Category: Sidewinder Insider

Those of us who have a proclivity for alternative sports felt a great disturbance in the Force in 1992, losing both the Major Soccer League (which changed its name from the Major Indoor Soccer League on July 24, 1990) and seeing the World League of American Football suspend operations.

But I’ve already written thousands of words – both in short form and book form – about the WLAF. What I haven’t explored is how the MSL reluctantly positioned itself to spearhead the creation of an outdoor league to fulfill a FIFA (International Federation of Association Football) mandate.

When the United States was awarded the 1994 World Cup in 1988, soccer’s international governing body insisted that the country have a First Division men’s outdoor league by 1992 as part of the deal.

The North American Soccer League had folded in 1985, but the MISL was still in business and – by soccer standards – doing relatively well at the box office. Founded in 1978, it quickly established itself as more than a just a six-a-side indoor gimmick and in 1984 had a league-high 14 teams and saw its championship series televised by CBS.

So in 1990 the circuit decided to rebrand as the Major Soccer League and bill itself as the primary association football circuit in the United States. It even tweaked its rules, widening the goal by two feet and raising the height by a foot and requiring a distance of 15 feet rather than 10 between the ball and defenders on all free kicks.

“We’re like America before World War II,” MSL commissioner Earl Foreman told the Baltimore Sun in the summer of 1990. “We can no longer be an isolationist league. We’ve been told our players are needed for the U.S. National outdoor teams and we’re needed for the election of U.S. Soccer Federation officials. The MISL no longer represents what we are exclusively.

“Our thrust is still on indoor soccer, but our horizons are widening. Hopefully we’ll be playing some outdoor games by next summer.”

The American Professional Soccer League was also formed in 1990 thanks to a merger of the Western Soccer League and third iteration of the American Soccer League. The APSL was outdoor only and promised to upgrade salaries, but was designated as a regional pro league by the USSF.

“We’ve been told by the U.S. Soccer Federation that we have a responsibility to soccer,” Foreman said. “The federation is very interested in us. We find ourselves in a strange situation. We just want to go and play indoor soccer, but we’ve had the responsibility laid on us that we’re the only major professional soccer league in the country.”

When the newly-named MSL began its 1990 season, it had already played 12 indoor seasons and averaged nearly 8,000-fans per game. If it could somehow transfer that enthusiasm outdoors, it had a chance to be what the USSF was looking for and meet FIFA’s requirements.

“We all know our main product is indoor soccer,” St. Louis owner Milan Mandaric told the Evening Sun of Baltimore. “But, at the same time, soccer is being played outdoors and we cannot ignore that. We want to participate in a professional and economic way.”

Ultimately, Foreman was selected to chair the governing body’s exploratory committee for a first-division outdoor league.

The hope was to combine the MSL, APSL and National Professional Soccer League (also an indoor circuit) into one league that would play 36 indoor games and 20 outdoor games. The indoor season would take place from November to the end of April each year and the outdoor season would start in June and finish by the end of September.

However, American soccer is nothing if not dysfunctional, and MSL never made the transition from arenas to stadiums and the hybrid league was never realized.

Financial woes became evident toward the end of the 1990-91 Major Soccer League season, and after St. Louis and Tacoma left the league with only five franchises, MLS folded on July 10, 1992, and the United States was without a major national professional league.

“We’ve been fighting this and working together for months now,” Foreman told the Associated Press. “St. Louis was shaky and we just couldn’t bolster it up. At this time, we probably have the strongest group of owners we’ve ever had, we just don’t have enough of them.”

When the end came, MISL/MSL had featured 32 different teams and drawn more than 27 million fans to its games.

“If there is a legacy, the legacy is the sport,” Foreman said. “I have faith in the game. We were probably a year away from having a truly international league of U.S., Canada and Mexico.”

Although the United States failed to meet FIFA’s requirement, the plug wasn’t pulled on the World Cup because FIFA always finds a way to bend rules to suit itself.

Major League Soccer was officially founded on December 17, 1993, and although it wouldn’t begin play until 1996, the lords of football were satisfied and the first World Cup ever staged on United States soil began on June 17, 1994.

