It was not quite the “I Have a Dream” speech delivered by Malcolm X several decades earlier but it may prove a historical marker for the changing demographics in the United States – as well as American soccer.
(No, really. Stay with me on this one.)
This was the big picture played out in miniature.
The event? The announcement that former President Bill Clinton had accepted an invitation to be Honorary Chairman of the United States Bid to host the 2018 or 2022 FIFA World Cups.
This event was neatly scheduled four days after each bidding nation – the USA, England, Spain/Portugal, Holland/Belgium, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Qatar, and (of course) Australia – had delivered their official bid documents to FIFA's Zurich headquarters.
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While England's bid team spent the past weekend sweating on public revelations about the private views of its own chairman, Lord Triesman, and Australia's team hoped the persuasive influence of its bid boss Frank Lowy will prove compelling to its own ambition, the US rolled out one of the biggest guns of all.
Subtly, kind of quietly, in a playground.
Clinton pressed all the buttons FIFA's Executive Committee would love to hear.
“I spend a lot of time in countries that are extremely poor, where kids have no playing fields and a lot of the time kids don't get to go to school,” Clinton reminded us.
“But they know about soccer everywhere – in most places they call it football. And they play. Sometimes barefoot, sometimes on rocky ground, sometimes with makeshift goals, but they play.
I have seen matches occur in countries where people are fighting and they stop fighting because of the game.
“Soccer is a sport that brings people together across all lines. It really is a metaphor for the way the world should work in the 21st century. It really is a metaphor for the way America should work more and more as our diversity increases. It emphasises that what we have in common is more important than our differences.”
And then came the part where, to mix a baseball metaphor, Clinton hit it out the park.
“One reason that America should get this bid and one of the reasons I agreed to be the honorary chair is that we want the world to look more like the world of soccer,” he said.
Ka-boom.
And to bring it home, Clinton reminded his audience that this, too, was all about localising globalisation. That The Astroturf football pitch we were standing on in an urban area with few parks and even less sports fields? That was a legacy of the 1994 World Cup. Guess who was President then?
“I have really been grateful ever since [1994] that I had a chance to be President during an American World Cup,” Clinton said. “That World Cup realised a surplus of $50 million. It allowed for the creation of organisations that spearheaded the development of playing fields like the one we are standing on now.
“Increasing the opportunities for people all over the country to experience the world's game, the World Cup of 1994 provided these children in Harlem and many others around the country a place to play soccer, a place to learn it, and a place to help them achieve their goals of being leaders in life as well as their life.”
Ka-pow.
Clinton neatly back-heeled any attempts by the media to trip him up on soccer specifics.
“If you play good defence, you always have a chance to win,” he said when asked how he rated the USA's chances to beat England during the upcoming World Cup.
Oh, and his football skills?
He has a decent left foot.
Seriously.
