I had forgotten the date. A former colleague sent me an email about it, and yes, he was right.

It was 25 years ago today that the U.S. national soccer team recorded the most important victory in the history of American soccer.

We can say that without reservation, actually, because soccer was languishing in the U.S. in 1989.

The North American Soccer League of Pele and Giorgio Chinaglia was long dead, seemingly only a fevered dream. No league of any significance existed in the US. And the national team still had not reached a World Cup since 1950.

A good case could be made, in 1989, that the U.S. was going to remain immune to this “global football” thing … forever.

Instead, Paul Caligiuri scored a random/miraculous goal and the U.S. defeated Trinidad & Tobago in Port of Spain, on November 19, 1989, setting the stage for all the American soccer that has come thereafter.

I was there.

It was something of a fool’s errand. A handful of reporters would make the trip to Trinidad to see the U.S. fail to defeat T&T (the result necessary to advance to the 1990 World Cup), and the latter would go to Italy 1990. United States soccer would return to obscurity.

It turned out the plane I took from Miami to Trinidad was the same the national team traveled on. Back in coach, with me, as I recall.

And the players and coaches no doubt at some point in that long flight south reflected on the result of two weeks before, when the U.S. was held 0-0 in St. Louis by a sad El Salvador team. (The rumor in the press box was that the whole team slept in two hotel rooms, because the Salvadoran federation was so poor. Possible. Probably apocryphal.)

I had been at that match, watched by all of 8,500 people at St. Louis Soccer Park, and Jerry Langdon, a soccer fan who ran the sports wire for Gannett News Service, decided we ought to see this thing to its end — on a Caribbean island within sight of South America.

Why me? In part, because I was willing.

Because I had covered the U.S. national team a few times, going back to 1985, when the Yanks lost 1-0 to Costa Rica in Torrance, California, ending their chances of playing in the 1986 World Cup.

What I didn’t know about world soccer was vast and deep, in 1989, but I was willing to go, and I knew a bit more about the world’s game than did the rest of my Boomer colleagues.

So, Trinidad, November 19, 1989.

Much about that match is not quite clear, 25 years later. For instance, how many print journalists from the U.S. were in the stadium? My recollection is seven, but over the years I’ve heard more than seven people claim to be there. I was there, and George Vecsey of the New York Times was there, and Filip Bondi was there, and I think Michael Lewis was there. (The latter two also NYC journos.) But for most U.S. newspapers, a trip to Trinidad to see a team no one cared fail again … wasn’t in the budget. However many of us were in the primitive “press tribute”, the number was small.

And now, I am going to crib from myself from material written 6.5 years ago, on this site. And I will pick it up on the other side of a couple of factual errors. I said the game was not televised in the U.S.  In fact, it was, on ESPN. I thought that Caligiuri received a throw-in from Brian Bliss. It actually was Tab Ramos who took the throw-in, and knocked the ball over to Caligiuri — who let fly with what some U.S. writers soon called the Shot Heard Round the World — playing on the Revolutionary War meme.

And I will pick up my stuff from 2008 after noting that I, like most of the other handful of American reporters there on that sunny Sunday, didn’t actually see the goal — Caligiuri’s marvelous shot, a sort of chip with velocity, into the upper-right corner of the net in the first half.

As I wrote, 6.5 years ago …

“If the U.S. ties or loses, T&T goes to Italy for the 1990 World Cup, the U.S. very possibly loses the right to stage the 1994 World Cup, Major League Soccer doesn’t start up as early as 1996, etc., etc.

“So, I’ve never actually seen the goal. Though I asked all the key players about it, after the match. (I still remember that tiny U.S. locker room, and the sickly sweet smell of champagne by the gallon on the floor — and on my clothes.)

“What made that match so great was …

“1. The do-or-die aspect to it. One of those teams was going to the World Cup. The U.S. for the first time since 1950 … or T&T for the first time. At all.

“2. The city of Port of Spain was nuts. The locals knew, they just knew, their team was going to the World Cup, and soccer is the sport in that nation (except among the ethnic Indians, a minority, who prefer cricket).

“The day before the match I bought a straw hat I may still have here somewhere that has a band around it that reads, ‘Trinidad & Tobago, 1990 World Cup, Italy.’ Also, local travel agencies were offering package World Cup tours to Italy — to see T&T’s games there, the following summer. (I suppose that would be considered serious “negative karma” in modern sports fandom.)

“3. The U.S. team, which I had joined as it traveled down from Miami, was greeted at the Port of Spain airport late Friday night by live local TV and 10,000 Trinidadians chanting ‘search and destroy!’ (It was the team slogan. Perhaps from some contemporary song?) That semi-menacing reception established immediately how huge this match was, as I followed the team through customs and into the arrival area — where fans were packed so tightly we had to have security create a path for us to get through.

