Playing for Uncle Sam

by David Tossell

  Dallas were beaten in the semi-finals by Miami, who lined up in their own Orange Bowl stadium against Los Angeles in the championship game. CBS carried the game live and, even though it received disappointing ratings, the few lucky viewers and 15,507 in the stadium enjoyed a dramatic contest, the Aztecs drawing level at 3–3 with two minutes remaining. Ironically, the Toros, so successful in penalty shoot-outs during the season, missed twice from the spot to allow Los Angeles to take the title.

  NASL attendances had increased by 24 per cent in 1974, the success of many of the new teams paving the way for more growth the following year. San Jose averaged 16,576 fans in Spartan Stadium and Calloway recalls, ‘The public made us feel so welcome. California was conducive to all the events they laid on for us, like barbecues and picnics, and we developed a great relationship. We had players who were good at all the public relations stuff – school appearances, speaking at Rotary Clubs or whatever. There were a couple of bad eggs. For example, Ilija Mitic would score goals, but caused a few dust-ups because he was a miserable sod. But the guys accepted that because he got goals.’

  Child adds, ‘Pretty much all the guys at San Jose had something to give and worked to promote the team. They weren’t perfect players, but they didn’t have any chips on shoulders. The club was coming out with all the razzmatazz, like a mascot called Crazy George who would come in on a camel or a racing car.’

  In Seattle, the Sounders were the victims of being in a highly competitive division, finishing only third in spite of winning 13 games. But with the NFL’s Seahawks and baseball’s Mariners not yet in town, the team had been given a rapturous welcome when they made their home debut against Denver at the tiny Memorial Stadium. ‘We didn’t expect big crowds to start with,’ says Gabriel. ‘The stadium only held about 12,000, but for the first game it was more or less full. When we came out, the crowd stood up and cheered like you have never heard. Our side was made up mostly of guys from the lower divisions and they had never heard a crowd like that. Every time we touched the ball they were cheering and if someone headed the ball, well, it was the most wonderful thing they had ever seen. The feedback from the crowd lifted us up and we rose to it. We won that game 4–0, started to sell out the games and they had to put extra bleacher seats in there.’

  According to Best, ‘the first year in Seattle was magical’ He adds, ‘At the end of the season we were out of the play-offs, but our final game against Vancouver sold out, even though it was a lame duck game. At the end, we had a whole pile of red roses in the centre of the field and the players ran up into the stands and gave each woman a rose and said thanks for a great season. There were tears in people’s eyes and my mail came in by the sackful. Hal Childs, our PR director, called it “Camelot” and that caught on big-time. The press wrote about “Camelot Day” all the time.’

  The experience of the season persuaded Gabriel that Seattle was where he wanted to make his home. ‘The club asked me to work with some of the players in the off-season, going round to schools and showing the kids how to play the game. I had the chance to be the full-time assistant head coach and to go across to England with John Best to get some new players. I’d had some coaching and playing offers in England, but I liked Seattle so much I decided to stay. It was largely because of the positive nature of the fans. Even recently, I was at an international in Seattle and almost all of the 40,000 crowd seemed to be old Sounders fans. I met so many people that day who remembered all the way back or told me their kids had been at a school when we went round teaching them how to play soccer.’

  7. Welcome to Soccer City, USA

  One was the best player the world had ever seen, scorer of more than 1,000 goals, star of World Cups, a name known around the globe. The other had not managed to play a single game in the Football League, had spent four years applying his relatively limited talent in transatlantic obscurity and was anonymous even in his hometown of Tipton in the West Midlands. Yet despite their vastly differing football pedigrees, Pelé, the brilliant Brazilian, and Mick Hoban, the unknown Englishman, would each play their part in the storylines that were to make the 1975 season one of the NASL’s most intriguing and important.

  The city of Portland, about 460 miles north of San Francisco in the state of Oregon, had enjoyed only limited experience of professional sport. A clean, green city, its people were more used to pursuing their own vigorous outdoor activities than paying to watch others perform on their behalf. Basketball’s Portland Trailblazers and American football’s Portland Storm, part of the upstart and ill-fated World Football League, had attempted to provide a vehicle for an outpouring of civic pride. Neither had delivered, the Trailblazers suffering the usual teething problems of a franchise still only five years old – although their first NBA championship was only two years away – while the Storm and the WFL, which arrived on the scene in 1974, would fold before completing a second season.

