Playing for Uncle Sam

by David Tossell

  The Tea Men were guided by head coach Noel Cantwell, who had won 36 Republic of Ireland caps during a playing career at West Ham and Manchester United, where he skippered the team to their 1963 FA Cup triumph. Having been manager at Peterborough and Coventry, Cantwell was getting ready to retire from football and concentrate on running his pub when Phil Woosnam and then the Tea Men themselves contacted him. Cantwell admits, ‘At first I said I wasn’t interested because I had done enough in the game, then the Tea Men offered me this and that and I agreed.’

  Without a team in place, Cantwell’s first move was to appoint NASL veteran and former United teammate Dennis Viollet as his assistant, explaining, ‘He was already established in America and I didn’t want to go out there blindfolded.’

  Deliberately setting out to build a team of British players, Cantwell’s choice of goalkeeper was the Indian-born Kevin Keelan, whose long career at Norwich had earned him a reputation as one of the country’s best uncapped players. Another who had fallen into that category was Arsenal’s Peter Simpson, a Double winner, who anchored a defence that included Chris Turner, who had played for Cantwell at Peterborough, and former Carlisle full-back Peter Carr. In midfield, Irish international Gerry Daly had played a major part in Manchester United’s renaissance after relegation to Division Two before a £175,000 transfer to Derby in the spring of 1977, while Keith Weller had jumped from Millwall to Chelsea to Leicester in quick succession before settling at Filbert Street and winning four England caps. Brian Alderson had joined him at Leicester from Coventry and Roger Gibbins was signed from Norwich, while winger Colin Powell had been one of non-League football’s best-known figures at Barnet before moving to Charlton. The south London team also provided the thrust of the Tea Men’s attack, with the inexperienced Laurie Abrahams teaming up with Mike Flanagan, approaching the peak of his career at 25 and soon to be pushing for England recognition.

  Flanagan marked his intentions early in the season, scoring all the goals in the Tea Men’s first three victories, a pair of 1–0 wins and a four-goal thrashing of Chicago, who were on their way to losing their first ten games, spelling the end for coach Malcolm Musgrove. By the time New England had played nine games, Flanagan had hit 12 goals and would end the regular season with 30 in 28 games, including all five in a victory against California.

  Flanagan earned the league’s MVP award and Weller recalls, ‘Flano was a good player and could score goals if you gave him a chance around the box. He wasn’t really like a target man, he had pace and a good left foot and could beat people. He surprised a lot of people when he kept banging in the goals. People thought it would dry up soon, but with the service he was getting he was always capable of scoring.’

  Cantwell adds, ‘His finishing was as good as anyone in England at that time. He was clinical and he was good in the air. He was never the fittest and best athlete in the team, but he conserved his energy for playing. In England, where they trained and worked hard every day, he had less energy for games, but it wasn’t like that in America. You didn’t take much out of them in training because they were in good condition anyway and it was enjoyable because you were always out in the sunshine. That helped Mike. Also, he was something of an unknown threat and he had more room in the American game.’

  In Detroit, the Express were winning the Central Division of the American Conference under the leadership of Ken Furphy, back for another shot at NASL success after his unhappy stint in New York. The Express were owned by Jimmy Hill, the face of football on the BBC, who had introduced a lot of American-style razzmatazz and promotions as manager of Coventry in the ’60s. The ex-Fulham midfielder and former head of the Professional Footballers Association was looking to invest the money earned by his company, World Sports Academy, from a lucrative contract to oversee soccer in Saudi Arabia.

  After departing the Cosmos, Furphy had accepted an offer to coach the Fort Lauderdale Strikers for the 1977 season, but fell out with the ownership before the season started. ‘I came back to England and I read in the papers they had accepted my resignation,’ he says.

  It almost marked the end of Furphy’s career in football. ‘I was not in the best of health and was ready to call it a day. I had been affected by years of working in pressure positions and went through a stage when I wanted to hide away from people. It was a nervous reaction. I was asked to help out with some part-time coaching at a school and I was fine when I was working, but in company I wouldn’t say anything and went into a shell. The doctor said all I needed was a job, and then the letter came from Jimmy Hill wanting to discuss running the new team in Detroit. The wages were not as good as the Cosmos but I decided to go.’

