Playing for Uncle Sam

by David Tossell

  When the Timbers played Dallas on 18 June, beginning a seven-game winning run, the crowd had grown to almost 15,000. One banner read ‘Jimmy Kelly for Mayor’ and the winger obliged his fans by scoring in a 3–0 victory. A couple of weeks later more than 18,000 saw Dangerfield grab the winner in a 2–1 success against Vancouver, with Paul having proclaimed at half-time, ‘Welcome to Soccer City, USA’.

  The first sell-out was achieved against Seattle, the team from the next state. A crowd of 27,310 saw the Sounders take the lead after half an hour but within three minutes Kelly had set up Withe for the equaliser. The duo repeated the trick in the second half and the game was won. After the game, Crowe told his players to get back out and perform a lap of honour, which took 20 minutes to complete as half the crowd, it seemed, came out to join them. Scarcely a single Timbers shirt made it back to the dressing-room as the fans grabbed their souvenirs.

  Portland had enjoyed a stretch of 15 wins in 17 games by the end of the season and were nine points clear of Seattle at the head of the division. Crowe’s team, one of the youngest in the league with an average age of 24, had achieved their success by utilising a fast-paced English style of play. Dangerfield explains, ‘It is an overused word but it was the concept of the “team” that really made us. We had players who would work hard for each other. Peter Withe was an unbelievable athlete who had the ability to hold the ball up front and take pressure off you. You knew you could always find him. Anderson and Kelly were wingers who could get behind players and could give you width, and we had a big, wide pitch that suited us.’

  Withe adds, ‘Vic had a plan in his mind, knew the system he wanted to play. He knew he had some fit players because we had all just come off an English season and he blended us into the team. We ended up playing a system that had Anderson and Kelly on the wings and me down the middle. We always kept the same shape. And Vic trained the arse off us. Whatever he threw at us, we did. We enjoyed all the running.’

  By scoring 16 goals in the regular season, Withe caught the attention of several English clubs and earned himself a transfer to Birmingham City. ‘Two teams tried to sign me while I was in Portland,’ he explains. ‘Peter Taylor wanted me to go to Brighton and then Birmingham came in for me. Freddie Goodwin flew out to America to watch me and I signed when I was in the US. Playing for Portland had given me the opportunity to prove what I could do.’

  In the play-offs, Portland were at home to their old rivals from Seattle in the quarter-finals. The club installed additional seating to take the Civic Stadium capacity up above 30,000 and Hoban recalls, ‘We walked the stadium before the game, shaking hands with everyone.’

  The Sounders would be no pushover, having won only one game fewer than the Timbers in the regular season. Chelsea forward Tommy Baldwin and Wales and Tottenham central defender Mike England, a veteran of 44 games for his country, were among Seattle’s new additions for the season, along with Wrexham’s Arfon Griffiths. England, a future Wales manager, had earned a place on the NASL All-Star team and, according to teammate and assistant coach Jimmy Gabriel, was revelling in the American scene. Already 33 when he arrived in the States, England would play for five NASL seasons, winning individual recognition in four of them.

  ‘Mike was another who came over thinking, “I am only going to spend a season here and then that’s it,”’ says Gabriel. ‘But we played on Astroturf and if you are player of Mike’s calibre your technique works so well on it. I felt the surface helped the older guys. Instead of running in mud we were bouncing off the hard surfaces and it meant our legs didn’t get wasted. The first thing you feel when you are getting older is playing in mud; it drags your energy. Having the ability to manage the surface, like Mike did, meant he could keep playing for so long.’

  Sounders coach John Best had been alerted to the possibility of signing England when he struggled to maintain his place in the first team at Tottenham, the club he joined from Blackburn and had helped to FA Cup, League Cup and UEFA Cup triumphs. ‘I saw that Mike had some problems and disagreements at Spurs so I thought, “Jeepers, that might fit just great.” He was the sort of player I tried to go for. He was not as quick as he once was but he was totally dominant in the air and had great touch on the ball. He used his experience and maturity in positioning and was an absolutely dominant player.’

