Y ou never forget your first World Cup , and the tournament’s return to American shores this year will stir vivid memories for anyone who attended USA 94. It was a curious and distinctive tournament, one that heralded the World Cup’s more expansive, commercialised future, while also seeming a world away from the jamboree that returns 32 years later, twice as big and at least twice as lucrative. I managed to do two weeks of it as a skint 23-year-old earning £9,000 a year, alongside my mate Paddy, a student. We took in only two games – both goalless draws – but soaked up enough of the occasionally raucous, often tepid, atmosphere for it to remain a personal favourite World Cup all these years on. Now, in an age when US investment pumps up pretty much every level of the English professional game , it’s difficult to overstate how distant and mutually suspicious the footballing relationship was between Europe and the US in 1994.…