  The Express, based at the impressive indoor Pontiac Silverdome, pulled off one of the coups of the season with the signing of Trevor Francis from Birmingham. Francis had burst onto the scene as a 16 year old in the 1970–71 season by scoring 15 goals in only 21 games and was now approaching the peak of his powers and establishing himself as an England international. After missing the opening weeks of the season because of international duty, he arrived to score 22 goals in 19 games, including five in a 10–0 defeat of San Jose. Francis, reported to have earned £50,000 for his summer’s work, would return to England to become the first million-pound player in British football when he was sold for £1,150,000 to Nottingham Forest, heading the winner three months later in the European Cup final win against Malmö.

  Furphy recalls, ‘Jimmy had been talking to Jim Smith at Birmingham and he asked me if I wanted Trevor Francis. When I met Trevor I said to him, “These are the drawbacks. The people know nothing about soccer, you are going to play on Astroturf and travel 4,000 miles for matches. But you’ll have an apartment, a car and everything you need.” He was going to go and play for Noel Cantwell in New England but he did the deal with us. Trevor has said to me since that his times in Detroit were the best he ever had in football. I kid him that we turned him into a million-pound player. He was superb. On Astroturf you had to play to feet and have great agility. He would play in the inside-left position, check back in on his right foot and – whack! – it would be in the net. Put a ball to him anywhere in front of goal and he could middle it because he could control his balance so quickly.’

  Partnering Francis was Alan Brazil, a blond, 19-year-old Scot on loan from Ipswich, the new FA Cup holders following their 1–0 Wembley upset of Arsenal. Brazil was attempting to make an impact at Portman Road behind strikers Paul Mariner, Trevor Whymark and David Geddis, but Furphy recalls, ‘I threatened to send him back after two days. His first game was at home and obviously he felt Astroturf was not his cup of tea. I took him off and he went around saying, “I didn’t come over here to sit on the bench.” I had him in my office and handed him a return ticket. I said, “We are paying terrific money and if you can’t enjoy yourself and improve your game, you can go.” He asked me to give him another chance and responded very well.’

  Brazil went on to score nine goals in twenty-one games and admitted, ‘Before I went to the States I lacked pace, but when I returned to England I was two yards quicker. It must have had a lot to do with playing on the Astroturf, plus the top-class company in which I played and the draining humidity. The trip gave me tremendous confidence.’ Brazil would return to become a regular in the Ipswich team, going on to win 13 Scotland caps before injuries ended his career while still in his twenties.

  Helping to supply the Francis–Brazil duo were the coach’s son, Keith, who scored 11 goals himself, stalwart Queens Park Rangers midfielder Mick Leach, and ex-Blackburn and Sheffield United player David Bradford. At the back, lanky centre-half Eddie Colquhoun, who had won nine Scotland caps and spent a decade at Sheffield United, was joined by ex-Everton stopper Steve Seargeant, Norwich full-back Ian Davies and ex-Blackburn and Newcastle player Graham Oates.

  Meanwhile, Philadelphia’s new franchise, the Fury, failed to enjoy the immediate on-field success of New England and Detroit. With an ownership group that included rock stars Rick Wakeman,
Peter Frampton and Paul Simon, the club understood the need for a flamboyant front man and turned to former Chelsea centre-forward Peter Osgood. One of the most skilful number nines in English football over the previous ten years, Osgood, scorer of more than a hundred Chelsea goals and winner of four England caps, had won the FA Cup at Chelsea and Southampton, for whom he had been playing since March 1974. He was introduced to the Philadelphia public in a television advert that featured him juggling a ball across the Walt Whitman Bridge to the accompaniment of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells’ while a group of worshipping children trailed in his wake. Osgood’s skill and personality suggested that he was a natural for success in the slower-paced NASL, even in his 32nd year, but in 22 games he was to score only one goal. ‘But he had a great time socially,’ laughs former Burnley centre-half Colin Waldron, a mid-season Fury signing from Tulsa. ‘But to be honest, the team never really clicked. We stuttered along.’

