Playing for Uncle Sam

by David Tossell

  Dangerfield recalls the thrill of playing in the Aztecs environment. ‘The best coach I ever played for was Rinus Michels. He and Cruyff were like father and son. They were on the same wavelength and were able to adjust to things on the park. All I used to do was make runs and it was like Joe Montana finding Jerry Rice for the San Francisco 49ers. As a team player, Cruyff added a little more than, say, George Best. Johan could play several positions and make coaching decisions. And what was not recognised was that he was so relaxed in America. He spent time with the young players after training and would share his experiences. He became one of the lads.’

  The first game of the National Conference semi-final series seemed to be going smoothly for the Whitecaps in Pasadena’s Rose Bowl after Valentine scored twice. But Waiters recalls, ‘With about 15 or 20 minutes to go, Valentine played a little square ball that was intercepted and they scored. Then Lewington repeated the same thing. It was a case of young players doing naive things.’ Those goals, including one by former Southport defender Bobby Sibbald, took the game into extra-time and the Aztecs went on to win after a shoot-out. ‘From being in control of our destiny we were facing a game where, even if we won, we would only be at 1–1 in the series and facing a mini-game.’

  Three days later, the Empire Stadium heaved to accommodate more than 32,000 fans. ‘The stadium was completely full but it was eerie because people knew we had to win two games to go through,’ says Waiters. ‘They were hardly cheering because they were as nervous as we were.’

  McNab, a veteran of Arsenal’s triumph in the 1970 European Fairs Cup, urged Waiters to be patient. ‘Tony had no experience in Europe and playing in the play-offs was very similar to European games. I said, “Let’s play tight and outwork them. You can’t let them score.” Tony wanted to bring on Carl Shearer, a big defender, and put him up front after about 15 minutes. I said, “If we win in 89 minutes that’s OK. You have got to approach the game properly, be cautious and sensible until the last few minutes.”’

  The Whitecaps prevailed 1–0 and McNab could sense that the 30-minute mini-game was there for the taking. ‘We were fitter and LA were dead by the end of the game. Cruyff could not walk in the mini-game.’

  Hector’s decisive goal brought the Whitecaps up against the reigning champions from New York. Once again, the Cosmos had not stood idle following their victory in Soccer Bowl ’78, adding Holland’s World Cup midfielder Johan Neeskens, Dutch defender Wim Rijsbergen and the striking blond Brazilian left-back Francisco Marinho. Giorgio Chinaglia was in no mood to be pushed into the shadows, however, scoring 26 of New York’s league-high tally of 84, while Dennis Tueart netted 16 times and added the same number of assists.

  The only bump in the smooth road to another division title was when coach Eddie Firmani was fired and replaced by Lithuanian-born American Ray Klivecka. It was a shock decision, given that the Cosmos had won 10 out of 12 games at the time, but the coach had upset the Ertegun brothers by preferring Canadian Jack Brand in goal over their fellow-countryman Erol Yasin and leaving out Marinho. A year earlier, Firmani might have survived, but he had lost the support of his great ally, Chinaglia, during the 1978 season when he substituted the Italian late in a game at the Memphis Rogues.

  Without the powerful Chinaglia in his corner, Firmani was exposed to the whims of the management and Klivecka stepped up from his position as assistant coach to help the Cosmos cruise to the play-offs. After disposing of Toronto, New York suffered a shock 3–0 defeat at Hinton’s Tulsa Roughnecks, for whom ex-Derby centre-forward Roger Davies scored twice. Normal service was resumed at Giants Stadium, where another 76,000-plus crowd saw the Cosmos reverse that scoreline and advance to face Vancouver after Chinaglia bagged two goals in the mini-game.

  The Whitecaps approached the Conference Championship series as underdogs, despite having scored four goals in each of their regular season victories against the Cosmos. McNab recalls, ‘I loved taking on New York. They had wonderful quality players, like Beckenbauer and Carlos Alberto and Chinaglia, but all of those lads were past their best and only wanted to play when they had the ball. When you get older you don’t want to do the grunt work, so we needed to outwork and outfight them. They also played with a sweeper and man-for-man marked. I had played against that system many times in Europe and always thought it a poor way of using your players.’

