Book Review: 'The Long Game' by Leander Schaerlaeckens
The TL;DR review is - this is an exceptional and engaging book for all sports fans, and the definitive book on the USMNT. Two thumbs up.
On page 271 of Leander Schaerlaecken’s epic recounting of the history of the US Men’s National Team at the World Cup, one finds one of those interstitial illustrations that cool books often have at the start of a chapter. This illustration is a four-panel diagram of Gregg Berhalter bouncing a soccer ball around his back – a goofy little sideline quirk that social media short video maker Watke would elevate to an iconic mannerism in a series of instructional clips examining, or perhaps having a little fun, with Berhalter’s simple act of bouncing a ball to the ref with a bit of panache.
That attention to detail - and love for the American soccer community and the USMNT - permeates ‘The Long Game’ in a million ways, and has led to Schaerlaeckens crafting a soccer work for the ages that will sit on my shelf proudly next to the other all-time greats - ‘Miracle at San Castile’, ‘The Ball is Round’, ‘Inverting the Pyramid’, and especially Grant Wahl’s masterful and entertaining ‘The Beckham Experiment’.
Schaerlaeckens bounces between short profiles of current USMNT players and chapters detailing the USMNT’s trials and travails going back to 1930 (and before) all the way to the cusp of this years 2026 World Cup. ‘The Long Game’ carefully and skillfully documents and details the key events and emotional highs and lows while also getting fresh quotes from the people who were there at the time. Want to hear both Jurgen Klinsmann’s and Landon Donovan’s sides of Landy’s exclusion from the 2014 WC? Leander got that.
Are you curious about how the players felt about Bora Miliutonic at the 1994 World Cup? Yup, that’s there. His chapter on Tyler Adams had me getting emotional and bursting out laughing within two pages of each other. His section on the transition to and then away from the Bradenton Florida National Training Center by US Soccer was insightful.
The chapter on the 2022 World Cup in Qatar sparkles in particular, most definitely because Schaerlaeckens was there in person to recount the experience. After describing in the scene in Doha and the corruption that led to their hosting the tournament,
Schaerlaeckens writes
“It was a dry World Cup, save for FIFA’s stadium luxury boxes and a few licensed hotel bars where imported beer and wine sold for eye-watering prices. A Potemkin World Cup: one that looked and sounded like a World Cup but somehow didn’t feel like one … An oppressively monitored and clumsily staged World Cup. An antiseptic World Cup, maintained by an army of street sweepers – enough of them to lay siege to a major metropolis. One of them worked the median of a non-descript road at 1 am, pushing the bristles of his broom against nothing at all.”
Poetic, and a bit dystopian, and it makes us readers that couldn’t shell out $5000 to go to Doha feel like we had been there. In spurts, Schaerlaeckens has the capacity write like Eduardo Galleano, but not to soccer, but rather to soccer greed. In others, he captures a players words with an honesty befitting Grant Wahl. And he documents the structural problems of US Soccer with the keen eye of Paul Tenorio and Sam Stejskal.
Honestly, the only conceivable criticism I could have is that I wanted more – I might have been satisfied if the book was a hundered pages longer. Obviously, this is the opposite of a criticism.
It’s a great soccer book, and a great sports book. The players and coaches, often abstracted by the media into two-dimensional characters in a soap opera - Who will play? Who was out too late? Do they really get along? - is fleshed out in three-dimensions in a way you rarely see in journalism - sports or not. If you’re like me, you will devour the book in three or four sittings, put it on your shelf and pull up some old clips of ‘The Shot Heard Round the World’ or Tim Howard’s 15-save masterpiece against Belgium in Brazil World Cup and just grin ear to ear knowing that you now know some things about those matches that give them greater context. And then think about re-reading it again in a few weeks.
Often, with the passage of time, events in history or even our own pasts become obscured or lost for failure to get down the details before they recede beyond our memory’s ability to recall. Schaerlaeckens has pulled together all sorts of moments from the USMNT, woven them together with deft skill, and delivered them for sports fans to remember, or discover for the first time. It’s a must read and a must own, and we’re lucky to have been delivered this gift right before the latest edition of the FIFA World Cup.