  A large British contingent had joined Osgood, including a midfield axis of Johnny Giles and Alan Ball. ‘It was great playing on Johnny’s team for once,’ says Ball, who spent more than a decade locked in fierce battles against the Leeds man for Everton and Arsenal. It seemed somehow appropriate that the two combatants should finally be brought together in the City of Brotherly Love. Former Manchester City keeper Keith MacRae was the Fury’s last line of defence, with Irish international centre-half John Dempsey, Osgood’s former Chelsea teammate, partnering Waldron.

  Coaching the team was Richard Dinnis, sacked as Newcastle manager the previous autumn when his team reached the second week of November with only two wins to their credit. Things were not to go much better for Dinnis at the Fury and in June he was fired again, to be replaced by Ball. ‘Richard was a former schoolteacher who had never played the game at a high level,’ Waldron explains. To go anywhere and have Ball, Osgood and Giles on your books, you would have to have great character and balls to cope with that. I felt sorry for him because he was a nice man. Those were great players but big personalities and it was tough for anyone to handle them.’

  Instead of asking anyone else to take on that task, the Fury looked inside the team for a new coach. Ball recalls, They asked Johnny Giles and me if we wanted the job. Johnny didn’t, but I said I would do it to help them out, rather than have them go and look for someone else. I didn’t think of it as the start of a coaching career at the time. I thought I had four or five years left as a player.’

  Waldron adds, ‘Bally took over and he was a great pro. But he was a bit hard verbally on the younger players, especially the Americans. I think he used to forget what a great player he was and expected the others to live up to his standards.’

  Decked out in yellow uniforms dreamed up by an award-winning fashion designer, the Fury finished last of the four teams in their division. Such was the generosity of the NASL play-off system, however, that they prolonged their season with a knock-out game against Detroit, decided for the Express by a goal from Francis.

  The Memphis Rogues, under head coach Eddie McCreadie, included several familiar British faces for their first season, but the play-offs were always out of reach. Defenders Bobby Thomson and Phil Beal, midfielder Alan Birchenall and forward Tony Field, signed from champions New York, were among those with previous NASL experience. John Faulkner, the big centre-half whose FA Cup exploits for non-League Sutton United eight years earlier had earned a transfer to Leeds, former Tottenham schemer Phil Holder and winger Jimmy Husband, a vital member of Everton’s 1970 League Championship team, were among the newcomers. Former Scotland and Chelsea left-back McCreadie, who inherited the Rogues job when first-choice coach Malcolm Allison was dismissed during pre-season, saw his team lose their first nine games.

  In Denver, the extravagantly named Caribous of Colorado had appointed former Cosmos midfielder Dave Clements as head coach. His team included former New York teammate Brian Tinnion, but, just as one year earlier in Hawaii, Tinnion knew instantly that he had made a bad decision. ‘I had verbally agreed to go to Colorado when Ken Furphy called me and offered me a job in Detroit. I wanted to go there but I had already said yes to Dave. First home game they were anticipating about 30,000 but it rained so hard they had to postpone it and only had a few thousand when they played it again in midweek.’ Clements was another coach who failed to last the season, dismissed from a team that would win only eight games. Clements’s departure did, however, allow Tinnion to escape to Detroit.

  Further west, turmoil prevailed at the Los Angeles Aztecs, where Liverpool defender Tommy Smith had returned for his second NASL tour of duty and was installed as player-coach after Terry Fisher was fired by the club’s new ownership. The Aztecs’ owners clearly did not know enough about Smith’s reputation as a player to know that he was not a man to be messed with and when he discovered they had traded Charlie Cooke without telling him, his reaction was one of anger, even though he had earlier agreed to the sale of the disillusioned George Best. Furious that the local media were blaming him for the player departures, which soon included centre-forward Ron Davies, Smith grabbed a baseball bat and went looking for team boss Larry Friend. He never did find him. ‘In the end he made his team the laughing stock of soccer in the States,’ says Smith. ‘It was a nightmare and I was truly glad to be out of it.’

  The Aztecs won only nine games all season and English midfielder Bobby McAlinden says, ‘It all went south. Tommy took over and was all for the lads but had not had any coaching experience. Once you get that losing mentality you are no longer competitive and there is no time to work with the players and change anything. It all fell apart and they got rid of everybody.’

