Copa América oral history: Former USMNT players recall tournaments past. 'It was wild'

The history of the U.S. men's national team dates back more than a century, and even with a 40-year drought between World Cup appearances mixed into that lore, the Americans have still participated in soccer's premier event 10 times.

The USMNT's history in the Copa América is shorter. All four of the program's appearances have come since 1993. Their fifth arrives in just a few days, as coach Gregg Berhalter's squad hosts the best teams in the Western Hemisphere in sport's longest running international tournament.

To help us prepare for USA 2024, FOX Sports spoke to six former U.S. players — Berhalter, Alejandro Bedoya, Jonathan Bornstein, Brad Guzan, Tony Meola and Tab Ramos — who were members of Copa América rosters past and kind enough to share their experiences.

Much like the current U.S. team, the Americans used the 1993 Copa América to help them prepare for a fast-approaching World Cup at home. Unlike this year, then-coach Bora Milutinović was missing a number of key players who had just competed in the U.S. Cup, a friendly tournament in which the U.S. stunned England 2-0. One week later, a different U.S. team made the country's Copa debut in a hard-fought 1-0 loss to Uruguay . Ramos was the captain.

Tab Ramos: It's hard to believe now, but our players looked at the U.S. Cup as the more important competition at the time. Some of the guys didn't really know much about Copa América. They didn't know the magnitude of it.

Tony Meola: I have family in Argentina, so I knew how big it was. I knew what it meant to Colombia or Brazil or Uruguay.

Ramos: In general, most of our guys treated it as just another tournament, an opportunity to showcase themselves. It was a little bit of a tryout. We still had college guys on