  The veteran England against the young, raw talent of Withe promised to be one of the key battles in a game in which regional pride, as well as a place in the semi-finals, was at stake. Gabriel explains, ‘Portland were huge rivals. We had beaten them in their first ever game, even though we had just defended well and stolen a win. When we played them in Seattle we beat them again, 3–2 in overtime, so they definitely had a score to settle. Portland were a strong team, even though they were in their first season. It was possible in those days to open a franchise, go over to England and get a very good team straight away.’

  Best recalls, ‘They had the teams walk out with the coaches in front, like at Wembley. The place was absolutely jammed and people were in trees outside and on the rooftops. Excitement and tension caused me to think, “Oh boy. Now we are really on our way.”’

  John Rowlands, who had finished the season as Seattle’s top scorer with nine goals, gave the Sounders the lead, only for Powell to equalise. Coaches Crowe and Best shouted in vain to have their instructions heard over the deafening noise of a 31,523 crowd as a fraught battle went into extra-time. After six minutes of sudden-death play the game was decided when a quickly taken Portland corner found the Seattle defenders out of position. A dipping cross reached the penalty area and Timbers substitute Tony Betts rose to make contact with his blond head and send Portland to the semi-finals. A disappointed Best said, ‘He fell over and the ball hit him on the head and it went in.’ Once again, the Timbers fans came down from the stands during the players’ victory lap, risking injury by dropping over a 20-foot wall to get to the field. Outside the stadium, the streets quickly became packed with cars and fans making their way to the post-game party at the nearby Benson Hotel.

  Meanwhile, Gabriel, a fierce competitor, took the defeat as hard as any in his professional experience, even after a career that had brought him Scotland caps and winners’ medals in the Football League and FA Cup. ‘My attitude was that you were a professional and you were taught to win. It hurt. Maybe it was easier for some of the players because they would go back to England and carry on playing, but for me it was the last game of the season.’

  The fact that the Timbers’ campaign was continuing caused some problems, as Withe recounts. ‘Freddie Goodwin wanted me back for the start of Birmingham’s season, Barry Powell was signing for Coventry and Graham Day was wanted back by Mansfield. The clubs were screaming and hollering for us to go back, but Phil Woosnam said every player must honour his NASL contract. We got together as players and said, “We know they are shouting for us to go back, but we want to stay here because we can win this.”’

  The next opponents in the Timbers’ quest to fulfil that prophecy were the St Louis Stars, whose coach John Sewell had added some familiar Football League names to a predominantly American squad for the 1975 season and had been rewarded with the Central Divison title and the Coach of the Year award. Goalkeeper Peter Bonetti, who had lost out to Welsh international John Phillips as the number-one keeper at relegation-bound Chelsea, arrived determined to prove that he still possessed many of the qualities that had made him one of England’s leading goalkeepers over the previous ten years. Bonetti performed well enough to complete the journey from the Stamford Bridge reserve side to the NASL All-Star team. Veteran Millwall defender Dennis Burnett also played an important role, while Hull City striker John Hawley, later to join Leeds, Sunderland and Arsenal, contributed 11 goals in 20 games. It was Hawley who scored for the Stars in their 1–1 draw against the Los Angeles Aztecs in the quarter-finals, a game they eventually won in a penalty shoot-out.

  The frenzy among the fans in Portland continued throughout the five days that sepa
rated the two play-off games. On the eve of the semi-final some began queueing outside the stadium, prepared to wait all night to take their places in a crowd of 33,503. A goal from the prolific Withe rewarded them for their patience and sent the Timbers into the Soccer Bowl, as the NASL final had been renamed. With the game to be played in San Jose one week later, the fans said farewell to their team one last time after a season that had seen their club progress from an idea in Don Paul’s head and a list of names in Vic Crowe’s pocket to a team that had captured its public’s imagination and attracted fans to NASL games in record numbers.

  Hoban concludes, ‘When we see guys nearly 30 years on from that year, we still say what a wonderful summer it was.’ But, as important as the events were in Oregon, the biggest story of 1975 was developing thousands of miles east in New York. Pelé had come to play.

