Playing for Uncle Sam

by David Tossell

  Hunt explained later, ‘I needed to prove to myself that I could make it in the First Division. A lot of people thought I was mad leaving the Cosmos when I had it made, but money is not everything. The Cosmos offered me a fantastic contract to stay on for another couple of years but I had this burning desire to return to England and show I could hold my own.’

  The Cosmos opened their play-off campaign against the Seattle Sounders, the team they had beaten in the previous year’s Soccer Bowl. Bobby Moore had returned to the NASL to play in the final seven games of the season as Seattle edged their way into the post-season field, but his presence did little to deter the Cosmos, whose 5–2 victory featured a pair of goals by Yugoslav Vladislav Bogicevic, an instant hit with the New York fans after scoring 10 goals and 17 assists during the season.

  The second round paired the Cosmos with Minnesota, who hosted the first game of the two-match series. Astonishingly, the Kicks tore the Cosmos apart 9–2, with Willey scoring five times. ‘It started off as a so-so game,’ he recalls. ‘Then Charlie George crossed the ball and the keeper collided with one of his own players and it went in. Then I got a second and another one just before half-time for 3–0. I scored another early on after half-time and they just kept coming and coming. Unfortunately, the newspapers were on strike in New York, so no one back there knew much about it.’

  The Cosmos exacted emphatic revenge, Chinaglia and Tueart sharing the goals in a 4–0 win, but the mini-game decider ended scoreless. ‘I almost got a winner,’ says Willey. ‘Ron Futcher headed back a ball from Charlie and I had a header from the penalty spot and the keeper made his only save in two games.’ New York prevailed in the shoot-out and then had an easier time of it against Portland, winning 1–0 and 5–0 to advance to the Soccer Bowl, to be played on their own turf.

  The one-game format of the first round of the play-offs had lent itself to surprise results and, sure enough, the New England Tea Men, one of the tournament favourites, fell at the opening hurdle when they went down 3–1 at home to the Fort Lauderdale Strikers. Tea Men coach Cantwell says, ‘We thought we had a very good chance of going all the way. The team was playing well together, we had a fair deal of experience and Flano was scoring a lot of goals.’

  Keith Weller claims, ‘We could have won the whole thing. We had beaten the Cosmos twice. Against Fort Lauderdale we were winning 1–0 and had a penalty just before half-time. I usually took them, but Noel let Mike Flanagan take it and he missed. Instead of 2–0 it was 1–0, and then Roger Gibbins sliced one into his own goal from a corner and we ended up losing.’

  The Strikers team was largely unchanged from the previous year, with the notable addition of Liverpool midfielder Ian Callaghan, who had just completed an 18-year Liverpool career that took in more than 800 first-team games. Remarkably, Callaghan, selected for one of the group games in the 1966 World Cup finals, his second cap, had not added to his collection until recalled to the side for two games early in his final season at Liverpool. Callaghan was joined later in the summer by George Best, who began his stormy Strikers career with two goals in a 5–3 defeat of the Cosmos.

  Having beaten New England, the Strikers came up against another division champion, Detroit, winning the home leg in a shoot-out after a 3–3 draw. Ken Furphy still questions the way the game was officiated. ‘The refereeing standard was dreadful. Why we didn’t get one of the imported referees for that game I will never know. If you got one of the American referees you were in trouble. We were winning and the referee gave them a penalty. He never looked me in the eye when I asked about the decision. You never knew what was going on over there and some people involved in the game had tremendous power.’

  Furphy also recalls with obvious pain his team’s defeat in the shoot-out. ‘Trevor just had to hit his one in to win and I thought, “We have got this all wrapped up.” The Fort Lauderdale players were shouting at him and telling him he was going to miss. He turned round towards them and the ref blew his whistle before he even got to the ball. He wasted a couple of seconds and had to run and hurry his shot and missed.’ Alan Brazil squared the series with a winner back in Detroit, but the Strikers forced a one-goal win in the mini-game.

