Soccer in a Football World: The Story of America's Forgotten Game (Sporting)

by David Wangerin

  For the most part Gulati chose his imports wisely, recruiting several he deemed as the biggest stars in their respective countries. Doctor Khumalo of South Africa and Mauricio Cienfuegos of El Salvador might not have been familiar to World Cup fans, but Carlos Valderrama of Colombia, Marco Etcheverry of Bolivia and Mexico's Jorge Campos all were. Some had passed their peak. A struggling Etcheverry was plucked from the Chilean league and the 35-year-old Valderrama became one of M LS's oldest recruits, though he was not quite as seasoned as 37-year-old Hugo Sanchez, the former Mexico international who had spent seven seasons with Real Madrid as well as two in the NASL.

  If the sprinkling of foreign signings carried some weight, the most significant of them had been made with an eye on marketability: the hugely popular Campos, with his self-designed jerseys and daredevil forays out of the penalty area; the bushy-haired Valderrama, who had inspired the sale ofa thousand look-a-like wigs at USA 94; and Etcheverry, whose nickname of El Diablo was familiar from the World Cup even if his appearance had been fleeting. Gulati carefully allocated them to the clubs where they were likely to sell the most tickets. There was never any doubt that Campos would end up in Los Angeles, where his fan club was enormous, or Donadoni in Italian-laden New York. But MLS pinned its hopes primarily on the image of hip young American talent, much of it conspicuously coiffed: Lalas and his red goatee; Jones and his dreadlocks; Meola and his black ponytail.

  For all that, and the tedious commercial detritus ofmodern sport ('M LS announces that All Sport Body Quencher is the 12th commercial affiliate to join the new league'), soccer's return to something approaching a big stage was worth celebrating. That it existed at all, that for the first time in more than a decade the best Americans could earn a living playing in their own country, was of considerable credit to Rothenberg and his associates, as was the fact that the fans finally had something to follow apart from indoor chicanery or minor league ephemera.

  Perhaps the greatest cause for rejoicing was the new, strangely joinedup world ofAmerican soccer that now emerged. It led the top professional clubs back into the Open Cup, a competition the NASL had steadfastly ignored, and eventually forced the APSL, its talent largely siphoned off by MLS, to accept its fate as a feeder league, a welcome semi-professional underpinning. Rechristened the A-League, the APSL merged with the USISL in 1997, producing an even stronger pyramid, which extended to a Division III semi-professional league and even a fourth-level development league. Teams this far down the ladder came and went - the Maryland Mania, the Lehigh Valley Steam, the Myrtle Beach Boyz - but some took root, and a few even drew the odd crowd.

  Such encouraging developments were overshadowed for the time being by the success of MLS's inaugural season, which saw more fans passing through turnstiles than anyone had expected. The season kicked off in San Jose, with dancers, fireworks, a mini-concert and an overflow crowd of 31,683 at Spartan Stadium. Predictably, the match was sloppy and scrappy, and it remained 0-0 until three minutes from the end, when Eric Wynalda produced the historic first goal. Big-time soccer was back, and it was pleasing enough to leave the Boston Globe exclaiming: 'If this game was a test, MLS passed.' Others were less charitable. Sports Illustrated, which largely ignored the league that season, headlined its brief report Goal-Poor, the first paragraph of which displayed a shocking ignorance of both the league's struggles and the sport itself:

  Starting a professional soccer league from scratch turned out to be the easy part. The truly Herculean labor at the inaugural game of Major League Soccer was getting someone to propel one of the colourful new MLS balls into the back of one of the virgin MLS nets.

  Not every assessment was as facile, and in fact scoring proved relatively frequent. The Shootout was summoned to resolve just five goalless draws from 160 regular-season games. While a fertile goal average of 3.4 was partly attributable to mediocre defending, it was only to be expected with teams that had been built in a matter of months, and it was probably just as well, for far fewer journalists were prepared to pounce on shoddy play than a dearth of goals.

