Playing for Uncle Sam

by David Tossell

  Both had very publicly become disillusioned with football in England. Best had walked out on Manchester United for the final time during the 1973–74 season, while Marsh, one of that talented group – along with Alan Hudson, Stan Bowles and Charlie George – whose face and feet never quite seemed to fit into Alf Ramsey’s rigid England set-up, had fallen out with Manchester City manager Tony Book. He found himself on the transfer list and banished to train with the youth team. Marsh and Best, though, were still at an age where their skills were expected to be intact, Best only 29 and Marsh 31. Both were intrigued by the prospect of a new beginning in a country whose soccer was crying out for entertainers of their calibre.

  The approach to Marsh had come in January 1976, several weeks after he last kicked a ball for City. Marsh’s former agent, Ken Adam, remembers, ‘I was friends with the photographer Terry O’Neill, who did the Elton John album covers. Elton wanted to get involved in football in America and John Reid, his manager, asked Terry to talk to me to see if I could fix up for Elton to get involved in the Los Angeles club. I knew the club owner, John Chaffetz, and we fixed it all up. Rodney fancied coming to the US and Elton thought it would be great to have him in LA. John Reid arranged for Rodney and me to visit Los Angeles and they took us to Elton’s concert at Dodger Stadium, the works.

  ‘While we were out there I was called by a man by the name of Theodore Beauclerc Rogers the Fourth – Beau Rogers. He was the general manager and co-owner of the Rowdies and said, “Would you be interested in taking a look at Tampa?” We had no idea where it even was. But we flew there and there was a crowd of people waiting for Rodney at the airport, like The Beatles had turned up. Beau Rogers had arranged it all. Rodney fell in love with the place and decided to go there instead of LA.’

  The product of a harsh upbringing in London’s East End, Marsh had found his escape route from poverty on the football field, eventually signing for Fulham. In March 1966, he was sold for a bargain £15,000 to Queens Park Rangers. It meant a drop of two divisions, but it was at Loftus Road that the legend of Rodney Marsh was born as he led the Third Division side to one of the great Wembley upsets when they beat First Division West Bromwich 3–2 in the final of the 1967 League Cup. Marsh, who scored twice to bring Rangers back from two goals down, had established himself as the south’s answer to George Best, full of versatility and flair for the extravagant.

  After successive Marsh-inspired promotion campaigns, Rangers experienced one ill-fated First Division season in 1968–69, their star player being forced to miss the early months of the battle through injury. By the closing weeks of the 1971–72 season, QPR’s latest attempt to return to the top flight had petered out and Marsh was allowed to join Manchester City for £200,000. A regular in the England squad, if not the starting line-up, Marsh posed an immediate problem for City manager Malcolm Allison: how to work his new signing into a system in which Colin Bell, Francis Lee, Mike Summerbee and Wyn Davies were spearheading City’s challenge in an exciting four-way race for the title. With the line-up chopping and changing to accommodate Marsh, who scored four goals in eight appearances, City’s championship train came spectacularly off the rails as they won only three of their final eight games.

  It was a sign of things to come in a City career that brought no tangible rewards. There was a shot at winning a second League Cup-winner’s medal in 1974, but a 2–1 Wembley defeat by Wolves put paid to that. And when City won the 1976 final against Newcastle, Marsh was out of the picture, his bags packed for Florida.

  The response to his decision to join the Rowdies shocked Marsh. He was openly criticised by some of his former teammates, whom he describes as ‘backstabbers’ in his autobiography, Priceless. As he prepared to board the plane to America, Marsh took his famous parting shot at the game he was leaving behind, claiming that English football was ‘a grey game, played on grey days by grey people’.

  The Rowdies team that won the Soccer Bowl in 1975 had been a side without stars, without egos. The acquisition of Marsh, for a reported transfer fee of $80,000, gave them both, a fact that was underlined when the new signing was presented to the Tampa media. Having been introduced as the white version of Pelé, Marsh jokingly corrected the statement, by saying, ‘Actually, Pelé is the black Rodney Marsh.’ Such a comment was typical of the man and was intended to be light-hearted, but some reporters immediately marked him down as an arrogant Brit. The relationship was not to benefit by Marsh’s reluctance to talk to the media and his habit of giving evasive and misleading answers on the rare occasions when journalists did corner him.

