The World Cup was coming to America. The year was 1993, and FIFA was placing soccer's crown jewel event in a country where the sport was not king for the first time in history. The goal was clear: to make the U.S. audience fall in love with the sport through a warm embrace of star power, scale and spectacle.

Act 1? The 1994 FIFA World Cup Final Draw, an event that determined how the field would be set for the competition.

The celebrities came out in full force, headlined by the aura of Robin Williams, who turned his brief cameo into a comedy set. Behind the scenes, Pelé was snubbed, Sepp Blatter stumbled through a complicated draw, and a twist in the group pairings changed the trajectory of men's soccer in the United States.

Thirty-two years later, as the event returns to the United Sta

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