Throwback Thursday: Indoor World Cup Soccer and Denim Kits. USA 1, Switzerland 1

(Editor's note: Each week VICE Sports will take a look back at an important sports event from this week in sports history. We are calling this regular feature Throwback Thursday, or #TBT for all you cool kids. You can read previous installments here.)

Twenty-one years ago today, the U.S. Men's National Team played against Switzerland in the first indoor World Cup match, which took place in the Pontiac Silverdome, a half hour drive from Detroit. Today, the Silverdome lies in ruins and is the the most visible reminder of the country's wasteful stadium boom since it's one of the only old stadiums nobody bothered to blow up. After being being sold for $500,000—or less than a Brooklyn apartment in a similar state of disrepair—the stadium is now best used as a makeshift playground for BMX bikers and a reminder of the disposability of the American stadium.

A quick review of the 1994 World Cup host stadia offers a brief reminder of just how the landscape has changed. The Silverdome has been abandoned. Giants Stadium and Foxboro Stadium were demolished to make way for their replacements. The Redskins left RFK in 1996 to move to the immediately despised FedEx Field, which the team is now looking to replace. Eventually, RFK will be completely abandoned once its final tenant DC United's new stadium is complete. The Cotton Bowl doesn't even host the Cotton Bowl anymore.

Since the 1994 World Cup, America has spent some $30 billion of taxpayer money on new stadiums, including the ones that replaced the Silverdome, Foxboro Stadium, Giants Stadium, RFK Stadium, and the Cotton Bowl.

By comparison, 11 of the 12 stadiums used for the 1990 World Cup in Italy—the exception being the Stadio delle Alpi in Turin—are still in regular use.

The Silverdome was a terrible place to play a soccer game even when it was still functional, especially in the middle of the day in the middle of the summer, as it was for that U.S. match 21 years ago today. Inside the domed stadium, temperatures rose above 90 degrees with an unbearable 90 percent humidity.

"It was probably the hottest game that I have been involved in," United States midfielder Tab Ramos told SBNation last year. "I know what it's like to play in Dallas at 4 p.m. in an MLS game, and that does not compare to how hot that game was inside the Silverdome."

Anyone following this summer's World Cup turf saga is aware that no men's World Cup match has ever been played on a synthetic surface. But that isn't to say it's always been played on good surfaces. The stadium crew at the Silverdome pulled the ol' stadium toupee routine by temporarily plopping real grass on top of turf, which, unsurprisingly to anyone who knows how grass works, didn't turn out well.

In the SBNation oral history, players referred to the surface as "too soft," "like running in sand," and "very heavy," none of which are good words for a soccer field. Nevertheless, I'm sure Sidney Leroux and her teammates would prefer playing on a surface that's too soft rather than too much like ground-up tires. Largely due to the playing conditions, the game had a languid pace, with both teams trying to prevent goals more than trying to score them. As one might expect with the negative soccer on display, both goals were scored via free kicks and the game finished in a 1-1 draw.

But the most lasting memory from the game was not the goals, or the Silverdome's boiling heat, or the inadequate imported natural grass. No, the 1994 World Cup was all about the US's gloriously hideous, incomprehensibly sublime denim kits.

Alan Siegel writing for Slate memorably described the design "as if it had been conjured by a stoned teenager using Microsoft Paint. The jersey featured a denim print, oddly shaped floating white stars, and bright red trim, and it was made of 100 percent polyester." Obviously it would never be Eric Wynalda's precise free kick or the Silverdome's impractical futuristic design that we would end up taking with us into the 21st Century from that humid, sweaty, unpleasant June afternoon. No, it was always going to be the denim.