Soccer in a Football World: The Story of America's Forgotten Game (Sporting)

by David Wangerin

  The words had a depressingly familiar ring to them, one that seemed especially hollow now that the NASL had no presence in seven of the nation's ten largest markets and an enormous pile of debt. Increasingly the 'phenomenon' of soccer seemed to be giving way to the new `phenomenon' of indoor soccer, an enterprise apparently unable and unwilling to cultivate interest beyond its own narrow peripheries.

  In July Samuels outlined his priorities for the season in the New York Times. Near the top of the list was a reconciliation with the Major Indoor Soccer League, whose 'Americanised' game had caught on like a virus in cities such as Baltimore and St Louis which the NASL had never managed to crack. He also drew attention to developing native players and qualifying for the 1986 World Cup. But his biggest priority was injecting some semblance of financial realism into a league which had somehow survived for 15 years without making any money.

  The boom was over. In 1982 gates fell in every city except Toronto. Plenty of famous names had departed, Cruyff, Muller, Best and Figueroa among them. But the Cosmos, even playing before crowds as low as 18,000, were still a formidable team. Victories over Tulsa and the luckless San Diego Sockers - defeated in the semi-finals for the fourth straight year - put them in their fifth Soccer Bowl in six seasons. There they faced Seattle, who squeezed through two nail-biting play-off victories over Fort Lauderdale partly thanks to their new striker Peter Ward, acquired from Nottingham Forest. But Soccer Bowl 82, staged in San Diego, was, in Samuels' words, 'a disaster', 23,000 turning up in one corner of the country to see teams from two of the others. It wasn't broadcast on national TV and the media, which began to circle the league like a vulture, used the event primarily to speculate about its future. A Chinaglia goal handed the Cosmos their fifth title. They would not get another.

  More teams fell by the wayside that winter: the Portland Timbers, whose days as 'Soccer City, USA' now seemed a long time ago; the Edmonton Drillers, whose largely Canadian team compiled the league's worst record; and the incongruous Jacksonville Tea Men, who decided to jump to the ASL, a league whose own future scarcely looked any more secure. Having abandoned the west coast, the ASL had concentrated its efforts in the deep south, creating teams such as the Georgia Generals and Carolina Lightnin' (possibly the first club in the world to end its name with an apostrophe). Such was the ASL's wanderlust that it abandoned New York altogether after 1981. Its past 11 seasons had produced ten different champions, only three of which still existed. Jacksonville and five other clubs signed up for 1983, the most senior being the five-yearold Pennsylvania Stoners (Pennsylvania being the Keystone State), based in Allentown and as close to professional soccer as nearby Bethlehem had come since the demise of the Steel. The Stoners reached the 1983 championship final, where they lost to the Tea Men, but that season - the ASL's 51st since its re-emergence in 1933 - proved to be its last. Its death was not widely mourned.

  Far from in rude health itself, the NASL sputtered into 1983. Even cable television now abandoned interest, a particularly cruel blow after an unprecedented number of foreign matches had appeared on American screens. The ambitious ESPN network transmitted the 1982 FA Cup final live for the first time (it was 'Breakfast at Wembley') and continued its diet of English highlights and even the occasional college contest, something no commercial network had dared attempt. The all-sports channel became a soccer fan's delight that summer, carrying a number of World Cup matches from Spain, including Italy's thrilling 3-2 victory over Brazil. Public television also carried edited highlights of World Cup matches via Soccer Made in Germany and ABC showed the final live. Yet none of this seemed to rub off on the NASL.

  If the league could be saved, most agreed Samuels was the man to do it. Having seemingly brokered a peace plan with the insolent MISL, the commissioner turned his attention to Americanisation, an especially topical issue in a World Cup year. The US's absence from the tournament was more conspicuous than ever, and owners had begun to recognise the value of a strong national team. Samuels saw no reason why that team couldn't become a member of his league, however odd a concept it was both to the rest of the soccer-playing world and American professional sport. Samuels was convinced part of the NASL's lack of appeal was down to what he referred to as 'nationalistic interest', and since only the most devoted fan could name more than a handful of native players, that was hard to stir up. The country had taken a fiercely patriotic turn with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, and waving the flag had become fashionable again. Sport had played its part with the gold medal-winning performance of the US ice hockey team at the 1980 Winter Olympics, the 'miracle on ice' in which a team of plucky collegiates defeated the Soviet Union, and a victory which lingered in the national psyche.