  A former Storm employee, Don Paul, an NFL player for the Los Angeles Rams in the ’50s, had become disillusioned so quickly that he quit his job and went to visit his mother in Tacoma, Washington. While there, a friend had taken him to a Seattle Sounders match and he rushed back to Portland to tell corporation lawyer John Gilbertson, ‘I have seen the future of pro sports and it works.’ Attracted by the NASL’s asking price of $100,000 for a franchise – the WFL had demanded $500,000 for the Storm – the duo set up Oregon Soccer Inc. With a deadline of 17 January to produce $200,000 for operating expenses, they made NASL commissioner Phil Woosnam sweat before he could announce the league’s 20th team. ‘I had an hour to go on the last day before the bank closed at five,’ said Paul. ‘I called a friend and told him I needed a cheque for $30,000. It was raining and I couldn’t get a cab. I ran all the way to his office, grabbed the cheque and ran to the bank just before the deadline.’ Portland, a city known for its lumber industry, had its Timbers.

  Portland was one of five new NASL cities, including Chicago, which was being revisited following the demise of the Mustangs seven years earlier. The success of the previous season’s expansion had convinced Woosnam of the viability of adding even more teams and he had identified 24 as his ‘magic number’ for achieving major league status. This round of expansion would leave him only four short of his target. There were clearly still problems in Baltimore, Toronto and Denver, but nothing could dissuade Woosnam from talking the owners into five new franchises for the 1975 season – the Tampa Bay Rowdies, Chicago Sting, San Antonio Thunder, Hartford Bi-Centennials and the Timbers.

  As the season approached, Toronto solidified its precarious existence by merging with Canadian National Soccer League power Toronto Croatia. They would field a mostly Yugoslavian side and defy league policy about ethnic nicknames by calling themselves Toronto Metros-Croatia. In Portland, meanwhile, the name may have been a happy fit but with only six weeks left before the season kicked off, the team still had no coach or players. It was Woosnam’s old Villa and Atlanta pal Vic Crowe who landed the job, although Woosnam stresses, ‘It was purely the Timbers’ decision. If someone asked me to try to get a coach I would do so, but I didn’t force anyone to take anybody. I didn’t go around with a list of names in my pocket.’

  Following the announcement of his appointment, Crowe jetted back to England in search of a team. It was a race against the clock, although taking over a club at a time of need was not exactly new to the quietly spoken Welshman. Following his season in charge of the Atlanta Chiefs, Crowe had been called upon to stabilise Aston Villa, the team he once captained, following the turbulent reign of Tommy Docherty.

  In his book, Deadly, Villa chairman Doug Ellis reveals how Crowe had talked himself into the job at Villa. ‘There had never been any intention of offering it to Vic Crowe, who, in personality and image, was the exact opposite to the Doc. I travelled to Manchester with Vic to watch a player. During what proved to be an enlightening drive I got to talk to him seriously, at length, perhaps for the first time and as we chatted, that scouting trip became a successful job
interview. Long before we arrived back I realised that this Welsh-born true Brummie was Aston Villa to the core, a very serious-minded professional and a man with an absolute desire to see Aston Villa on top of the football world.’

  Villa were already bound for the Third Division when Crowe had taken charge during the 1969–70 season, but in his first full campaign he led Villa to a place in the League Cup final against Tottenham, claiming the scalp of Manchester United in the semi-finals before losing 2–0 to the Londoners at Wembley. Promotion followed a year later, but with the First Division still out of reach, Crowe was sacked by Ellis at the end of the 1973–74 season.

  By the beginning of April 1975, with the NASL season opener now only days away, Crowe’s organisational and recruiting skills were being fully tested. The Timbers’ locker room still had no names above the players’ changing spaces. According to Don Paul, ‘I kept calling Vic in England and telling him, “We must have some players here!”’

