In 1994, soccer's World Cup was played in venues all over the United States. It was the year that the Colombian national team's defender scored an own-goal, and was later shot upon his return to Bogota.

It was the year that the Brazilian national team won the title in penalty kicks after Italian superstar Roberto Baggio launched Italy's final PK over the crossbar, sealing their fate. Ageless German forward Jurgen Klinsman led the world in scoring, and the Germans to the semifinals.

The Americans were famous for wearing their "stars and stripes" jerseys and for advancing to the second round for the first time in years. It was during the Cup that the town of Kearny, N.J., became known affectionately as "Soccertown USA," because, as every single commentator pointed out at least a dozen times a game, American stars John Harkes, Tab Ramos and Tony Meola all came from that town.

With respect to the Garden State, now, 12 years later, I am going to have to, sadly, set the record straight. Kearney, while admirable for giving the U.S. team a full third of their World Cup squad, is still a distant second from St. Louis, Mo.

As a young kid, playing soccer in Kansas City, Mo., there were always two things you were assured of: You could play on perfectly manicured Midwestern fields, sporting fresh chalk and true lines and, no matter how well you did, you were never going to be as good as the best teams from St. Louis. That was just the truth.

Over the course of growing up, I heard numerous stories about the storied soccer clubs and players from the St. Louis area. There was always the club soccer team Busch, whose very presence on your tournament program instilled the fear of God into you. This was a team that won national tournaments like the U.S. Cup, in Minnesota, and the Pikes Peak Tournament, out at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo.

There were also all of those players from the junior college somewhere around town whose name I have long since forgotten who, after winning a JuCo national championship, had been offered scholarships to go play at the University of South Carolina, which was just starting a soccer program of their own. Lo and behold, two years later, those players won another national championship, this time an NCAA Division I championship.

Then there is the obvious, the men's soccer program at our own University, which has won more championships than any other team and even has the national player of the year trophy named after a former player, who was also the namesake of our soccer stadium.

But none of those feats compare to what a bunch of kids from "The Hill" did for United States soccer in the 1950 World Cup, ironically being epitomized quite nicely in a motion picture that is set to be released in select cities tomorrow.

Just a couple weeks short of the beginning of the Korean Conflict, the United States World Cup team, really just a bunch of kids who barely knew each other and had never been more than 200 miles away from home, boarded a plane for Rio de Janeiro. In front of them loomed a meeting with, among others, the best team in the world, England.

The English were so good that they actually viewed the World Cup as beneath them and, as such, had refused to compete in the last three. They were 500-to-1 favorites against the Americans.

So, the Americans, true to form, did the only thing that would have warranted a movie to be made about the game, more than half a decade later: They won, and tossed the soccer world on its head.

So while I gladly applaud the efforts of Kearny, N.J., to highlight the abilities of three very good players, I can say that, without a doubt, St. Louis should hold the honor of being "Soccertown USA."