Category: Sidewinder Insider

Sports fans – especially those my age – often look back fondly at defining moments of our fandom.

I can still remember Joe Namath wagging his right index finger after the New York Jets upset the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, 16-7, on January 12, 1969.

Nearly 11 months later, on December 6, 1969, I watched Texas rally to beat Arkansas, 15-14, in what was dubbed the “Game of the Century.” It was the first time I recall watching an entire college football game on TV.

And on September 19, 1970, my dad, brother and I were among 53,958 people who were in the stands when Alabama walloped Virginia Tech, 51-18, at Legion Field. I had never witnessed a live football game before that sweltering night in Birmingham.

Yet, while tackle football memories occupy much of my brain, 50 years ago today association football made an indelible mark. That’s when Pelé – born Edson Arantes do Nascimento – made his debut with the New York Cosmos.

Now, before I get to that, it’s important to note that soccer had actually entered my radar five years earlier. After getting bored watching the Dallas Cowboys-Detroit Lions playoff game on December 26, 1970 (Dallas won a snoozer, 5-0), I changed channels to ABC’s Wide World of Sports.

The program was showcasing the 1970 World Cup Final between Brazil and Italy. Led by Pelé, Brazil won in dominating fashion, 4-1.

I was mesmerized by the spectacle. Aside from the movement and the motion of the game itself – and  a magnificent performance by Pelé, who opened scoring in the 18^th minute  – the size of the crowd at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City (107,412) and the sounds were fascinating. It wasn’t long after that when I started reading everything I could about “The Beautiful Game.”

Other than occasional blips in the newspaper, however, soccer news was hard to come by for a kid in Alabama. And a match on TV? It was easier to spot a unicorn.

Pelé changed all that.

On June 15, 1975 – at 2:30 p.m., Central Standard Time – the Dallas Tornado squared off with the Cosmos at Downing Stadium in New York. It was broadcast as a “CBS Sports Special,” and I had been looking forward to it all week.

The New York Times reported on June 11 that Pelé had finalized a three-year, $4.7 million contract with Warner Communications, owners of the Cosmos franchise, on June 10. It was a personal services pact, and it made the 34-year-old the highest paid athlete in the world. He already had three World Cup crowns on his resume and tallied 1,091 goals while leading Santos to a staggering 21 Brazilian championships.

“You can say now to the world that soccer has finally arrived in the United States,” Pelé said after making the deal official at New York City’s 21 Club.

The North American Soccer League had been around since 1968, but not until Pelé signed with the Cosmos did it start to take off.

Although the match with the Tornado was merely a midseason friendly, that was just a minor detail to me. A player hailed by many as the greatest of all-time was suited up for a club repping the Big Apple, and the NASL had its grand ambassador.

Just seeing him play was a big deal – it didn’t matter to me how well he performed. It had been eight months since he’d been in a competitive match, and there was bound to be some rust.

And maybe there was, but he knocked it off long enough to score the game’s final goal – a beautiful header – in the Cosmos’ 2-2 draw played before an overflow crowd of 21,278.

It officially turned me into a Cosmos supporter, but more importantly, it laid the groundwork for soccer becoming my favorite sport. (A side note … it was also the first time I had seen Dallas’ standout Kyle Rote Jr. play. It was rare then for a U.S.-born athlete to excel at the game, so I became a big fan of his, too).

Anyway, I anxiously awaited the game’s account in Monday’s Birmingham News. While it didn’t make the front page of the sports section, the Associated Press story led page 2 – and even had a picture of Pelé.

“I had only planned to play 45 minutes,” Pelé said. “But I felt so good I decided to play the whole game.”

It was later revealed that 10 million people tuned in to the live broadcast, which was a record American TV audience for soccer.

“When we play a few more games together, we’ll get better,” Pelé told a United Press International reporter. “We did not make the ball do the work for us today. Most of the young players tried to pass to me too much, instead of going through and having a shot on goal.

“The standard of play is quite high and there is a lot of potential in this league.”

In three years with the Cosmos, Pelé scored 37 goals and registered 30 assists, helping New York’s NASL team become a box office juggernaut. During that time my room was adorned with his and Rote’s poster (courtesy of Sports Illustrated), and I became a subscriber to both Soccer America and later, Soccer Digest.