  Meanwhile, there was concern in the Rowdies locker room that Marsh would upset the delicate equilibrium of team spirit. When Rogers appointed him team captain, it was against coach Eddie Firmani’s wishes. ‘Eddie didn’t want him,’ says midfielder Mark Lindsay. ‘We hadn’t had one player who was picked out as being a great player. The guys liked the idea that we were all considered reputable players. We all got time in the press and radio and everyone was happy. All of a sudden, Rodney comes in with all his history. The Clown Prince, good looking, blond hair. He leapt above everyone else.’

  Tampa Bay striker Derek Smethurst remembers whispers about Marsh’s salary. ‘Rodney was flamboyant and when he came over he wasn’t liked. There was a lot of animosity because he had been signed on a big contract.’

  Defender Stewart Jump adds, ‘I do remember a few times when there were conflicts in practice or in team meetings. In discussion, some things were brought up that gave you the impression there was not the harmony there had been a year before. But he was enjoyable to play with and fun to watch. Our style certainly changed a bit with Rodney in the team.’

  Smethurst encouraged his teammates to look at Marsh’s arrival as an opportunity. ‘I thought, “It’s none of my business what he earns.” But I knew what he had done was to open the door to negotiate. I went up to him after about three weeks and said, “Thanks for coming.” He looked at me as if to say, “What does this guy want?” He knew what the feeling was among some of the players and he said, “What do you mean?” I said, “You have given me the chance to negotiate a new contract. I can go in and take my salary up. What you get is your business.” Of the other players, maybe Farrukh Quarishi was the only one who really understood it, but he had come up through the college ranks.’

  Unrest in the camp aside, Marsh’s impact on the Rowdies was immediate. In the final home game of the regular season of 1975, their championship year, just over 12,000 had seen Tampa Bay play Chicago, but for Marsh’s home debut against the same opposition more than 32,000 watched their new hero score one goal and set up another in a 2–1 victory. ‘He was like the Pied Piper in Tampa,’ says Gordon Jago, Marsh’s former manager at QPR and later to become his boss at the Rowdies. ‘He was a showman, he played the crowd and he has to take a great deal of credit for the way the sport developed in that city.’

  Says Adam, ‘Rodney saw it for what it was and gave his all to the club and league in general. He as much as anyone, apart from Pelé, was responsible for promoting the league.’

  Lindsay comments, ‘I think Rodney was one of the reasons I stayed in America. The direct result was noticeable in the stands; we were going up by a couple of thousand every game. He was not only producing on the field but he was charismatic off it. Jasper Carrot came over to film a programme about us and everybody was talking about the Rowdies. I am still good friends with Rodney and it’s fair to say he definitely sees himself as a focal point. He needs to be the focus of attention and a lot of people who thought they were that focal point found out they weren’t. The average Joe Blow wouldn’t gravitate to them, but to Rodney.’

  Liverpool defender Tommy Smith, another new arrival at the Rowdies in Marsh’s first season, recalls in his book, I Did It The Hard Way, ‘You could never really get on his wavelength, never talk his language, which always seemed to be halfway between Freud and Donald Duck. He would do things purely and solely to surprise you. We’d go on a trip to New
York for a couple of days and he would bring along a big bag that could hold a suit and all that business – and inside he had nothing except a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste.’

  Goalkeeper Paul Hammond adds, ‘Rodney was a bit of a comedian. Some people thought he was a bit flashy, but I thought he did very well for us. He would do things like sitting on the ball and the Americans lapped it up.’

  No one enjoyed Marsh’s presence in the team more than Smethurst. During the 1976 season, the former Chelsea man scored 20 goals in 24 games, while Marsh notched up 11 goals and set up almost as many. Smethurst recalls, ‘The press loved him and controversy followed him. But we were on the field one second and I knew it would be great playing alongside him. Any time he didn’t look at me, I knew I would get the ball. If he looked at me, I knew I wouldn’t get it and he wanted me to move.’