If you follow domestic soccer, you probably remember the Major Indoor Soccer League – maybe even fondly. But while it debuted in 1978, are you aware that three years earlier another group tried to make the sport go balls to the walls?

They did – although that version of the Major Soccer League never got beyond a few pronouncements.

While there have been variations of indoor soccer for decades, up until 1970 the more accepted inside version of association football was largely confined to futsal, a 5-on-5 game played on a hard surface with no boards or walls. But in 1971 the North American Soccer League hosted the NASL Professional Hoc-Soc Tournament, which was the first time a major professional league had sanctioned such an event.

Held at St. Louis Arena with the Dallas Tornado, Rochester Lancers, St. Louis Stars and Washington Darts participating, six-a-side teams played on an AstroTurfed field with small goals set in the endboards and dasher boards keeping the ball in play.

Two years later the NASL Atlanta Apollos took part in a pair of exhibition matches as the league studied the possibility of adding an indoor season, and on February 7, 1974, nearly 8,000 fans showed up in Toronto to watch the Soviet Red Army team defeat the NASL All-Stars, 8-4, at Maple League Gardens. It was the first game of a short but well-attended exhibition tour, and was later featured on ABC’s Wide World of Sports.

“The crowd is about what we hoped for,” NASL commissioner Phil Woosnam told the Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester, New York. “And ABC seemed pleased with the excitement produced by the game. Indoor soccer may be the answer to making soccer popular in America.”

A year and a half later the NASL still wasn’t committed to an indoor season, but a pair of former NASL officials were.

Norman Sutherland and Rick Ragone, who had previously served as executives with the outdoor league, announced they were establishing a new professional indoor organization called the Major Soccer League.

In a telephone interview with Associated Press for an August 20, 1975, story, Sutherland said MSL had opened offices two weeks earlier and two Miami groups had put down deposits on franchises.

Teams would feature 14-man rosters with at least 10 American players, and minimum salaries would be set at $10,000.

“The players in the NASL have been treated almost like servants,” Ragone said. “They have nowhere else to go and there aren’t many salaries over $3,000 or $4,000 per year.”

Games would be divided into three, 20-minute periods with free substitutions and a penalty box. The founders envisioned as many as 12 franchises to start, with a 50-game schedule starting in April, 1976.

“I don’t see how we can miss,” Ragone told the Miami News. “We think the game will appeal to the American sports fan and you can put ‘American’ in quotes. American fans want to see action – lots of action – and we’re going to give it to them. It has all the elements of soccer, hockey, basketball and football rolled into one. It’s exciting and we think it’s what the American fan wants to see.”

Aside from Miami, other potential flagship cities included Washington, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Kansas City, New York, Boston, Montreal, St. Louis, Houston, San Francisco and Chicago.

Two months later, Sutherland and Ragone said they would make an official announcement about franchises in December.

And while they insisted they weren’t intentionally trying to do a “hatchet job” on the NASL, they were happy to go head to head with it.

“The arena owners didn’t want it in the winter because of hockey but when we agreed to a summer season we had no trouble selling it,” Sutherland said in an October 26, 1975 story from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “We went into the summer because it was best for our league. No matter what the (NASL) tries, it’s never really caught on. We think we can sell the game, taking the best of soccer and bringing it to the American sports fan in the comfort of an air-conditioned arena.”

As late as December Sutherland was touting his MSL as the soccer league of the future in the United States, one that was ready and willing to outbid the NASL for talent.

But the bidding war never materialized because the Major Soccer League never materialized – at least not this version of the MSL.

By January, 1976, Sutherland announced that the league was postponing its launch until 1977.

But the only league to launch that year was the Major Indoor Soccer League, announced by Ed Tepper and Earl Foreman on November 11, 1977.

Both Sutherland and Ragone did play further roles in indoor soccer, first with 1978’s Super Soccer League (which never played a match) and later as executives with MISL teams.

As for the Major Soccer League, it had to wait until the MISL opted for a new identity in 1990.

More about that next week.

Raise a glass, tip your hat, or – if you’re feeling extra festive – juggle a ball, because today is the 100^th anniversary of major league soccer in the United States.

Don’t believe me?