  Familiar names occupied most of the league's managerial positions. Kansas City had landed the veteran Ron Newman, frequently heralded as 'the winningest coach in American soccer' even if the majority of his victories had come in a version of the game few outside the country recognised. ('I get frustrated by outdoor people who run down the indoor game,' he protested. 'To me, it's un-American.') Other veterans of the NASL - Timo Liekoski, Laurie Abrahams and Tom Rongen - took charge at Columbus, San Jose and Tampa respectively. Most nostalgically of all, the MetroStars reacquainted Eddie Firmani with Giants Stadium. The former Cosmos boss had spent the past few years with clubs in the Middle East, where he had been taken captive during the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

  The 62-year-old Firmani survived less than two months at what proved to be the revolving door of the league, plagued by early-season defeats and the prima-donna peevishness of its three American stars, Meola, Ramos and Peter Vermes. His replacement, Carlos Queiroz, helped the club climb out of an early-season hole, but he quit at the end of the season. Any hopes the league held about the MetroStars inheriting the Cosmos mantle disappeared amid a sea of inconsistency. Not even the manifest talents of Donadoni could retrieve their fortunes.

  Progress was more encouraging on the other coast, where former national manager-cum-waiter Lothar Osiander led the Los Angeles Galaxy to a 12-match unbeaten start. Two years earlier Osiander had guided the San Francisco Greek-Americans to Open Cup success, then turned his attentions to a team called the Atlanta Ruckus, leading them to within a Shootout of the A-League championship. In LA Osiander found himself in charge of what turned out to be the best-supported club in the country, with a fan base leaning unapologetically towards Latin America. The Galaxy's home average of nearly 29,000 easily doubled anything the NASL had ever produced in the city, and more than 69,000 turned up for the club's home debut, quickly establishing Campos as one of MLS's principal attractions. A few months later, 92,616 saw him perform the surely unprecedented feat of playing in a league match and a full international in the same afternoon, keeping goal for Mexico in a US Cup tie against the Americans, then turning out for the Galaxy against Tampa Bay, even finishing the last 17 minutes as centre-forward.

  No other club could boast a player with Campos's appeal, and not everyone was captivated by his eccentricities, but in openly courting the Latino fan MLS was rewarded both off the pitch (it gauged that nearly 40 per cent of its fans were Latin Americans) and on. Tampa Bay's Valderrama was named the Most Valuable Player, though his Colombian team-mate Leonel Alvarez, the chief weapon of the Dallas Burn, might have been more deserving. Even the greying Hugo Sanchez finished second on the Burn's goal-scoring chart. In New England, Alberto Naveda from Argentina was one of the few heroes of a dismal Revolution side, and Uruguay international Adrian Paz, acquired from Ipswich Town, became a striking presence for the Columbus Crew. Playing alongside Campos and Cienfuegos for the Galaxy was Ecuador's powerful Eduardo Hurtado, scorer of 21 goals.

  Americans made their presence felt - their sheer numbers meant it was almost impossible for them not to - though the names weren't always those the marketers had counted on. In particular, Lalas failed to emerge as a league icon, falling out with New England manager Frank Stapleton and only rarely displaying the fruits of his World Cup experience. Cynics joked, perhaps unfairly, that his best performance of the season had been reserved for the league's championship final, where he was invited to sing the national anthem.

  League performances were rendered almost meaningless by a ridiculously forgiving post-season format in which eight of the ten teams, split into two 'conferences', made the play-offs. The Valderrama-inspired Mutiny finished with the league's best record, but they were eliminated in the semi-finals by DC United, a team they had finished comfortably ahead of in the Eastern Conference.

  Having wrested Bruce Arena away from the University of Virginia, United reached the single-game, winner-take-all
final after starting the year with six defeats in seven. Etcheverry recovered spectacularly from an indifferent start to become the team's creative inspiration, while 23 goals from Salvadoran Raul Diaz Arce was the second-best haul in the league. Alongside them, Arena included many of his Virginia proteges, including John Harkes, Jeff Agoos and midfielder Richie Williams.

  United defeated the Galaxy 3-2 to claim the first MLS Cup - no Soccer Bowls for this generation - on an afternoon almost as memorable for the weather as the event. Temperatures hovered precariously above freezing, with torrents of rain driven sideways by a howling wind. But for the presence of ABC television, the pitch, laced with standing water, would surely have been declared unplayable. Yet fewer than 8,000 of the 42,000 ticket-holders stayed away, and those who braved the storm were treated to an improbably captivating contest, settled by a United goal five minutes from what surely would have been the most farcical Shootout of the season. 'That soccer could be played at all on that field is remarkable enough, but that it should be so enthralling, so skilful, and so dramatic is downright astounding,' claimed Soccer America. 'Words can't do this game justice,' gushed a sodden commissioner.