  Possee adds, ‘The Cosmos used to hate playing against us because we didn’t give them any respect. Some other teams would think, “Oh, my God. We can’t beat the Cosmos.” We said, “Screw it. We can sort them out.”’

  Whymark recalls an explosive regular season game between the teams. ‘Willie Johnston was up against Eskandarian, the Iranian, who was not the most popular player to be playing in America at that time. They got in a brawl and Chinaglia got involved and kicked Willie and as he turned to get away from the referee Craven put him down with a crunching right-hander. I think all four of them were sent off and it was chaos for a few minutes. Pelé, who was watching the game, came on in a white suit to calm everything down.’

  Whymark and Johnston were on target as the Whitecaps continued their dominance over the Cosmos with a 2–0 home victory in the first game of the play-off series. ‘We fought and pressurised them everywhere, even in their own half of the field,’ says McNab. ‘We were dropping off and encouraging the goalkeeper to throw the ball out to their back men then flying into them. Ballie was being man-marked, which teams had been doing to him without success since 1966, and he bossed the midfield.’

  Three days later came another of those dramatic occasions that only the NASL’s play-off format could produce. ‘It was incredible,’ says Ball. ‘We kicked off at eight o’clock and didn’t finish until half past eleven.’ By the end of the night, the Whitecaps were through to the Soccer Bowl.

  It began with the teams battling to a 2–2 draw, Chinaglia scoring twice for the home team, Craven and Johnston for Vancouver. The Cosmos kept alive their hopes of a third straight NASL title when the Whitecaps could only score once in the shoot-out. For the decisive mini-game, the Whitecaps left out Lewington in favour of Sammels, whose hamstring injury had made him an absentee from the play-offs until his appearance as substitute earlier in the evening, and played Possee from the start in place of Hector. Having already played 120 minutes in 88-degree heat, the teams, like heavyweight boxers rising from their stools for the 15th round, squared up for another half-hour of battle. Valentine recalls, ‘There was so much on the line. No one wanted to make any mistakes and you were just going on adrenalin.’

  Tempers became frayed and both teams had goal attempts ruled out before the decisive match ended scoreless. For the second time in an hour, the outcome depended on sudden-death attempts on goal. It looked bad for the Whitecaps when Canadian defender Bob Bolitho missed their second attempt, but Beckenbauer followed suit. After Possee scored and New York’s Ricky Davis missed later in the shoot-out, Ball wasted the opportunity to clinch a Vancouver victory. That left Brazilian Nelsi Morais with the chance to beat Parkes and extend the competition to a sixth round of kicks, but he failed to get his shot away in time and New York’s reign was over.

  That it was Possee whose shoot-out goal proved decisive brought some deserved glory for a man who, McNab recalls, ‘worked his socks off. He was magnificent’. Possee says, ‘I had come in for Trevor Whymark for a while that season and did very well, but they wanted Trevor back in the team. I was in my thirties and had the experience to understand about the team and that it takes a lot of people working together to win. You get your glory where you can and the semi-final was my game.’

  With only the Tampa Bay Rowdies standing between them and their first NASL championship, it should have been a time of celebration and anticipation for the Whitecaps. Instead, it became one of bitterness and animosity. ‘The players felt they should have got a bigger bonus and they might have in other soccer environments,’ says Waiters. ‘The attitude in the club was, “That is your contract. You signed and that’s w
hat you get.” The bonus was about $5,000 or less and they wanted it doubled. I recommended to the board they found a way of doing it. In the end we tried to build in a bonus the next season but it was messy.’

  At the root of the players’ problem was the NASL’s policy that all bonus money for play-off success was paid by the league. Best recalled, ‘A number of the owners could have paid huge bonuses if they had wanted to, whereas a club like ours could not compete. That’s why the league decided the best way was for them to control the bonuses.’

  Whymark continued, ‘We knew a lot of the players from Tampa Bay and, as always happened, money came into the conversation somewhere. I think they had offered their players and wives a holiday in Hawaii just for getting to the final. We formed a little committee, led by Ballie and John Craven, and they went to the management. But they were told the club would not break the rules and regulations. Ballie and John told them they didn’t know how the players would react.’