  Which is where Hoban came in. An articulate, 23-year-old centre-back, Hoban had played for Atlanta for three seasons and Denver for one and had long since given up his ambitions of a Football League career. ‘I was with Villa as a kid and played back and forth between there and the States,’ he recalls. ‘I was substitute in Division Three a couple of times but by the end of my second season in America I realised I was going to be farmed out to a lower league by Villa. George Curtis, Freddie Turnbull, Brian Tiler and Neil Rioch were the regular crew in central defence. I had stayed on at school to take my A levels because my dad wanted me to get some education and I didn’t feel I was as good as the other young defenders at the club, like John Gidman and Bobby McDonald. I had liked the US from the day I got there and the Chiefs offered me a job as a soccer development officer.

  ‘By the spring of 1975 I was back in England working at the West Bromwich post office when I got a call from Vic to say he had taken the job in Portland. He said, “I need you to do the job on the ground for me while I get the rest of the team together. By the way, you will play as well.” I think even when I first went to Villa there was an acknowledgement that “we can get more out of this kid” and that was always the case with Vic. As a player I took the preliminary coaching badge at 18. It was a wonderful programme offered to the forty pros at Villa, but only three or four took it.

  ‘I learned a lot about coaching in America. The team in Atlanta was owned first by the Braves baseball team and then by the multi-sport Omni Corporation. I worked in the building where other sports, like basketball, were staged and saw all the promotions and marketing. It intrigued me. I was captain of the team at the age of 20 and I had a business card that said I was the business manager. I was responsible for booking airline tickets, filing match reports to Atlanta newspapers and booking half-time and pre-game entertainment.’

  The Timbers set their season ticket price at $5 and Hoban was suddenly in every newspaper and radio station selling them. ‘For several weeks I was almost single-handedly trying to saturate the city, saying, “This is what is coming.” I was explaining rules and getting questions like, “How many on a team? Do you play with sticks?” It was like someone clearing the ground in advance for a politician. I was relieved when the rest of the players got off the plane!’

  There were only ten days left before kick-off when Crowe arrived back in Oregon. Five days later nine weary Football League veterans trooped off a ten-hour flight from London; three more followed three days later. Crowe brought his players together to train for an opening game that was now only two days away. What stood before him was a squad made up mostly of professionals from the West Midlands, including some tried and tested veterans from Villa and up-and-coming younger players from Wolves.

  At 31, goalkeeper Graham Brown had played close to 200 League games for Mansfield and Doncaster. In front of him at full-back were Ray Martin, the former Birmingham City skipper, and ex-Atlanta Chief Barrie Lynch. Hoban and Graham Day, from Bristol Rovers, marshalled the centre of defence, while the midfield was anchored by Crowe’s on-field lieutenant, Brian Godfrey, who had captained Villa to their Wembley appearance four years earlier. Godfrey made up in knowledge what he lacked in pace and was a valuable organiser and coaxer. Also in midfield were Port Vale’s Tom McLaren, 21-year-old Wolves player Barry Powell, who had appeared in his club’s League Cup final victory over Manchester City in 1974, and Tony Betts, Villa’s former England youth international. Willie Anderson, on loan from Cardiff, had been a member of the Villa League Cup final team under Crowe. Dark and handsome, skilful on the ball, Anderson had a reputation for relaxing in the changing-room after the game by smoking a cigar.

  Wolves’ bearded centre-forward Peter Withe was the spearhead of the attack. For Liverpool-born Withe, a 23-year-old reserve team player at Molineux, the NASL season would be a springboard to moves to Birmingham, Nottingham Forest, Newcastle and Aston Villa, winning 11 England caps and two League Championships along the way and scoring the winning goal in Villa’s 1982 European Cup-final triumph.

  ‘I had played in South Africa and I asked Bill McGarry if I could go back there that summer,’ he explains. ‘I was young and enthusiastic and had got into the game late and I just wanted to continue playing, but he didn’t want me to go. I thought maybe that meant he wanted me to be more involved in the first team. Then Vic asked Bill if he could take me to Portland and he let me go.’