  Lindsay adds, ‘I was excited about a player of that quality coming in and he was a dream come true for a player like me. Every time you tackled and came up with the ball you would just stand up and he would be there, so you would just shovel it to him. The 35-yard offside rule stretched the game and was made for Rodney. He could find space, attract people to him, wind them up a bit and get a couple of fouls. Then he would go in the box for a bit and draw penalties. If he was playing against a young American kid he would pull a couple of free-kicks on the halfway line and then he would go forward and get a couple of penalties.’

  Marsh was at his flamboyant best early in his first season when the Rowdies dismantled the Cosmos 5–1 at Tampa Stadium, with Smethurst scoring a hat-trick. Turning on the trickery for a crowd of more than 42,000 and a live television audience, Marsh terrorised New York’s Northern Ireland international midfielder Dave Clements throughout the game and clearly felt his opponent had got away with one foul too many by the time the second half came around. As Clements challenged from behind, Marsh swung an elbow into his opponent’s face, adding insult to injury by kneeling over the ball with his arms outstretched matador-style. Pelé was the player who reacted most angrily, grabbing Marsh by the head in a clash that made all the next day’s newspapers.

  Such performances by Marsh were all the more remarkable given that he admits his first couple of seasons in the NASL were set against a backdrop of marital problems, difficulty in coming to terms with the rejection he felt he had suffered at City, self-doubt over his decision to go to America and an increasing reliance on alcohol to escape from that cocktail of problems. Marsh confesses that he was often drinking a bottle of vodka a day at the depths of his dissatisfaction with life. In an interview given to the NASL’s Kick magazine in 1979, he admitted, ‘I had a nervous breakdown in 1975. It was a culmination of emotional, domestic and professional problems. When they come at the same time there’s no way around it. You collapse. Your brain can’t take it.’

  Marsh’s ability to make a consistent contribution on the field, even though ‘psychologically, I had lost it’, would have Tampa Bay challenging for honours regularly over the four years in which he wore their white, green and yellow uniform. And his career in America would produce its share of controversial headlines along the way.

  Tabloid tales had been constant companions for the man who would become Marsh’s great friend. Unlike the relatively unfulfilled Marsh, George Best arrived in America having won the biggest prizes available in club football, the European Cup and the First Division Championship. But while Marsh would win two division championships and achieve qualification for two Soccer Bowls in four NASL seasons, Best was embarking on a three-team, six-year American career that would feature only a pair of semi-final appearances and not a single division title.

  Still just a skinny kid from Belfast, Best was in only his second season in the United team when he won the first of his two League Championship medals in 1965, a few weeks before his 19th birthday. It was when he destroyed Benfica in Lisbon in the quarter-final of the following season’s European Cup that the George Best phenomenon really began. From the moment he stepped back on English soil after scoring two goals and inspiring United to a 5–1 victory, his life would never be the same, and would never be his own. Another First Division title, a great goal in United’s 4–1 defeat of Benfica as they completed their fabled quest to conquer Europe, English and European Footballer of the Year awards, the dark good looks, the pop-star lifestyle, the Miss World girlfriends – it all added up to a frenzy of attention that had never before been lavished upon a British footballer.

  Best rarely failed to match the hype with his performances on the field, yet by the end of the ’60s, a decade for which he had become such a striking symbol, the signs of self-destruction were becoming evident. The ’70s brought suspensions, dismissals, skipped training sessions, late arrivals at disciplinary sessions, missed trains to away games and eventually the first of his walkabouts and announcements that he was quitting the game. Best, who revealed in later years the part that an ongoing battle against alcoholism was playing in his life, twice announced his retirement in 1972, the second of which prompted the first interest from the New York Cosmos.