Of course, the NASL is no more, and the Cosmos franchise sits in limbo. But 50 years ago, one player, one club and one league had my undivided attention.

I’ll never forget it.

If you’re looking for the greatest era of American professional soccer, it’s tempting to simply look around. I mean, in terms of quantity and stability, 2025 makes a pretty good case.

The domestic professional soccer landscape includes 30 Major League Soccer franchises, 24 United Soccer League Championship clubs, 14 National Women’s Soccer League teams, 29 MLS Next Pro sides and 14 USL League One squads. MLS boasts 22 soccer-specific stadiums with two more on the way.

Throw in the fact that USL is planning to  create a First Division circuit to compete with MLS – and introduce promotion/relegation – and it’s a heady time to be an association football supporter in the United States.

However, American soccer was also a pretty big deal 100 years ago. And on May 18, 1925, it reached an early milestone.

On that day the American Soccer League, which had been formed in 1921, became a member of the United States Football Association (now the United States Soccer Association). Although the ASL sought only associate membership, delegates decided to extend full privileges.

Placing the league under the USFA umbrella meant the league and governing body would finally be partners. They had been at odds in the past, mainly over participation in the annual National Challenge Cup (now the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup). That event meant clubs had to break from their regular season schedule and travel long distances to compete in Cup competitions.

“Calm came out of chaos at the opening meeting of the twelfth annual session of the United Football Association, governing body of soccer in this country, at the Hotel Astor yesterday,” hailed the Passaic Daily News in a May 19, 1925, article. “For more than a year there has been a civil war between the American Soccer League, one of the most powerful, richest and largest organizations of its kind in the country, and the United States Football Association, controlling body of the sport. Yesterday all the differences were ironed out and the American Soccer League, headed by President Fred Smith, was welcomed into the United States Football Association as a full member. The sudden and undramatic ending to the strife between the two organizations was hailed as the greatest step that ever has been taken toward putting the game on a firm foundation in the United States”

In 1925, the ASL was made up of Bethlehem Steel, Boston Soccer Club, Brooklyn Wanderers, Fall River (Massachusetts) Football Club Marksmen, Fleisher Yarn (Philadelphia), Indiana Flooring (New York City), J&P Coats (Pawtucket, Rhode Island), Newark Skeeters, New Bedford Whalers, New York Giants, Philadelphia Field Club, Providence Football Club and Shawsheen Indians (Andover, Massachusetts).

The league paid its players well, and many European stars crossed the pond to suit up in the ASL. The quality of play was excellent, and some clubs even outdrew NFL teams.

In fact, USFA executive secretary Thomas Cahill thought association football had a chance to become the most popular sport in America.

“I hope within 25 years that soccer football will have almost as great strides as has baseball,” Cahill told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in the summer of 1925. “For I am sure that fundamentally it is even a more interesting game to play and much more exciting to watch.”

Yet, while international players helped elevate the ASL, Cahill felt it was time to “Americanize” the game.

“I think the time has come when American-born officials should control the national and all subsidiary organizations in this country,” he said. “The teams should be made up of as large a percent of American-born material as is possible, and the propaganda of soccer should be undertaken with a view to more thorough Americanizing some of its phases.

“The country owes a great deal to the Old Country pioneers who brought the came across and kept it alive in its early days. We need their good players, and their presence in a minor proportion on all clubs is highly desirable.”

Fall River went on to win the ASL championship with a 27-12-5 record, and Scottish born, American raised forward Archie Stark of Bethlehem Steel led the league in scoring with an astonishing 67 goals – 34 more than second-leading scorer Andy Stevens.

Alas, the shine of elite American soccer soon faded.

The ASL and USFA never got on the same page, especially when it came to the National Challenge Cup. By 1928 ASL officials opted to boycott the Cup, but when three teams (Bethlehem, Newark and New York Giants) opted in and the ASL suspended them, things began to fall apart.

First FIFA ( which was already angry at the ASL for poaching top European players) and USFA declared the circuit an “outlaw league,” and later the Eastern Professional Soccer League was formed by the USFA to dilute the ASL.

By 1933 the original ASL was out of business, and soccer in the United States had become an afterthought.