  Joining the future England man were two of his colleagues in the Wolves second team, Jimmy Kelly, a promising young winger from Northern Ireland, and Chris Dangerfield, a former England youth international. With Derek Dougan, John Richards and Alan Sunderland occupying the striking positions in McGarry’s first-team squad, the Timbers offered a chance for the three young forwards to gain some competitive experience.

  Dangerfield, who would join the band of English players that stayed to enjoy long NASL careers, says, ‘There were 44 professionals at Wolves at that time. I felt I should be given the opportunity to play for the first team but I wasn’t going to get a game and Vic told me this would be a chance to get some experience. The money was secondary. My position at Wolves hadn’t been helped by a blow-up I had with Bill McGarry over Steve Daley. He borrowed my car, had no insurance and had a bust-up in it. I think McGarry felt I was responsible and wanted to get me out of the way.’

  Dangerfield recalls the mood surrounding the Timbers’ camp as they prepared hurriedly for their opening game. ‘Vic and Leo Crowther, his assistant, did a great job of selecting players and getting them to meld together at short notice. To be honest, it was a lot of fun; this feeling that we would sink or swim together. It was a good mix of young guys and veterans. Many were guys I watched when I was going down to Villa as a fan.’

  Withe recalls his first Timbers training session. ‘Most people out there had never seen soccer before in their lives and we felt we were going on a bit of a mission. There was a camera crew watching us train and they were bored to tears. I heard one of them say, “What are we doing here looking at these limeys?” I asked Kelly and Anderson to cross a few balls into the middle and I headed the ball into the net. The guy almost dropped his camera. “Did you see that?” he said. I was the first person they had ever seen do something like that and they ended up nicknaming me “The Wizard of Nod” and the “Mad Header”.’

  The day of the Timbers’ season opener against Seattle brought incessant rain and, with one hour to go before kick-off, there were no more than 500 fans dotted around Civic Stadium. But with Don Paul outside apologising for the shortage of ticket sellers, there were plenty trying to find their way in and when the teams lined up to start the game on the slick artificial turf there were 8,131 inside the ground. There was no fairy-tale ending, with Portland going down 1–0, but the fans braved the rain until the end. ‘They took us to their hearts,’ says Dangerfield. ‘It rained very heavily on that night and the baseball diamond that was part of the field was uncovered. It meant the playing surface was a mix of mud and Astroturf. Third base was in the mid
dle of the six-yard box so you would have guys trying to kick the ball out of the box in knee-high mud, while the rest of the field was rock hard. But the people showed a lot of enthusiasm. We were lucky to get into a city that was really trying to find something sports-wise that was a winner.’

  The fans’ reward came in the next game when Withe scored the only goal against Toronto. Taking their lead from the big forward’s enthusiastic celebration, the crowd came to life and the Timbers’ bandwagon was rolling. Hoban explains, ‘With the promotional skill of Don Paul, who was like Barnum and Bailey, and Vic’s support, the club did some wonderful stuff. There was a deep sense of community among the fans and the players.’

  During the season, Kelly summed up the difference that playing in America could make to a lot of reserved, media-shy British players. ‘I was self-conscious and I had no confidence in meeting other people. I didn’t even give a speech at my brother’s wedding, and I was best man. Now I give talks and I look forward to meeting people. I’ve got more assurance and I think my game is better because of that.’

  Withe continues, ‘I looked upon myself as an entertainer and showman more than just a footballer, and so did a lot of our players. Also, it was evident to people that their Johnny, who was 5 ft 7 in., could play this game. You didn’t need to be 6 ft 2 in., 220 lb and able to run 100 yards in 10 seconds.’

  After a loss in their third game at Denver, the Timbers embarked on a four-game winning streak, which included an overtime victory against Rochester. The NASL had again changed the rules for drawn games, playing sudden-death football over two periods of seven and a half minutes each before going to penalty kicks if neither team had broken through. Against the Lancers, the game was won 3–2 when Withe headed down into the path of Anderson, who fought off the attention of two defenders, controlled the ball, took it round the keeper and scored with the side of his foot. It was the first of Portland’s five overtime victories.