As Americans celebrated the Fourth of July in 1988, a presentarrived from Zurich: The World Cup was headed to the United Statesfor the first time.”The richest land in the world simply cannot be allowed toremain a blank spot on the world map of soccer any longer,”Hermann Neuberger, president of West German soccer’s governingbody, said at the time.Since that watershed 1994 World Cup the global game is now verymuch a part of the country’s sports landscape. There’s a nationalteam that’s played in six straight World Cups, three televisionnetworks that are pretty much all soccer, constant additionalexposure on ESPN2 and a growing league preparing for its 16thseason – albeit one still struggling to gain attention in a marketdominated by the NFL, Major League Baseball and the NBA.Bidders promise another burst of explosive growth if FIFA’sexecutive committee awards the 2022 tournament to the United Stateswhen it votes Thursday in Zurich. Australia, Japan, Qatar and SouthKorea are the competition.”We’ve got all of the infrastructure in place, and it’sextraordinary infrastructure, which allows us to focus on growingthe game and using the World Cup to do that in the United Statesand have the U.S. become an important part of the global communityin this,” U.S. Soccer Federation…