wambach was 5 years old when the U.S. women’s national team was born in 1985. She was 10 years old and still unaware of the team that she would one day win both Olympic Gold and a World Cup with.
“Remember, this was before the Internet – there was no such thing as the women’s national team for my purposes,” Wambach said. “I had never seen them on television. Not until 1996 when Mia (Hamm) starting doing some Pert Plus commercials leading up to the Olympics in Atlanta. I said, ‘Wait, there’s a woman soccer player. What’s going on here.'”
In addition to Gulati and Wambach, on this episode of On Frame, one of the hosts of the Hall of Fame induction – FC Dallas president Dan Hunt – explains how the Hall of Fame found its home at Toyota Stadium and why his father, Lamar Hunt, became enamored with both American football and soccer.