  Itwas this type ofthrill Samuels was seeking to reproduce for his league, and in January 1983 the proposal, with the blessing of the USSF, became reality. Team America, consisting solely of US citizens, would occupy the vacant slot in Washington DC. But the venture was doomed from the start, requiring more co-operation and goodwill than the various parties were willing to provide. Some players, like Rick Davis of the Cosmos, felt it was more beneficial to play alongside foreign stars than against them; others were not released by their clubs. Team America ended up looking nothing like the national team it was meant to represent. Most of its players had never been capped and some were naturalised citizens with little hope of appearing in a World Cup. Nottingham-born goalkeeper Paul Hammond, a nine-year NASL veteran, and two other Englishmen, Alan Merrick and Alan Green, were winding down their careers. Hammond never earned a US cap, while Merrick and Green managed one each. Even Alkis Panagoulis, the successor to Walt Chyzowych, who as national team manager became Team America manager by default, was himself a naturalised citizen. Panagoulis had led the New York Greek-Americans to three Open Cup triumphs in the early 1960s and was later manager of the Greek national team at the 1994 World Cup, but earned his living selling real estate.

  Beleaguered by the club-versus-country (or club-versus-Team America) dilemma, Washington ended up with the worst entry in the league and little in the way of 'nationalistic interest'. More than 50,000 attended Team America's 2-1 win over Fort Lauderdale, but only because the match was the curtain-raiser for a Beach Boys concert; just 8,200 had been at the same ground three days earlier for the visit of Tampa Bay. Panagoulis wondered aloud: 'Where are we going? What the hell are we doing? Why do these people keep paying me?' In the end, they didn't - the experiment came to an embarrassing end after just one year.

  Such appeals to patriotism worked no better in Seattle, whose franchise had been purchased by a consortium headed by Bruce Anderson, a former NFL defensive lineman. The Sounders' gates had fallen to an average of 12,500, a record low which the new owners seemed to blame on the club's lingering Anglophilia. Virtually the entire team was English, as was their coach, the former Derby winger Alan Hinton, whose use of words like 'pitch' and 'lads' rubbed Anderson up the wrong way ('lad is what I call my dog, and pitch is something I get on my hands when I put up the Christmas tree').

  For 1983 Hinton was replaced with Birmingham-born Laurie Calloway, whose half-season in charge of the California Surf had been no roaring success, but who displayed greater sympathies toward native talent. The Sounders were given a new logo, a new playing strip and a lamentable new marketing slogan: 'Red, white, black and blue.' But all the fresh thinking and flag-waving merely sent the remaining fans away. The Sounders ended up with the second-worst gates in the league, one-third down on even the previous season's dismal figures. Anderson lost about $1 million, and with that the city lost its franchise. Of all its collapses, this was the NASL's most spectacular - no Soccer Bowl participant had ever gone out of business the following year.

  A similar miscalculation led to the demise of the Montreal Manic, whose owners had alienated much of the city's fan base by declaring their intent to field a Team Canada for the 1984 season. In a city whose French-speaking Quebecois had harnessed a particularly strong separatist movement, this wa
s suicidal. Almost at a stroke, crowds at the Olympic Stadium dropped by more than half, and the Manic followed the Sounders into extinction. Problems in San Diego were of a different nature. Allowed to spend the winter in the MISL, the Sockers ended up as champions, and often found themselves attracting more fans indoors than out. Club owners claimed they had lost $7 million during their six NASL seasons. Chicago, too, joined the MISL that winter and found it easier to recruit indoor fans, as did San Jose, who had changed their name to the Golden Bay Earthquakes in an effort to widen their geographic appeal.