  8. Coming to America

  In October 1974, Pelé had waved an emotional farewell to football. After only 21 minutes of Santos’s home game against Ponte Preta he sank to his knees and, with tears streaming down his cheeks, bowed to kiss the grass. He rose to his feet, trotted around the field and, after 1,254 games and 1,216 goals, including 96 in 111 internationals, disappeared down the tunnel for what seemed like the last time. It was a day the NASL had been waiting for.

  ‘It all goes back to 1971 when we expanded into New York,’ explains Phil Woosnam. ‘We said that in the long term we had to attract the great players and get two or three years out of them. Chelsea asked the US Soccer Federation secretary Kurt Lamm if he could set something up for them while England was snowed up. They ended up playing Santos in Jamaica and I said to Kurt, “Do you think we have a shot at meeting Pelé?” Before going down there I went to Coca-Cola and said, “We are having a meeting with Pelé. How about making him a worldwide spokesman?” They said it sounded interesting.

  ‘So Kurt, Clive Toye of the Cosmos and I met Pelé and his adviser, Professor Julio Mazzei. We sat around the pool talking and I said, “We have come for one reason. When you retire, before you retire completely, would you consider coming to America for two or three years?” He said, “Yes, sure.” So I thought that maybe it would happen, maybe it wouldn’t, but at least we had sown the seed. “And one other thing,” I said. “Do you have any interest if I can fix up for you to be a spokesman for Coca-Cola in a worldwide sponsorship?” I needed him to think that those guys from the NASL had done something for him. I came back and told Coke we had spoken to Pelé, but my guy there hadn’t been able to get it sold to the rest of his company. We were moving offices from Atlanta to New York, so the first thing I did when I got to New York was find Pepsi’s number, find out who was handling their sports sponsorships and it was a done deal. All of a sudden Pelé was their worldwide ambassador. That was the end of my involvement and I said to Clive, “When you feel the time is right, go and see if you can do it.”’

  After winning the NASL crown in 1972, the Cosmos had performed unspectacularly and by the beginning of the 1975 season were playing in front of crowds of fewer than 10,000 in Downing Stadium, Randall’s Island. Gordon Bradley, entering his fifth season as coach, recalls, ‘Because we were owned by a gigantic organisation like Warner, we took the initiative to ask the powers that be if we could spend more money to get Pelé, and they allowed us to do it.’

  Toye continues, ‘I had pestered Pelé constantly after that first meeting. I did not want anything else to attract him and I met him on every possible occasion in more countries than I can remember. After he had been retired about four or five months, the itch to play again had plainly set in. Juventus and Real Madrid were sniffing around as well, but I told him, “If you go there, all you can win is a championship. In America, you can win a country.”’

  The Cosmos became more optimistic about getting their man when it emerged that Pelé’s estimated £1.5 million-worth of business interests in Brazil had been hugely diminished by the bad advice, and worse, of his advisers. Bradley explains, ‘Everything seemed to come right for us to get him. We took an entourage from Warner to see him. He passed everything on to Professor Mazzei, who thought it would be a good idea for Pelé to be part of the league. Pelé liked the idea of who we wanted to be and where we were going and knew he would be with a tremendous organisation. There was a good rapport from the start.’

  So it was that on 3 June, Toye announced that Pelé, star of two World Cup finals, had signed a three-year deal with the New York Cosmos. Speculation focused on how much the 33 year old would receive for a contract that also called for him to promote Warner Communications. An amount of $4.7 million, plus private yachts and planes, was reported, but Toye says, ‘We paid him a total of $2.8 million for three years as a player and ten years of marketing rights. I found out later that Real Madrid had offered roughly the same.’ It bought the NASL the credibility the league had been seeking for eight years.