  Best told me, ‘A couple of the players came to me and said they wanted extra money under the table as a bonus for reaching the final. I had anticipated something like it. I met with the players and told them we could not do that. One of the players who came to me said, “You are going to have worse problems than you can imagine,” and was threatening me. What made a mess of things was that a couple of players got hold of a couple of our directors at a social function. The directors said they would throw in some money for the players. When the chairman heard about it he went crazy. From the players’ perspective it just seemed like the management was being tough about it.’

  Possee claims, ‘They screwed us, basically. All we asked the Whitecaps was if they would match the league bonuses. They wouldn’t even think about it, but said they would reward us on our next contract. Then they got rid of a load of us, so we never got anything.’

  Feelings were running so high that the Whitecaps players even talked about boycotting the Soccer Bowl, although Possee admits now, ‘It was all bravado really. We wanted to play.’ The fact, however, that the Cosmos had been beaten in the semi-finals and that the final was now being played in Giants Stadium only accentuated the Whitecaps players’ feelings of being poor relations. Says McNab, ‘Our guys were on 36,000 Canadian dollars and the New York players were on about 360,000. The Cosmos spent more on programme sellers than we did on players.

  ‘I remember Tony having a meeting in the dressing room the day before the game. It was not nice. After Tony had finished speaking, I said to the players, “You get very few chances in your life to win things. You have worked your socks off to get where you are now. Whatever is going on, arguments or disagreements, you can’t jeopardise this one chance of making a little history or you will never forgive yourselves.”

  ‘During our warm-up that evening, the grumbling and complaining was still going on so I decided to give them quite a hard session. The players were soon swearing at me and saying, “How can we be doing this when we have got a game tomorrow?” It turned their anger towards me and it seemed to change their focus for a while. We finished the practice with a small-sided game, which turned out to be extremely physical. I think most of the players were trying to kick me.’

  The bonus issue was still on the players’ minds as the game approached, until Ball decided to speak up. ‘The money side of it was a nuisance,’ the former England captain admits, ‘and being a senior member of the team I decided to speak to them, away from Tony and Bob. I said, “This is a fantastic thing you have achieved. Don’t let the monetary side of things get in the way.” I think the fact that it came from me made a difference. It was different to one of the management team trying to get through to them.’

  Waiters says that ‘Ballie helped save the day, even though he was one of the ones stirring it up,’ while Whymark remembers, ‘Ballie was absolutely superb. He spoke about how the cup finals he had played in had gone so fast and that he was going to enjoy every single minute of this one. He instilled that feeling in everybody and kept everybody calm.’

  But there had been more unhappiness in the Whitecaps ranks when the team to face the Rowdies was announced. Sammels, who had at one time been the team captain, did not even make it on to the three-man substitutes’ bench. For the 34-year-old midfielder it brought back haunting memories of 1971, when, out of favour with the North Bank fans, he had lost his place in Arsenal’s first team and had missed out on the Double-clinching FA Cup-final victory against Liverpool.

  McNab, who had seen the torment that Sammels had gone through at Highbury, recalls, ‘I still remember the sick feeling in my stomach when Tony told me that Jon could not even be on the bench. Jon was very upset and I don’t think he has ever forgiven me. He deserved to be playing and it left me feeling very uncomfortable, even though it was not my decision. But it was the only decision that Tony could possibly have made. Roger Kenyon had a calf-muscle injury, so we had to have Peter Daniel on the bench to cover for him. We had to cover the forwards with Derek Possee and league rules stated that you were only allowed two foreign players on the bench.’

  Meanwhile, the Rowdies team that arrived in New York in the hope of erasing memories of their previous year’s Soccer Bowl defeat were not without their own problems. Rodney Marsh, the charismatic club captain, felt that the club’s new general manager, Chas Seredneski, was forcing him into early retirement. Wanting to release the 34-year-old after the season, but fearful of the public reaction, Seredneski had offered Marsh the first testimonial game ever given to an NASL player if he would go quietly. Tempted by the prospect of a pay five times his annual salary, Marsh accepted, but felt he had been ‘blackmailed’ by the club.