  A few miles away in Anaheim, George Graham, who had been to Manchester United, Portsmouth and Crystal Palace since helping Arsenal win the League and FA Cup in 1971, was wearing the number eight shirt for the Surf, who also fielded former Fulham left-winger Les Barrett. Graham’s Palace teammate Peter Wall had helped persuade the elegant midfielder to accept an offer to go to the NASL, although the uneven surface at Anaheim’s baseball stadium led to an ankle injury that ended his season prematurely.

  Wall believes that the injury could have changed the course of football history, pushing Graham towards a management career that saw him win two League Championships and four other trophies at Highbury. ‘That injury led to a big change in his life. If he had not gone home because of it, I am quite sure he would have stayed in America. He loved it there, thought the competition was good and thought there was a good future there.’

  Meanwhile, Charlie George, the man whose Wembley strike had clinched the Gunners’ Double, signed on loan from Derby for the Minnesota Kicks, who duly won their division once more. While Alan Willey was leading the team with twenty-one goals, George scored nine times and had eight assists in eighteen games for the Kicks. Former Aston Villa midfielder Ian ‘Chico’ Hamilton led the team with thirteen assists, while Willie Morgan added seven in the first of his three seasons with the club.

  Elsewhere, former Liverpool and England left-back Alec Lindsay played in 28 games for the Oakland Stompers, who saw five men take turns in coaching the team, including former Tranmere defender Ken Bracewell, who had last been in charge of an NASL team in Denver four years earlier.

  The Dallas Tornado’s season was dominated by the goalscoring of Jeff Bourne. Back in Texas after a one-year absence, Bourne scored twenty-one goals, the highlight being a four-goal haul in less than five minutes in a 5–3 win against the mighty Cosmos in the final game. Bourne’s record for the fastest four goals in NASL history followed up his achievement a week earlier, when he had grabbed two goals only forty-one seconds apart against Houston.

  By the time New York were being beaten in Dallas, the Cosmos had long since clinched another division title, winning 24 games, tied for the best record in the 1978 season. They had clearly proved they could win without the physical and inspirational presence of Pelé, whose place had, in part, been taken by Manchester City and England forward Dennis Tueart.

 
; Beginning his career at Sunderland, Tueart had been part of one of the great FA Cup upsets when helping the Second Division club beat Don Revie’s Leeds at Wembley in 1973 before moving to City for £275,000 a year later. Having forced his way into the England team and scoring a spectacular winning goal for City in the 1976 League Cup final against Newcastle, Tueart’s transfer to the Cosmos late in 1977 was the first time a current member of the England squad had chosen to make a permanent move to an NASL club, although he would not add to his six England caps following his transfer.

  Manchester United had reportedly made a £300,000 bid for Tueart after he scored his third hat-trick of the season in a Boxing Day 1977 win against Newcastle, but his refusal to consider a cross-town move was thought to be evidence of his desire to move overseas. In mid-February, the Cosmos completed the signing, with newspapers quoting a £1,000-per-week salary on top of a £100,000 signing-on fee. Earlier in the season Manchester City chairman Peter Swales had addressed the exodus of English players to America after the Cosmos had bid £150,000 for midfielder Paul Power. ‘This trend is certainly a challenge, but I think it’s a healthy development,’ he said. ‘It will keep us on our toes. I firmly believe in competition and I am also convinced that the growing interest from America is going to lead to an even better deal for footballers in Britain.’

  While Giorgio Chinaglia led the Cosmos attack with 34 goals, Tueart weighed in with 10 goals in his 20 games, while Steve Hunt added 12 with 12 assists from wide on the left. Before the season ended, Hunt agreed to return to England at the end of the summer in a £40,000 transfer to Coventry, a decision that amazed his teammate Terry Garbett. ‘I was given the job to persuade Steve not to go back. I remember speaking to him in an elevator coming down Rockefeller Plaza. He said he was going back because he wanted an England cap. I said, “That is nice, but they have offered to give you your apartment beside the Hudson River and pay you in excess of $100,000 and I don’t think you are going to get that deal in England. You are going to regret that decision.” But when we are young we have these aspirations and he did it with his heart and not his head. He had this place wrapped up. They loved him and he was doing TV ads and all sorts.’