  At home to the Rowdies in the first game of the American Conference championship series, the Strikers won 3–2, with goals by Whittle, David Irving and Best, but the Rowdies were comfortable 3–1 winners when the action returned to rain-soaked Tampa. In the mini-game, Strikers coach Ron Newman made his infamous decision to substitute Best before the contest reached its goalless conclusion.

  Yet another shoot-out ensued, but Newman remembers the difficulties faced by the players in the wake of the evening’s deluge. ‘There were puddles all over the field. I sent out Tony Whelan, our first shoot-out taker, to check the location of the puddles, fearful that he might get the ball stuck in one. Sure enough, on the run-up from 35 yards, Wheels pushed his ball into a puddle and it stopped, forcing him to try to drag the ball with him. The Tampa goalkeeper, Winston Dubose, smothered the ball before Wheels could get a shot off.

  ‘The league’s Director of Officials, Eddie Pearson, came into the dressing-room later and asked me why I didn’t protest about Whelan’s kick. He explained that Dubose had slid right out of the area and came up with the ball in his hands in making the save. The referee should have awarded us a penalty. But it was impossible to see the field markings from the bench because the floodlights caused a sheen on the wet field.’

  Rowdies coach Jago recalls, ‘We had an unbelievable year and I was very confident when we got to the semi-final. I called home and invited my father and mother and some friends to come over if we got through. It was gone midnight when Rodney Marsh popped in the last goal in the shoot-out and I was calling people at two in the morning to say, “You are on the way.” I knew in my heart of hearts there was not much chance of beating New York, but we would have a great time.’

  The best hope of a Rowdies upset obviously lay at the feet of Marsh, a player who seemed to reserve his best for when the stakes were highest. His habit of pacing himself during games, taking breathers and conserving energy for the vital moments, could sometimes seem like he was loafing, but he explained, ‘That’s my style of play. That is the reason I will win games in the last few minutes when the others are flagging. What I do in the first minute I will do in the last.’

  But on the morning of 27 August, Marsh met with the Rowdies medical staff and informed them that he would not be facing the Cosmos. A gash he had suffered in his left shin had become infected and, although the doctors said later they would have allowed Marsh to play, he withdrew himself from the Tampa Bay line-up.

  Jago still finds it hard to comprehend the decision. ‘It was a downer on the whole team. There will always be a question about whether he could have played, but I always left it to the players. Maybe Rodney felt it was sufficient to stop him playing well and all the European press were there. I knew that even with him playing it would be difficult.’

  Inevitably, the Rowdies attack lacked penetration without Marsh and the Cosmos went in at half-time two goals ahead, Tueart and Chinaglia having scored. Jago introduced Mirandinha as a second-half substitute and, with the Rowdies raising the tempo, the Cosmos were on the back foot for a while. The Brazilian reduced the New York lead with 17 minutes to play but the goal stung the Cosmos back to life and Tueart added a second, decisive, goal to round off a successful debut season in America.

  14. Death of a Salesman

  The Fort Lauderdale Strikers may never have won a Soccer Bowl, but they certainly knew how to make an entrance. Head coach Ron Newman, a man who had once dressed up as George Washington for a holiday promotion – ‘complete with wooden teeth’ – recalls, ‘We had this PR guy called Ken Small who was a great promoter and we had this track that went round the field. He said, “Let’s come out in different ways every week.” It was a real gimmick and we kept it a secret. We would come out standing on the running boards of mafia-type limos or on horseback.’
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br />   As former England international Keith Weller, who spent four seasons at the Strikers, explains, ‘I don’t think I ever entered the stadium the same way twice. I remember sitting on the back of a fire truck one time to go in and other times it was different kinds of cars or Harley Davidson bikes.’