  Rowdies coach Gordon Jago believes that, one year after being denied Marsh’s services in the Soccer Bowl through injury, he had been left with a distracted star player. ‘Rodney was upset about not receiving a new contract and maybe felt I was partly responsible. I think he felt they weren’t treating him right. He had been Mister Soccer in Tampa. It weighed on his mind and I don’t think his concentration was fully there. There might not have been the determination to win there would normally have been.’

  It had been a determined, slimline Marsh who reported to the Rowdies for pre-season training, weighing a stone and a half lighter than a year earlier. Marsh explained that the criticism of his no-show at Soccer Bowl ’78 had been a spur for his programme of self-improvement. ‘At the end of the season, with the bad publicity I got, I went into a bit of a depression. I was drinking a few beers, eating lots of stupid food, and I was really upset by what went down. So I decided to cut out beer and junk food. Later I went on a religious diet, eating pure health foods. I had no drink at all, apart from champagne and white wine.’

  With a reunion with his wife, Jean, aiding his mental health, Marsh totalled 11 goals and 14 assists, many of them to set up his new strike partner Oscar Fabbiani, scorer of 25 goals. At the back, the Rowdies had added former Millwall stopper Barry Kitchener and ex-Tottenham full-back John Gorman and they won the American Conference’s East Division with a defensive record bettered only by the Whitecaps. Detroit and Philadelphia were beaten in the first two rounds of the play-offs, before San Diego forced the Rowdies into a mini-game decider in the Conference Championship.

  The stage should have been set for Marsh to emulate Pelé two years earlier and bring the curtain down on his career with a glorious finale. But in front of more than 50,000 in Giants Stadium, he was denied twice by Parkes and the Whitecaps took the lead through Whymark.

  Having missed Ipswich’s big day a year earlier, Whymark had feared the ankle injury he suffered against New York would keep him out of another big occasion, but he recovered in time to receive specific pre-game instructions from McNab. ‘He told me that every time I got the chance I should get myself turned and take on Barry Kitchener because if I got him on the turn I would be through. After about a quarter of an hour I got the ball, turned Gorman on the halfway line and had about 20 yards to Kitchener. I ran at him full pace and ch
ecked out to the left. As I took it past him I hit it and it flew into the net. McNab was full of praise for himself!’

  Despite Dutchman Jan Van der Veen’s equaliser ten minutes later, the Whitecaps remained confident of victory, with Whymark having a further attempt disallowed and Hector hitting the post. ‘We were constantly attacking,’ says Whymark. ‘We played very well throughout the team, and bossed it, apart from a ten-minute spell when they scored. In the second half they ran out of steam and we came more into it. Ballie laid the ball off to me and said, “Hit it!” I whacked it and it clipped someone’s heels and flew inside the near post.’

  The Rowdies had more than half an hour in which to salvage the game, but with only ten minutes remaining Jago decided to take drastic action. ‘I could see it was not going to be Rodney’s day,’ he remembers. ‘I thought, “Bugger it. I will make the change.” I’d had a similar situation with him at QPR when he wanted to go to Manchester City and was affected by it. That may have been in the back of my mind.’

  Marsh threw down his shirt in the dug-out, distraught at the way his career was being brought to an end. Jago explained he felt he needed more pace up front and Marsh, recalling his response in his book, Priceless, shot back, ‘How long have you known me? Fifteen years? And with ten minutes of my career left you’ve realised I’m not fucking quick enough.’

  The Whitecaps were on their way to victory and Waiters saw Marsh’s withdrawal as a testament to his team’s professional display. ‘We knew we had to keep Marsh quiet and he didn’t do much. It was a very workmanlike performance, an example of the team doing its job.’

  Jago still claims his team should have had a penalty in the opening minutes, while McNab believes that the loss of an early goal could have spelled the end of the road for Vancouver. ‘I am convinced that if they had scored first we would have lost because of the frame of mind the players were in.’