![]() ![]() By contrast, the Washington Darts, the team DeLeon later joined, had seven Trinidadians on the roster. As DeLeon recounted, he decided to join the New York Generals in 1969 after a recruitment trip to England in which he only saw one Black player, West Ham’s Clyde Best. It led players like Trinidad and Tobago’s Leroy DeLeon to choose the NASL rather than sign contracts with European teams. They were aided in their search by overseas racism, both implicit and state-sponsored.Įuropean teams in the 1970s had relatively low numbers of Black players playing in them. And this often meant bringing in African and African diaspora players. ![]() NASL teams needed to strike a balance – and balance their budgets – by searching for players who were talented but also undervalued. It also set a course for rosters featuring players from around the world – and not only through the import of fading stars. It resulted in increased attendances and a higher media profile in the U.S. It represented a who’s who of the soccer world, albeit an aging one. Other global stars who signed for different teams included elite global players such as Johan Cruyff, Gerd Müller, Peter Osgood, Bobby Moore, Eusébio and George Best. The Cosmos followed the signing by bringing in other global stars, such as Germany’s World Cup winning captain Franz Beckenbauer, Italian Giorgio Chinaglia and Brazilian Carlos Alberto. Pelé chats with fellow New York Cosmos player Manoel Maria in 1975. The New York Cosmos, owned by Warner Communications, was one of earliest NASL teams to reach out to international star power, luring Pelé out of retirement to play three seasons for a reported US$4.7 million. And that is when the story of the league’s diversity really takes off. After playing his first game for the Portland Timbers, Pat Howard – a former player for the English team Everton – found himself thinking, “What kind of football is this? I mean, there were blinking cavalry charges up the wings, ducks behind the goal, firecrackers going on.”Ī study commissioned by the NASL convinced the league that it would have to increase the skill level of the game if it hoped to grab the largest possible viewership. Likewise, European players often found the innovations of the NASL off-putting. Polls revealed that these traditional soccer supporters perceived the quality of play in the league to be so inferior that they weren’t interested in attending games. Although the NASL was able to enlarge its audience among a subset of fans through these stylistic distractions, others felt alienated by the focus on razzmatazz.Īs Newsweek reported at the time, first-generation immigrants – the demographic expected to make up the supporting base – stayed away. Rules were tweaked to increase the number of goals, and more traditional American sports add-ons – tailgating and cheerleaders, for example – were encouraged to help improve the atmosphere.īut the impulse to alter both the substance and meaning of the game had mixed results, at best. To that end, the league decided to make a number of alterations. Most team owners and league commissioner Phil Woosnam believed the NASL needed more sizzle to appeal to an American market. Growth was slow – by 1973 there were nine teams, and games had an average attendance of about 6,000 fans. A full dozen of the 17 inaugural teams folded after the first year, leaving just five competing in the second season. With minimal audiences at the gates and a TV contract that was scrapped early on because of dismal ratings, the league struggled early on. It ran from 1968 to 1984 and peaked in popularity the mid-1970s. Most often remembered for bringing Pelé to the U.S., the NASL was arguably the first serious attempt to develop a truly professional “major” soccer league in the country. Indeed, the MLS had, as a model of diversity, an earlier attempt to get Americans to embrace the “beautiful game”: the North American Soccer League, or NASL. Members of racial minorities make up 63% of players and 36% of head coaches, according to the latest diversity scorecard from the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport.Īs a soccer scholar and author of the forthcoming book “ Soccer’s Neoliberal Pitch,” I know that this diversity is in part by design and has deep roots. The league, commonly known as the MLS, has long prided itself as a standard-bearer for racial and national diversity: Last season saw players from 82 countries across six continents compete for teams. 25, 2023, as Major League Soccer returns after a winter break. North America’s most diverse professional league kicks off on Feb. Patrick ‘Ace’ Ntsoelengoe in action for the Toronto Blizzard. ![]()
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