Generation Zero

"Hal Phillips has written a uniquely important and highly original book that simply represents a MUST read for all soccer fans in the United States and beyond." 

-Andrei S. Markovits, professor of Comparative Politics and German Studies, University of Michigan; author of Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism, and the 2021 memoir, The Passport As Home: Comfort in Rootlessness  

"... a masterly job of celebrating the players and '80s era that laid the foundation for today's American soccer culture." 

-Jim Trecker, National Soccer Hall of Fame Colin Jose Media Award Winner, World Cup '94 Sr. VP/communications, co-editor 100 Years of Soccer in America 

"It's taken my lifetime for soccer in this country to move from obscurity to the status of big-time sport, and over those decades, Hal Phillips was the journalist who stuck it out and followed that fascinating ascent."

-Larry Olmsted, NY Times bestselling author of FANS: How Watching Sports Makes US Happier, Healthier and More Understanding  

"Can four billion delirious soccer fans possibly be wrong? Brother Hal thinks not. A must read for your sports bookshelf - and the budding soccer star you're driving to practice twice a week."

-James Dodson, bestselling author of Final Rounds, American Triumvirate and Ben Hogan - An American Life

"...highly entertaining account of how a generation of players decisively moved soccer from niche to mainstream in American sporting culture."

-Carlo Rotella, author of Cut Time: An Education at the Fights 

"...both a compelling, comprehensive history and a heartfelt account of one man's passion for something that many Americans didn't even notice was sweeping the nation and burrowing into its culture."

-Jeff Wallach, Sunday striker and author of the novels Mr. Wizard and Everyone Here Is From Somewhere Else 

"With dry humor and precise analysis, Hal Phillips has filled in the missing years between American soccer's early aspirations and today's actual achievement." 

-Patrick Symmes, author of Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey

"With Generation Zero, Phillips offers a touching, incisive, and above all personal history of the growth of soccer in the U.S., from what he calls The Before Time, through an American Soccer Metamorphosis, to its current position as a Big Time Sport that encompasses many levels of participation, class, and ethnicity. Read this book before the FIFA World Cup starts on November 21."

-Paul Spencer Sochaczewski, author of A Conservation Notebook: Ego, Greed, and Oh-So-Cute Orangutans - Tales from a Half-Century on the Environmental Front Lines