  All this seemed to point to another Cosmos championship, particularly with Beckenbauer back from Germany. But Chinaglia, playing in his last season, featured in less than half the club's matches and Giants Stadium was now frequently three-quarters empty. Even the once-fierce rivalry with Tampa Bay attracted fewer than 20,000. Paired against Montreal in the first round of the play-offs, the Cosmos received the shock of their life, losing 4-2 at home before fewer than 18,000. Six days later the Manic knocked them out in Montreal, and New York television did not even bother to broadcast the misfortune live. It was Chinaglia's final competitive game. His 193 goals in 213 league appearances over eight seasons put him comfortably atop the league's scoring ladder, although his 49 goals in 45 play-off matches were perhaps even more significant. In a league which emphasised attack and abounded with famous strikers, he was the NASL's greatest asset, a player fans loved or hated but could not ignore, and one whose talent and statistics easily impressed the fans.

  With the Cosmos eliminated and Toronto knocking out a Vancouver team which had lost only six of 30 league matches, Soccer Bowl 83 was up for grabs. Few could have predicted its eventual winner. The Tulsa Roughnecks operated in a small market with one of the league's lowest payrolls, and during their seven-year history they had changed owners four times. But their prudently run franchise, bolstered by tireless promotional work and an absence of big-league competition, attracted consistent if unspectacular crowds. In 1983 the Roughnecks claimed their first division title with a starless collection of largely British imports managed by former Wales international Terry Hennessey. They eliminated Montreal with a 3-0 victory in the deciding match of their semi-final, and produced a goalscoring hero of their own in former Manchester City striker Ron Futcher, an NASL veteran of eight years. In the five games leading up to the Soccer Bowl, Futcher scored five times, but acquired one too many yellow cards and was suspended for the championship game. Appeals to let him play were waved aside until, late in the day, Samuels took it upon himself to overrule his office's own decision 'in the best interests of the game'. Futcher, naturally, scored as the Roughnecks melted the Blizzard 2-0, bestowing professional sports success on the state of Oklahoma for the first time.

  Though more than 60,000 turned up in Vancouver's indoor BC Place to see it, Soccer Bowl 83 could not conceal another miserable year, one which Samuels admitted had run the league close to collapse. In Tampa, attendance at Rowdies matches had dwindled to about 11,000, about the same as were now turning up to see the Earthquakes in San Jose. Infatuated with the MISL, the Chicago Sting sought to pull out of the NASL, while Fort Lauderdale moved to Minneapolis, largely because it wanted an indoor arena. Even the champion Roughnecks were in danger of folding. They were saved partly by a cable television executive and partly by an enthusiastic disc jockey who orchestrated a door-to-door fundraising drive. With Montreal, Seattle and Team America disbanding, membership fell to nine, fewer than at any time since 1973.

  Other events also conspired against the league, though in some cases the owners had only themselves to blame. The NASL had responded energetically in the wake of Colombia's decision to withdraw as hosts of the 1986 World Cup, sensing an opportunity to bolster their sagging fortunes by stepping in to stage the tournament. The refusal of USSF president Gene Edwards to make a bid didn't stop them from turning to one of the vice-presidents, Werner Fricker, a Serbian-born Philadelphia property developer, who had played for the US in the 1964 Olympic qualifiers. Flushed with optimism, and competing only against Canada, Mexico and Brazil, they even received encouraging noises from Joao Havelange, who described the US as a 'healthy candidate'. Of course, with an abundance of huge stadiums, an enviable infrastructure and American promotional savvy, this was merely stating the obvious. But when, in August 1982, nearly 77,000 filled Giants Stadium for a FIFA benefit match featuring most of the stars from that year's World Cup, America's - or at least greater New York's - interest in top-class international soccer seemed hard to deny. Yet FIFA had not forgotten how the NASL had irritatingly bickered over its idiosyncratic rules. Politically predisposed towards Mexico anyway, they rejected the US proposal, not even extending the courtesy of an inspection of potential sites. Falling at the start of the 1983 NASL season, the blow sent the league reeling.