  Strikers player and assistant coach David Chadwick recalls, ‘Ron loved the game and went along with some of the wacky stuff and stupid things we did to sell it. The marketing department put us on different vehicles every week and you can imagine some of the ribbing Gordon Banks and those guys got. I remember it was a London bus one time. But the funniest one was something I didn’t even know about and I was as close to Ron as anyone.’

  One particular stunt has gone down in NASL lore. The Strikers, division champions in 1977, had lost their first three games of the new season and were due to play host to the Los Angles Aztecs. Newman recalls, ‘The papers had run headlines saying, “Are the Strikers dead?”’ Chadwick adds, ‘There was build-up in the press all week. We came out in hearses, with the death march playing as we entered the stadium. We all got out and the front hearse had a coffin.’

  Newman corrects Chadwick’s memory by saying, ‘I don’t want to break the myth, but there was never an actual coffin – the players would have nailed it shut. I was lying on this roller thing with a sheet over the top. I thought it was better that I did it rather than one of the players. The plan was that they would pull out the dead body. I threw back the sheet and grabbed the microphone and shouted, “We are not dead yet!” Actually, the microphone was not on!’

  Despite the audio problems, the crowd responded wildly. ‘We couldn’t believe it,’ says Chadwick. ‘And we went out and won the game. It was typical of the crazy things we did to get the game in front of people.’

  Every team in the NASL took part in some kind of marketing activity. Some went down the route of staging stunts in the manner of the Strikers, others focused their efforts on organising clinics for children, building at the grassroots level.

  As well as the appearances at local schools and coaching clinics, there was another important cog in the public relations machine: the need to speak frankly, and frequently, to the press. At a time when most Football League players were becoming more remote from the journalists who wrote about them, contact often restricted to brief encounters in stadium car parks after games, they now entered a culture that insisted on them being available to reporters on a daily basis, including in the changing room after the game.

  Vince Casey, whose role as public relations director of the New England Tea Men meant introducing this notion to his English players, recalls, ‘I think they actually looked forward to it. Talking to the media about the game at length was something they had never done before. It was fresh and new to them. There was none of the suspicion that they had in their relationship with the British press. To them, it was just one more example of those crazy Americans.’

  Casey recalls his fear at how head coach Noel Cantwell, brought up as a player in the old school of Upton Park and Old Trafford, would react to female reporter Lesley Visser, now one of America’s leading NFL broadcasters, being around the locker room. ‘Lesley was a young reporter for the Boston Globe. I’d had a bunch of things to talk to Noel about as we put the team together, explaining how we did things in America, but one thing I didn’t talk to him about was women in the locker room. First game, we are up in the press box and Lesley comes up to me and I am just ecstatic that the Globe is covering us. She asks, “Will I have any trouble getting into the locker room after the game?” My worst fears are coming true. We are being covered by a woman reporter and this can only lead to something negative. I thought, “Damn it, I never asked Noel.” I don’t have time to go down to the locker room so I have to call him from the press box. An hour before our first game I have got to call him over what, in his experience, is totally inconsequential but for us is a big deal. I was very nervous about his reaction. I explained we had a woman reporter who would like to come into the locker room after the game. He said, “Well, will she mind?” I said, “No.” So he says, “Well, then we won’t either.” That was symbolic of the whole team’s approach. It was as though they were being allowed to talk to the press for the first time and now they couldn’t stop talking.’

  For each team, the aim was the same: to sell the sport of soccer. Just about every player who went from Britain to take part in the NASL has memories of being such a salesman. ‘I remember going to places where the kick-off was delayed by 20 minutes,’ says former New York Cosmos captain Keith Eddy. ‘I am getting uptight about the game and a guy comes out dressed in a gorilla outfit. I am thinking, “Jesus Christ, get me back to England.” But one thing the Americans do well is marketing. Someone thought all these gimmicks were a good idea.’

  Minnesota Kicks goalkeeper Geoff Barnett adds, ‘Our first game was at San Jose. Being from England we were used to running out five minutes before the game, warming up and kicking off. They had us lining up in our positions while the mascot, Crazy George, was going in and out of us on a three-wheel bike and then he was climbing up the stanchion of the goal banging his drum. It was something of a culture shock.’