A century later, U.S. Soccer and MLS have a cozy relationship (perhaps a bit too cozy for those of us who want the USL to challenge MLS). And the U.S. Open Cup? Sixteen Major League Soccer teams gain entry, entering in the Round of 32.

Cahill’s dream of “soccer football” becoming the new national pastime didn’t happen. But 100 years after the ASL and USFA joined forces, the game has made an indelible mark on the domestic sports landscape.  

Back in 2020, when Greenville Triumph SC won the championship of USL League One, I remember thinking how bittersweet it was. At the time I was a resident of the city, so I was happy for them, of course. After all, my local soccer team had earned a crown, and that’s a big deal. But in just their second season, they’d already hit the ceiling.

Without a system of promotion and relegation – the standard in international association football – there was nowhere to go. The USL Championship was atop the pyramid in the United Soccer League system, and its lineup of franchises was set. A Triumph title in a lower circuit didn’t secure passage to a higher one.

But that’s all about to change.

Today the USL announced that a supermajority of owners voted to implement pro/rel. The news – some of the biggest in U.S. soccer history, if you ask me – comes on the heels of the organization’s plan to create a new Division One league starting in 2028.

“A new chapter in American soccer begins,” Alec Papadakis, CEO of the United Soccer League, said. “The decision by our owners to approve and move forward with this bold direction is a testament to their commitment to the long-term growth of soccer in the United States. This is a significant milestone for the USL and highlights our shared vision with our team ownership to build a league that not only provides top-tier competition but also champions community engagement. Now, just as it is in the global game, more communities in America can aspire to compete at the highest level of soccer.

“It’s time.”

Once the Division One league is formed, the USL Championship – already considered second division by United States Soccer Federation standards – will remain in that spot while League One will be D3. (The USL system also includes League Two, which is a developmental league with 74 teams).

USL officials have hinted for years that they were open-minded about pro/rel, but it never seemed to get beyond the talking stage.

The National Independent Soccer Association, on the other hand, was founded in 2017 with the intent of creating a pathway pyramid, but that didn’t happen. As of now, NISA is struggling to even stay afloat. It’s not sanctioned by USSF for 2025 and has long been overshadowed by MLS Next Pro and League One.

And Major League Soccer never has and never will consider it. In 2024 Forbes estimated that the average MLS club is worth $658 million.

League commissioner Don Garber famously (infamously?) said this about pro/rel in 2015:

“If you’re investing billions and billions of dollars, which we are now at about $3.5 billion invested (in MLS) in twenty years, to build something in Kansas City and they have a shitty season, to think they might be playing in Chattanooga in a stadium of 4,000 people on a crappy field with no fans, makes no sense.”

Garber later apologized (and Chattanooga FC is now part of MLS Next Pro), but the point was made. It’s a closed league and it’s staying that way.

Thus, the boldest step possible in domestic soccer is finally being taken by the USL.

“Promotion and relegation transforms the competitive landscape of American soccer,” Paul McDonough, President and CEO of the USL, said. “With the 2026 World Cup and other major international events approaching, we have a unique opportunity to build on that momentum and create a sustainable future for the sport in the U.S. Fans and stakeholders have been clear – they want something different. They’re drawn to the intensity of high-stakes competition, where more matches have real consequences – just like we see in European leagues.

“This shift challenges the status quo and brings a level of excitement and relevance that can elevate the game across the country.”

I’m truly excited about this. Moving up or dropping down based on sporting merit has long been a defining feature of international soccer, and soon – in the USL – every single match will matter. Few things are as dramatic as seeing some clubs climbing up the ladder and others desperately trying to avoid falling off.

Obviously, there are plenty of major details to be worked out. We don’t even know who’ll comprise the top division once it kicks off in 2028. And USSF Pro League Standards require first division clubs to play in stadiums that seat at least 15,000, which could create problems for those in cozy, smaller confines.

Still, this is major news for a circuit determined to take on Major League Soccer. And the investors who buy into the premiere division of USL will know exactly what they’re getting into.

Even though I no longer live in Greenville, I’m still gonna keep a close eye on the Triumph and root for their success.

Winning a trophy in 2020 was cool.

But winning promotion? That’s gonna be so much cooler.