  Less than a fortnight later, United claimed a rare professional double, winning the Open Cup to restore some badly needed prestige to what had once been the showpiece of the American game. To all but the most dedicated fan, the Open Cup hadn't mattered for more than half a century, and the sudden inclusion of professional clubs would not shatter that indifference. Only 7,234 saw DC's 3-0 victory, and few newspapers paid any attention to the impressive run of their A-League opponents, the Rochester Raging Rhinos. The Rhinos, who had come into existence only a few months earlier, were the real success story of the year, eliminating two MLS clubs on their way to the final and averaging almost 10,000 fans for their league games, a figure nearly as high as some in MLS. In Rochester, at least, the NASL had left a fertile legacy.

  A proud Doug Logan was left to reflect on a banner first year, one he deemed to have exceeded expectations by 80 per cent at the turnstiles. M LS crowds averaged more than 17,000, with even bottom club Colorado's 10,300 figure welcomingly close to the original target. But television ratings were modest, and Logan lamented the infrequent appearance of highlights on ESPN's SportsCenter, whose rare forays into soccer territory often elicited little more than sarcasm from the show's notoriously irreverent presenters ('2-1! A veritable goal-fest!'). Even the biggest MLS stars failed to register on the scales that measured the sporting heroes of the year: Olympic sprinter Michael Johnson, boxing's Evander Holyfield, Tiger Woods and the omnipresent Michael Jordan.

  Six of MLS's top 15 goal-scorers were American-born, suggesting the arrival of a home-grown superstar might not be far off. On top of the pile with 27 goals was Roy Lassiter, a former college star acquired by the Mutiny. Playing for North Carolina State University, Lassiter had been implicated in a series of burglaries and ended up in Costa Rica, where he played for three years. When an observant police detective read in a newspaper that Lassiter had scored the winning goal for the US in a friendly against Benfica at the Meadowlands, the striker was given a tenyear suspended prison term.

  Yet the penitent North Carolinian - who served 30 days in jail - kept his place in Steve Sampson's squad, and his intimate familiarity with the Costa Rican league proved useful to the national team over its strenuous World Cup qualifying course, which took in 16 matches spread across little more than a year. The unprecedented number of fixtures was tempered by the expansion of the final tournament to 32 teams, making the Americans' path considerably easier.

  The run-up to qualification had been anything but ideal: a poor showing at the 1996 US Cup followed a few months later by a player walkout over bonus money, leaving Sampson to field a 'replacement' team for a friendly in Peru just two weeks before the opening game. The dispute dragged on for months, but the players came back in time to win their first three qualifiers and all but reserve a place in the final group of six, from which three would go to France. Lassiter scored the goal against Costa Rica in California that put them there, by which time some began to suspect that Mexico were no longer Concacaf's top dogs.

  Though the asterisk next to his job title had been removed, Sampson was still under pressure to prove himself at each game. His contract was renewable on a year-to-year basis, and faint praise from Rothenberg ('of course I want Steve to do well; he's my baby') did little to bolster his confidence. In fact, the federation refused to rule out bringing in a new manager even if the team qualified. While only a display of resounding ineptitude was likely to keep the US from reaching France, ineptitude was no stranger to American World Cup campaigns. After three draws in their first four games of the final round, they stood only a point clear of last place, and the twitching of federation officials grew more pronounced.

  Financially there was little to worry about, since Nike was setting off on its conquest of international football, poised to tattoo its swoosh on the USSF for $120 million. The federation agreed to stage a crucial game against Costa Rica near the corporation's headquarters in Oregon, installing a temporary $100,000 grass surface in the former home of the Portland Timbers. In turn, the corporate leviathan equipped fans with missile-shaped noisemakers and ordered everyone to turn up for the game in a white shirt. If the resultant atmosphere was 'impressive', as Soccer America claimed, it was also surreal. The teams skidded across the mysteriously slippery pitch to little effect until Ramos drove home the winning goal with 11 minutes to spare.