  Back in the fold for the 1973–74 season, Best finally walked out on Old Trafford for good after Tommy Docherty’s decision not to play him in an FA Cup game against Plymouth. A handful of games for Southern League Dunstable followed, a few more for Stockport County and, in an attempt to prepare for his first NASL season, three games in the League of Ireland for Cork Celtic, who then sacked him for ‘lack of enthusiasm’.

  The latest opportunity to play in America came via Los Angeles General Manager John Chaffetz, who, while persuading Best to head to California, asked if he knew of any other British players worth signing. Best put forward the name of one of his gambling buddies, Bobby McAlinden, highlighting his brief career at Manchester City rather than his subsequent moves to Port Vale, Stockport and Glentoran.

  McAlinden, whose debut for City was the only League appearance of his career, recalls, ‘George and I were pals. I knew him from when I was an apprentice at City. We were socialising together in Manchester and used to play five-a-sides together at the YMCA in Stalybridge. I had not played at all for four years, not even semi-professional, and George suddenly said, “Do you want to go and play in Los Angeles?” What did I have to lose? I was already in pretty good shape. I was not much of a night owl. George asked me in November and told me to get fit and ready to go out in February. I felt it was a second bite at the cherry for me and I was confident that if I did my best, it would be good enough.’

  McAlinden would hold his own against some of the biggest names in world football and establish himself as a pivotal member of the Aztecs’ midfield for the next three years. Having gone over as an unknown quantity on his pal’s recommendation, he was quickly offered a year-round contract to stay and help with development work in the winter. Ken Adam remarks, ‘Of all the people who came over here, the best example of someone who made a second career for themselves is Bobby McAlinden. He played his heart out.’

  Sharing a house with McAlinden on Hermosa Beach and making the most of the exciting social life on offer in southern California, Best teamed up with former Wales centre-forward Ron Davies and ex-Chelsea and Scotland winger Charlie Cooke in the Aztecs’ forward line. The powerfully built, fair-haired Davies, one of the most feared headers of the ball in the game, boasted more than 150 competitive goals for Southampton and 29 appearances for his country. Meanwhile, Cooke’s 16-cap Scotland career and dazzling wing play in Chelsea’s FA Cup and Cup-Winners’ Cup triumphs early in the decade had brought inevitable comparisons with the trickery of Best himself.

  Married to an American girl, Cooke had always planned to settle across the Atlantic one day and happily accepted the chance to join Best in his wife’s home town of Los Angeles. He says, ‘It was kind of strange playing alongside George. The truth was that soccer stars were not recognised here so you would go places thinking George would draw a crowd but there were only a few thousand.’

  Those who did see the Azt
ecs in 1976 were lucky enough to witness Best’s brilliance. Says Cooke, ‘He still showed spurts of quickness and could spin on a dime. He could do things without exaggerated body movements. He was subtle and elegant and a little shimmy could get him two yards of space, where other players would have to work really hard to create that.’

  McAlinden says, ‘In that first year, George carried us. We wouldn’t have been any good without him. He was enjoying himself. Five of us eventually bought into a bar called the Hard Times Tavern, which then became Bestie’s – although it ended up with just me owning it. George was still well known but not to the extent that he was in England, so at first it was great for him. On the field, we had a good mix and even though our coach, Terry Fisher, was American, he knew the game. Most important, he knew how to handle George, which is to let him do his thing. George was very good that year and never caused any confrontations. He showed up, did his training and performed on the field. He never caused one second of worry.’

  Needing to win and score three goals in the final game of the season to make the play-offs, Best scored the second in a 4–1 home win against Dallas, bringing his total for the season to 15 in 23 games. There were to be no more, however, as the Aztecs lost 2–0 to the same opposition in the first round of the post-season. Best wrote, ‘It wasn’t Manchester United, but I was playing well and enjoying my football again.’

  San Jose Earthquakes defender Laurie Calloway remembers, ‘George could do stuff that Pelé couldn’t. I was playing left-back against the Aztecs and he would go one way and I would go the other. I have a couple of pictures of me holding his shirt, but I never got the better of him one on one. I traded jerseys with him and it’s the biggest trophy I have.’