  Steve Earle has similar memories of pre-game antics in Tulsa. ‘At one game we had someone called Captain Dynamite blowing himself up at half-time. We often had people parachuting in before the game and one time they missed the stadium and landed in the bleachers and broke some woman’s legs.’

  Combating the locals’ lack of knowledge of the sport was a vital part of the sales process. Fort Lauderdale forward David Irving explains, ‘When we first went over, people thought we were a rock band with our long hair and our accents. Once we did a clinic in a Catholic school run by nuns. We had shown a lot of tricks with the ball and afterwards the Sister came up to me and said that the kids had really enjoyed it. “One question,” she said. “How do you stand on those skates and kick a ball?”’

  For outgoing personalities like Alan Birchenall, the PR work was a welcome diversion. ‘All the personal appearances didn’t bother me. I was up at six o’clock the first morning in San Jose and they drove me into San Francisco to do a breakfast show. There was no breakfast TV in Britain at that time so I thought, “Who the hell is going to be watching this?” But it was like peak-time viewing over there. The interview was a joke, though. The guy was just interested about the difference between posts in football and American football.

  ‘I wasn’t the best player San Jose had, but the fans liked me for my after-game performances. They would have a big tailgate party in the Californian hills with live bands and I would get up and sing. I was even asked to sing the American national anthem in front of 18,000 fans before a game. Some of the notes were a bit hard, but when you have a load of armed marines as guard of honour you make sure you get it right.’

  Birchenall’s teammate, Laurie Calloway, had a similar outlook. ‘I bought into the whole public relations thing very early. A lot of Brits come over and criticise anything Americans do. After a couple of years of seeing what they were trying to do, I felt they should do more of it back home. I did some wacky stuff, like taking part in fairs and rallies and sitting in a dunk tank while people fired baseballs at you to knock you in the tank. Some thought it was bullshit and didn’t have the personalities for it. But when I ran on to that field I felt like I had 20,000 relatives in the stand. They did a survey at one game in 1978 and 90 per cent of the people there had either met or been in the company of an Earthquakes player. The fans looked at you like buddies and friends. You never had to battle to get over a loss of confidence because they always supported you.’

  Tampa Bay striker Derek Smethurst adds, ‘The only thing I didn’t like at first was when we had to go to all the schools. It was tough. I knew why we had to do it and we shared the load. A year after we got there suddenly soccer balls were being seen and not just baseballs. Most of the players hated all the promotional stuff and I didn’t like it initially. You would train
and then have to go back in the afternoon and go to a school. We were messing about with a basketball one day and I headed it through the hoop and they all went bananas. I wouldn’t do it again, though. It hurt.

  ‘I had decided after three or four months that I was staying and I had got used to the selling and the publicity. And I realised that I was getting out and meeting people who would be good for my future after I finished playing.’

  New England defender Peter Simpson, brought up in the traditional football environment of Highbury, recalls, ‘We did a lot of coaching with the kids and I remember going into one of the stores and doing a routine. Four or five of us were playing “keepy-uppy” and I think I was given a gold chain for doing that. I felt like a right prat. It was not the sort of thing I would ever have anticipated doing when I was at Arsenal.’

  David Chadwick, formerly of Dallas and Fort Lauderdale, says, ‘A lot of guys on my teams were English and some had never really played at a high level, maybe only non-League. They were great guys and worked so hard for the game. We were asked to do two clinics or speeches a week and the young Americans showed such great energy that I enjoyed it. But I think some players came out and took the money and ran. Some of the guys didn’t give a shit about the promotion of the game and didn’t give a shit about the sport. Fort Lauderdale is one of the nicest places in the country with its beaches and restaurants. There were guys who came over and trained and then went on the beach and hit the nightclubs. But there were some who did want to promote.’