This is another job for The Record, Northern New Jersey's daily newspaper. Shortly after finishing up my last assignment for them, the gentlemen who run the art department there, Jerry Luciani and Bob Rebach asked if I would illustrate the cover of the paper's World Cup Preview.
The section was going to be a tabloid despite the papers normal broadsheet publishing format. That meant, I'd have a squarish sort of space to work with. and would need to work in the section nameplate in the top left corner and leave space for a headline The working headline I got was U.S. against the World.
Here are the initial sketches I put together:
Goalkeeper diving to stop a ball, which looks like a globe. U.S. stopping the world
Here's a player bending it around the world toward a goal suggesting the U.S. finally getting by some of the World's biggest teams
The thinking here was more a United Front ready to take on the world. 
Kicking a ball from a new position in the soccer world, near the top. We're not a third-rate soccer country anymore Jerry liked what was going on in that last sketch near the top, but thought that the player should be bigger and kicking the globe. Happy to oblige, I worked up this and was off to the finish.