  Sampson was almost home and dry, but in Washington DC Jamaica put another dent in his credibility, outplaying his team again in an embarrassing 1-1 draw. Then it was down to Mexico, where the US had never done anything except lose: in 17 qualifying fixtures spread over 58 years, they had fallen every time. With the match barely half an hour old, Jeff Agoos was sent off, but Sampson moved Harkes into defence and emerged with a 0-0 draw before nearly 115,000 in the Aztec Stadium. The result was decisive enough for Mexico's jaded fans to turn on their own team and coach, the returning Milutinovic. It was also achieved with a team drawn entirely from Major League Soccer.

  Ostensibly, Sampson's precarious footing should have been shored up a week later, in the less animated surroundings of a Vancouver suburb where the Americans beat Canada 3-0 to earn their place in France. Rothenberg doled out cigars while a relieved manager stood proudly in his corner. For all his lack of experience, Sampson had suffered just two qualification defeats, both in the hellish atmosphere of Costa Rica's Estadio Ricardo Saprissa, the ' Monster's Cave'. Yet it was another month before ambiguous pronouncements from Rothenberg ('He's the coach until he's not the coach') dried up and the incumbent manager was assured of leading his team into the finals.

  Perhaps the most remarkable victory of Sampson's tenure came a few months later at the Gold Cup in California, an event Concacaf organised as a preamble to France 98. The victims were Brazil, albeit a Brazil somewhat removed from the incumbent world champions. Fewer than 13,000 were on hand in the LA Coliseum to see it, and the late kickoff kept the news out of many of the next morning's papers, but for a nation which hadn't so much as scored against the South Americans since 1930, the 1-0 semi-final victory deserved a wider audience. It came through a sensational goal from a naturalised striker, Belgrade-born Predrag (Preki) Radosavljevic - one of the few players to have graduated from an American indoor circuit to England's top division, with Everton - but the hero of the evening was another Premiership representative, Leicester City goalkeeper Kasey Keller. The afterglow faded quickly: the Americans lost the final to Mexico in a Coliseum jam-packed with hostile fans, a sight many hoped World Cup 94 had consigned to history.

  By now, the coach who had trusted his players and nourished their team spirit considered his apprenticeship over. Sampson had spent much of the previous year fighting for his job, and in the process settled into the more autocratic demeanour of the typical American coach, tinkering with line-ups and formations, placing a premium on video ana
lysis and tactics and identifying players who could 'do a job'. Some in the squad found little fault with this - most were used to it from their college days - but others took umbrage. Deploying John Harkes at left-back instead of central midfield in an effort to make room for Reyna, Sampson found fault with the player's unenthusiastic response and, after Harkes had committed a series of minor disciplinary indiscretions, removed his captain from the final list of 22. Castigated for unspecified 'leadership concerns' and a lack of enthusiasm for playing at the back, Harkes was left hoping for a change of heart which never came. Though some suspected Harkes's ego had spun out of control, the bombshell seemed to complete a transformation in Sampson's character, one Harkes later recounted in his autobiography, Captain For Life and Other Temporary Assignments:

  In meetings, he would stop the videotape and examine every little play. He was constantly stopping our training sessions to tell a player he needed to be five more yards this way or that, overanalysing every move. He wouldn't let us play. He had gone 180 degrees from where he was two years earlier. He would tell Eric Wynalda how to hit a free-kick, Joe-Max Moore how to hit a corner, or Preki how to swerve a ball. You've heard of micromanaging? Well Steve was microcoaching.

  Sampson had other shocks in store. Balboa, Lalas and Wynalda were all missing from the final warm-up games, while starting roles were given to peripheral figures such as Chad Deering, a striker from Texas who had played sporadically for Bundesliga debutants Wolfsburg, Germanborn David Wagner, once of Schalke 04, and the Columbus Crew's Brian Maisonneuve.* They joined Reyna and North Carolina-born Eddie Pope, both under 25, and Frankie Hejduk, a quicksilver 23-year-old Californian who had represented his country as a surfer. When that team produced an emphatic 3-0 win in a warm-up game against Austria, Sampson was left to conclude that fresh blood - and the 3-6-1 formation he had devised for the occasion - would serve him well in France.