Scott Adamson writes stuff. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl and Instagram @scottscribe60

Well, then, perhaps you’ll believe the secretary of the United States Soccer Association, James E. Scholefield, who wrote this in the May 20, 1921, edition of the Evening Herald newspaper in Fall River, Massachusetts:

Though from a playing sense the soccer season is closed, the next few days is expected to make history in the development of the game in this country. Tonight the big Professional League “The American Soccer League” meets at Hotel Astor in New York. It is expected that permanent officials will be elected and the constitution and by-laws adopted. All the clubs are enthusiastic and each have put up guarantees unheard of in the history of soccer football in this country. There is naturally much disappointment in many cities who have not been able to obtain coveted franchises, and in a few years it is certain that professional soccer will be the fall and winter sport of the country.

Obviously when I write “major league soccer” I’m not referring to Major League Soccer (it’s still a relative baby, born in 1996). Nor am I claiming the ASL was the introduction of professional soccer to America, because it wasn’t. There were already stateside footballers getting paid to play, and in 1907 the St. Louis Soccer League became the first fully professional circuit in the United States. But the original ASL was the country’s initial attempt to make the Beautiful Game a major national sport, although its roots and branches were very much regional.

Culled from the National Association Football League and Southern New England Soccer League, the original franchises were New York Soccer Club; Todd Shipyard (Brooklyn); Celtics (Jersey City); Philadelphia Field Club; Bethlehem Steel Company (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania); Harrison (New Jersey) Soccer Club; Fall River (Massachusetts) United; and J and P Coats (Pawtucket, Rhode Island).

At the time the ASL was hailed as the vehicle to begin soccer’s rise as the second major sport in the United States, joining baseball.

Al Spink, who founded The Sporting News, wrote:

At last soccer football is to take its place as the winter game to be played from fall to spring, and in the same way as baseball is played from spring to fall. There is a (great) deal of capital behind the newest soccer enterprise. The president of the league is W. Luther Lewis, a brother of H. Edgar Lewis, vice-president of the Bethlehem Steel Company. Thomas W. Cahill, the guiding spirit of the league, has been called the father of American soccer. He conceived and founded the present national body, which has grown to such proportions it embraces some 25 affiliated state associations fostering the booting sport.

It was, indeed, a big deal. With owners flashing plenty of money around and willing to spend it, rosters were augmented by the arrival of many European stars.

The Boston Globe trumpeted one of the first big signings:

British soccer stars have already begun to arrive here to get a chance in the new league. (Willie) Porter, the crack Hearts Forward of the Scottish League, landed yesterday and was promptly captured by Philadelphia.

But soccer’s relationship to America has always been a rocky one, and it wasn’t long before things went sideways. While international players elevated the game here, their influx all but shut out native-born footballers.

In a 1927 column, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Westbrook Pegler addressed the issue:

There are only two native Americans in this league, Davey Brown, of the New York Giants, the leading goal scorer of the league, and Tommy Florrie, of the Providence team. The rest of the athletes are English, Irish and Scotch, Welsh, Germans, Frenchmen, Italians and Jews from Austria. The British Isles are the greatest soccer country in the world, but although crowds of 100,000 have been checked in at the turnstiles for big games in England, the president of the American Soccer League claims that his teams pay highersalaries than any of the European teams. That is why the European club owners are always so leery of agents representing the American teams.

This financial tug-of-war created a major rift between the USFA and soccer’s international governing body, FIFA, but then the ASL also began quarreling with the USFA over participation in the National Challenge Cup, which required extensive travel and took place during the league’s regular season. The ongoing ASL vs. USFA crisis became known as the “Soccer War,” leaving both sides much worse for wear. Ultimately there was infighting among league owners themselves, franchises came and went, and when the USFA put financial backing behind a new league in 1928 (the Eastern Professional Soccer League) the ASL’s days as soccer’s grand United States showcase were numbered. The Great Depression – which began in August, 1929 – made sure of that.

By the time it went out of business in 1933, the American Soccer League had burned through 47 different teams but never expanded beyond the Northeast. One hundred years after the ASL’s introduction, American professional soccer still hasn’t become “the fall and winter sport of the country,” which I’m certain would be disappointing to Mr. Scholefield. It is, however, still alive and kicking. And as someone who owns $125 worth of Chattanooga FC, this makes me happy.