Ian Plenderleith - Rock n Roll Soccer: The Short Life and Fast Times of the North American Soccer League

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For my dad, Robert Plenderleith, who had the great but truly terrible idea to take his six-year-old son to Sincil Bank in 1971

In memory of soccer writer David Wangerin (19622012)

This is an analysis, not a complete history, of the North American Soccer League. The book does not cover every team season by season, and the events and games described are only in a very rough chronological order. There are dozens of players, coaches and owners not mentioned in this book, but Colin Joses book A Complete Record of the North American Soccer League will answer any statistical question that might arise while reading. The Internet will more than likely help too. Because the Leagues cities, team names, rules and structure changed constantly, I have added two appendices for reference. lists the finalists and the scores of the championship game or games.

I call football soccer throughout, simply to avoid confusion and differentiate it from American football. I refer to a teams coach knowing that we in the UK would call that same person a manager. Again, this is to differentiate the coach from the general manager (GM)every US sports team has a GM, who is generally in charge of buying players and managing the budget for buying players. He also tends to act as more of a team spokesman than the coach. Simply put, the GM manages the team, and the coach coaches it. Or, at least, thats the theory.

When referring to the NASL as the League, a capital L is used to differentiate it from any other league. An MVP is Most Valuable Player, which depending on the context means man of the match or player of the season. An All-Star XI is announced at the end of every US sports leagues season to honor those judged to be the best eleven players in the league that yearit is generally considered to be a big deal. The term franchise is used liberally and interchangeably with club and team, not because I supported the FAs decision to move Wimbledon FC to Milton Keynes (I didnt, and still dont), but because in the 1970s especially, US soccer teams really were franchises, as mobile and vulnerable as under-performing branches of a fast-food chain. Quotes in the present tense are from interviews conducted by the author, quotes in the past tense are from archival research. Picture credits for images in the plate section appear alongside the individual images. Where images appear uncredited we have been unable to trace the copyright holder; anyone whose copyright has been inadvertently infringed is invited to contact the publisher.

History may have largely forgotten the North American Soccer League, but it wasnt forgettable to those of us who were there. I joined the appropriately named Tampa Bay Rowdies from Manchester City in 1976 when the NASL was on the rise, following in the footsteps of world greats Pel and Eusebio. My very first day at the Rowdies pretty much set the tone for what was to come. I walked into the secretarys office to find her on the phone to the local police station, negotiating to get two of our players out of jail. Apparently a couple of Tampas Scottish lads had enjoyed a boisterous night out and ended up behind bars.

Yes, the NASL had a reputation as something of a party league for aging pros. The last time that Pel came to play in Tampa for the New York Cosmos in 1977, it was a massive game, built up for weeks beforehand. Our marketing executive sent a limo to the airport to pick him up, along with their colorful striker Giorgio Chinaglia, to be taken straight to a press conference at a TV station. In the back of the limo were two beautiful cheerleaders holding a bottle of Chivas Regal on a silver tray. The story goes that the two players never made it to the press conference, and in fact were not seen at all for several hours. Next day, the Rowdies won 42 in front of 45,000 fans.

Yet no one who played in the NASL disputes that we all took the soccer very, very seriously, and that included Pel. The Rowdies developed an intense rivalry with the Cosmos, and I had my personal battles with the great Brazilian. In one game he went ballistic at me for what he thought was showboating (he was rightit was). In another game he scythed me down and provoked a fifteen-man brawl. Most painful of all, after I nutmegged him once he came up to me and ruffled my haira sporting gesture by the revered icon. Except that no one could see that hed gouged my ear with his fingernail and opened up a bleeding wound.

Off the field, Pel was always the perfect gentleman, but on the field he would throw the elbow and harass the referee. He was not only the greatest player in the world, but a proper winner, and the vast majority of those who played both with him and against him in the NASL approached the game with just as much commitment.

Pel and footballs other household names like Johan Cruyff and Franz Beckenbauer were a perfect fit for America, where I quickly learned that people generally love a superstar as much as they love a big event. I still today look at the English mentality and its desire to slag off a star and destroy him as quickly as possible. In the US, I found a country that not only celebrated its stars, but enjoyed them too. Like many other British players at the time I felt more relaxed in a place where I could express myself freely, both on and off the field.

Of course there was a lot of craziness as well. In my NASL career I was a player, coach and finally part-owner of the Rowdies. Before the final season in 1984 we met to discuss possible rule changes, and somebody suggested each team should have a designated number 9 who would be allowed to punch the ball in open play. I burst out laughing, and told them FIFA would never allow it. We actually took a vote on it, and it tells you something about the adventurous mind-set of some of the owners that the idea suffered only a narrow defeat.

Those owners were the same men, women and corporations who lost millions of dollars in a league that ultimately didnt make it. Some were clueless jokers out to make a fast buck, but many were courageous investors who genuinely thought that soccer had a future in the US. Beyond all the razzmatazz and the great players, it was their cash and enthusiasm that helped lay the foundations for soccers massive presence today across North America. The millions of young kids now playing across the US and Canada are the enduring legacy of a trend kick-started by the global games biggest names, and the hundreds of European and South American pros who joined them.

Ive always felt that theres been the need for a relevant, definitive book about the NASL that would capture the essence of the League and its true place in both US and world soccer history. This book finally does justice to the story of the remarkable rise and fall of a wild and uniquely glorious league that dared to be different, and had a hell of a good time along the way.

This sport will take off. There is absolutely no way that it will not bypass everything else. This country will be the center of world soccer. In the 80s there will be a mania for the game here. There will be three to five million kids playing it. The North American Soccer League will be the worlds No. 1 soccer league. And it will be the biggest sports league in the USA.