“4. The Trinidadians created a “sea of red” by wearing the national colors to the game. They filled the ancient and rickety stadium hours before kickoff. A few hours before, at a reception brunch at the U.S. ambassador’s home, on a hill overlooking the city, we could look down (from the big lawn, in the back of the house) at the stadium, miles away, and see the people already in the stands, and sometimes, when the wind was right, we could hear them chanting ‘search and destroy!’

“5. It was madness for the first half hour of the game, just incredible noise and energy in the stadium … and then Caligiuri scored his improbable goal — and it was as if someone had hit a giant ‘mute’ button. It was that quiet, that quickly.

“After that, the Yanks held on against the increasingly desperate (and increasingly error-prone) Trinidadians, and when it was over, Port of Spain was like a mortuary — except for the tiny locker room where the Americans celebrated.”

I’m back, in 2014.

Some other recollections, images that pop into my head.

–The upside-down Hilton. It was where the U.S. team and journalists stayed. It wasn’t officially the upside-down Hilton, but it was built into the side of a hill, and you entered the lobby, and to get to your room you took the elevator down.

–I want to emphasize how cool brunch was at the embassy. If ever you are invited to an embassy event, you have to go. It is an urbane world of canapes and white wine and politeness and interesting and exotic people.

–I also remember the embassy’s press secretary, answering my question about “is this search-and-destroy thing at all serious?” And she said, “Oh, no, the Trinidadians are exceptionally peaceful. It is a bit of pop hyperbole.”

(Turns out, there is a wiki page entitled “social unrest in Trinidad and Tobago” … and a few months after the match a coup attempt was made that led to at least 24 people being killed. I remember wondering, in 1990, what the embassy press secretary did, during that outbreak of peacefulness.)

–At the match, we had no access to televisions — which is crucial to covering soccer. Like hockey, many people have trouble reconstructing a goal, especially taking it back to the first pass and ending where, exactly, the player was when he shot the ball. TV replays are a huge help, but we had no TV and, thus, no replays. And we had to come to a consensus, among ourselves, on what happened.

–The role of the sun in Caligiuri’s goal is perhaps underestimated. If you look at this ESPN video, you will note the glare as the TV camera shifts towards the goal to the left. (That video is crucial; some of those scenes, I haven’t seen in 25 years.) Watch it to the end, and you will notice Tony Meola, the U.S. goalkeeper, wearing a cap, for help with the sun.

–What a trip down memory lane it is, too, to hear the names of the 11 guys who were on the pitch for the U.S. that day. They should get special cards, like original members of the Communist party, with really low numbers on them.

Meola in goal, Paul Krumpe at left back, John Doyle and Mike Windischmann in center defense, Steve Trittschuh on the right. In midfield, John Harkes, Caligiuri, Ramos and Bliss. (The first three of them turned out to be pretty good players.) And at forward, Peter Vermes and Bruce Murray. The latter eventually got to England and played for Millwall, and in 1993 I interviewed him in London — along with Kasey Keller, the U.S. goalkeeper, who also was at Millwall — which has some of the roughest fans in England.

–I was pleased for Bob Gansler, the U.S. coach and relentlessly patient and decent man who was as good as the U.S. soccer federation could afford at the time. He went on to later successes in Major League Soccer, including a championship in 2000. A good man, who would be called an idiot during the three-and-out 1990 World Cup … but what he had to work with was not ready to beat international sides like the Czechoslovaks, the Italians (in Rome, for crissakes) or the Austrians.

And I will climb out of this with one more point of emphasis.

It was not at all — at all — beyond the realm of possibility that the U.S. would have lost the rights to stage the 1994 World Cup — the mega event that kick-started U.S. soccer, if they had not won in Trinidad, 25 years ago today. That was the rumor knocking around.

The federation was not a bunch of pros, back then. The top guy was Werner Fricker, an ethnic German with roots in, I’m gonna say, Romania (to Gansler’s ethnic German with roots in Hugary). Fricker was fiercely anti-communist, and the U.S. national team never wore red, during his tenure. Never. The Yanks wore blue and white, as you can see on the video.

People in Europe were saying the U.S. couldn’t stage a World Cup if it wasn’t good enough to play in one since 1950. If it couldn’t qualify in 1986, when Mexico was the host, nor in 1990, when Mexico was banned for cheating in an age-group tournament. (Overage players. Hello, Nigeria.) All the U.S. had to do was beat T&T (Costa Rica already was in) to get to Italy … and they damn near didn’t do it. And, too, the U.S. did not have a serious soccer league, in 1989. Why should it be allowed to host, in 1994? My recollection is that Germany and England were ready to take over, they said.

If the 1994 World Cup goes somewhere else …

The U.S. would have picked up this game, eventually. It was going to happen. Immigration patterns would see to that. And in 1989, Landon Donovan was already seven years old, and terrorizing tiny goalkeepers in Southern California.

But Paul Caligiuri and that 1-0 shock, as overlooked as it was at the time by most Americans … led to where we are now — World Cup habitues, ranked in the top 25 of the world.

In retrospect, it was one of the two or three most important sporting events I covered. In a way, it was like being at the birth (or re-birth) of U.S. soccer.