  Pelé, who hailed from the poverty-stricken mining village of Trés Coracoes, had first made his mark on the world game as an outrageously talented 17 year old, helping Brazil lift the 1958 World Cup in Sweden. Injury meant he played only one complete game as Brazil successfully defended their title in Chile in 1962 and he limped out once again after being subjected to brutal treatment as his country lost its crown in England in 1966. The 1970 finals in Mexico belonged to Brazil and, most notably, Pelé. His goals and near misses (who can forget his lob from the halfway line against Czechoslovakia or his dummy against Uruguay?) shaped the most memorable of all World Cup tournaments. Now he was coming to America. Bradley recalls, ‘Once Pelé arrived, he drew in all kinds of people. Celebrities from all over the world, people like Muhammad Ali, came to watch him.’

  Woosnam adds, ‘Now no one could refuse to come and play in the NASL because they thought it wasn’t good enough. It was good enough for Pelé. We really needed this in New York because the media were killing us and didn’t think we would succeed. Suddenly Pelé walked through the door and the whole attitude to the sport in this country changed overnight. That was the most critical moment in the history of soccer in the USA. All of a sudden, the youth organisations started playing. It was the turning point. And it meant that as he went around the country we had great attendances.’

  Given the obvious benefits to the NASL as well as the Cosmos, it was natural that Woosnam should have to contend with accusations that the league had contributed to the cost of such a coup. ‘I know a lot of other people thought we had helped out and didn’t like it, but it was purely club money,’ he insists. ‘Unless someone did something behind my back.’

  Toye adds, ‘I had to go to a league meeting and present a case for allowing us to pay above the maximum wage for Pelé. The teams voted for it unanimously because of who it was.’

  However, future Cosmos head coach Ken Furphy says that the NASL took steps to ensure that the club was rewarded for their investment. ‘He was the highest-paid sportsman in any sport in America at that time. The league agreed that, wherever he went, we got 50 per cent of whatever gate the team drew in excess of their average. It was to help pay for him.’

  John Best, coach of the Seattle Sounders, remembers, ‘The reaction from most other teams was one of excitement. For him to pitch his tent in America was obviously going to bring more awareness of the game and I don’t feel his signing was regretted by anyone. With the help of Pelé, people in other countries were more aware of the league and it made it easier to talk to some of the other well-known players.’

  For the players around the league, the ripple effect of Pelé’s arrival was to reach both the big fish and the tiddler. Portland Timbers defender Mick Hoban recalls, ‘Pelé’s salary raised the bar and his presence attracted players of different quality to those who were going to America in the early days. For me, and others like me, the greatest pleasure now is looking back and saying that I played against some of the world greats.’

  Pelé would be followed to the NASL by a veritable ‘Who’s Who’ of world football, from Franz Beckenbauer and Gerd Mull
er to Johan Cruyff and Johan Neeskens, along with some of the leading British stars. Says Hoban, ‘Suddenly every team had a famous player. There was always a story coming to town to use as a hook. And there were good journeymen professionals behind them.’

  Woosnam believes that the Pelé gamble would not have paid off so handsomely if the man himself had not been such a willing ambassador. ‘His personality was something else. He always had a smile on his face and did a great job with the media, who loved him. The biggest problem was to get him anywhere on time.’

  Toye adds, ‘Pelé had no airs and graces. Of course he had a security guy and had his calls screened and he knew how important he was, but when he first stepped into the locker room he went round to each player and gave him a handshake and a hug. Sometimes he would tell me I worked him too hard. We would arrive somewhere and I would present him with a list of about seven appearances, but I knew I would end up with the two or three I really wanted. In the beginning, the other players didn’t want to play with him. They wanted to sit on the bench and watch him play. They were in awe of him.’

  One-time New York Cosmos captain Keith Eddy recalls witnessing Pelé’s public relations skills at the team’s weekly press conferences. The former Watford and Sheffield United defender says, ‘Pelé was a diplomat and a politician. He always said the right things. Before every game, he and I met the press. He was there because of who he was and I was there simply because I was the Cosmos captain. Of course, nobody ever wanted to ask me a question, so everything was directed at him. His English was as good as mine, but every time someone asked a question that was a little controversial, he would say, “Sorry, my English is not quite good enough. Let Keith answer that question.”’