  Punches were being thrown from all directions. America's seemingly insatiable appetite for gridiron had led to the creation of the United States Football League, which defied convention by operating during the spring. It placed a franchise in the Meadowlands opposite the Cosmos and also went head-to-head with the NASL in Chicago, Washington and Tampa. The league had secured high-profile television contracts with ABC and ESPN, hired a former network TV executive as its commissioner and animated the national press with a series of big-name signings, kicking off in March to crowds soccer had little hope of replicating. 'We haven't had a good year,' sighed Samuels as 1983 came to an end. 'We haven't had a really bad year, either, but since it wasn't better than last year, I consider it a bad year.'

  It would only get worse. After 48 straight quarters of record profits, Warner Communications reported a loss of $424 million over the first three quarters of 1983. Sales in its lucrative Atari electronics division had nosedived, leaving chief executive Steve Ross - whose management style was condemned as 'lackadaisical' - in a compromised position over his soccer plaything. Although continuing to tour the world and hosting an assortment of international friendlies (including European champions Hamburg, whom they beat 7-2 in June), the Cosmos lost $5 million in 1983. Beckenbauer did not return for 1984; nor did Rick Davis, who defected to the MISL.

  Samuels continued to sober up the league, trimming its expenditure by millions on the assumption that gates would remain modest. He put in place a new collective bargaining agreement which included a player salary cap and agreed to slash administrative costs. He increased the requirement for North Americans on the pitch from four to five. And he scrapped the Soccer Bowl in favour of a best-of-three match series on the contestants' own turf. Yet he still found himself with too many opponents to fight: the owners, whose interest in his league continued to suffer at the hands of the indoor craze; the intransigent MISL, who steadfastly refused all invitations to merge; the media, whose interest in a shrivelling league amounted largely to Schadenfreude; and the labyrinthine politics of the USSF, whose president saw nothing wrong with directing operations from Wisconsin.

  The NASL staggered through 1984 with few hopeful signs. San Diego, champions of the western division but destined to be defeated in the play off semi-finals for the fifth time in six years, continued to draw pitifully. Gates in Tampa Bay slumped to as low as 4,900. Minnesota attracted more than 52,000 to a bank holiday game with Tampa Bay, but it was the Beach Boys at work again. League champions Tulsa drew only 7,300 for their opener, lost six of their first seven matches and before the season had even ended announced they were pulling out. So did Chicago, who, along with San Diego, pledged allegiance to the MI SL. The championship series between Chicago and Toronto, won by the lame-duck Sting, drew just 8,300 to Chicago's Comiskey Park and 16,800 to Toronto's Varsity Stadium.

  The Cosmos staggered through their worst season in more than a decade, failing even to make the play-offs. Warner handed Chinaglia a controlling share of the club, effectively ending its interest, the last of the corporate benefactors. But Chinaglia had also taken control of Lazio, leaving him with little money to sink into a second team, particularl
y with the Biancocelesti about to be relegated to Serie B. Suddenly even the league's flagship franchise sought comfort in the flashing lights of the MIS L. Brash as ever, Chinaglia threatened to pull his club out of the NASL if it couldn't spend the winter earning money indoors ('They're a sinking ship right now, and I refuse to go down with them').

  The ship was indeed sinking, but no one knew just how quickly. Less than a month after the league crowned its 18th champions, the heavysmoking, 64-year-old Samuels died of a heart attack. Clive Toye stepped forward to assume control, but by then just four teams had expressed interest in another season. Chinaglia duly stuck his team in the MI SL but found its strange game difficult to master. Before the season ended, the Cosmos had run out of money and were forced to withdraw. Clutching at straws, they expressed an intention to contest a series of friendlies with top foreign clubs. But their charisma had vanished, and the few matches they managed to stage in Giants Stadium in the summer of 1985 were played out in front of ghosts. Just 8,700 turned up to watch Chinaglia's two teams face off at the Meadowlands. A fight broke out and the match was abandoned. The Cosmos never played again.

  The NASL was finished. By March, it had been reduced to just Toronto and Minnesota. Toye politely expressed the hope it would be back, or at least that 'a good pro league will be in operation for the 1986 season'. But it would take a good deal more than a year for the professional game to find its feet, and by the time it did, 'soccer' in America would come to carry two meanings.