The post in question at This Is American Soccer (TIAS), one of the oldest and most thoughtful American soccer blogs out there, was entitled “American soccer media landscape needs to get beyond the blog.” It’s an incisive, intelligent exploration by Adam Spangler of soccer writing and the possibilities of forming new, in-depth coverage of the game in America “beyond the blog”.

Though dated February 2010, the questions Adam asks about how this can happen remain valid today:

Soccer journalism’s living death is a real problem, one we can only hope changes in the wake of a World Cup year (and bid for 2018/2022), increased MLS, USMNT, and national player success, and the overall consumer growth of the sport. In lieu of what sometimes seems like every blog trying to be everything to everyone—in the wake of the reshuffling of media names in the ever changing of world of journalism, what should it all mean?

We are not lacking for words on American soccer (can you keep up with the blogosphere?), and I am supremely sure the quality writers are out there, either underemployed (or not really employed at all, writing for nothing in their free time with the consequences this has for the type of coverage created, as interesting as some of the writing is), or churning out words at an obscene rate to attract enough eyeballs to keep the likes of goal.com in business.

We lack the publications that have as their defining marker what Adam calls “long-lead feature writing.” For Adam, this absence is particularly reflected by the dearth of stories that tell us more than the surface story about American soccer; in particular, of how a fan connects to and understands players. That requires spending time with the subject, and that usually means a cost is entailed, one few existing publications are prepared to pay for soccer stories. As Spangler says:

Players by and large aren’t millionaires, and they could use some attention both for the sake of their game and off-field marketing pursuits. Compared to other sports, more soccer players are highly educated, offering intelligent opinions but also, and more importantly, they have unique paths and stories (just stop asking them about how well the team did and begin spending as much time talking about off the field as on it).

Many readers are simply too young to know what they are really missing—that imaginative and telling narrative that brings their sports heroes to life and reflect the lives of readers while taking them into the lives of players. I don’t, for example, know a single thing about Blanco and his life in Chicago and MLS. That’s a shame. Angel in NYC? For real, America’s best soccer player, Landon Donovan, has never had a proper feature article written about him?

Adam is quite right on this. For me and for the other founders of XI, this is only one element of North American soccer that simply isn’t being told; at least since the passing of Steven Wells, most articles on fan culture – to pick my area of focus – scratch only the surface. Journalists and bloggers have only the most cursory understanding of the beautiful madness that drives fans to spend hundreds of volunteer hours creating elaborate tifo displays for MLS clubs owned by billionaires, or of how social responsibility should (does?) play into fan group activities, or of how North American soccer is refracted from ultra culture elsewhere, or of how MLS’ commercial emphasis threatens a co-option of a fiercely independent but fragile culture. In fact, even the surface of those stories have barely been scratched.

The same goes for women’s soccer; for ethnic identity and soccer; for the business of the sport; for youth development; the grassroots of the game at amateur and lower-league level; the way game the is administered; the way it is played; its tactical development on this continent. And so on, all so little understood, all so little explained by the people that matter to people who can write about it in-depth entertainingly and intelligently, in ways where an editor engages with a writer and shapes a story over weeks or months, in a fashion that is then visually laid out and presented to enhance the story, rather than to generate clicks on google ads.

To get back to Jason’s original tweet, hopefully the establishment of both XI and Howler are steps “beyond the blog”, with two quarterly print magazines giving writers some time, some space, some support in crafting stories that tell compelling narratives about North American soccer. Speaking for XI, a very specific niche will be filled; this won’t be a general purpose magazine telling timely stories, it will be one theme per issue, explored in eleven unique ways. I’m not sure exactly what Howler are planning, but I am excited to find out.

I’m also very interested to see if these new quarterly publications do indeed to prove to be steps toward more in-depth soccer media: it doesn’t, by any means, always have to be print, or even via the written word. It just has to be thoughtful, it has to be resourced, and it has to sell – or it’s unlikely to succeed. For XI, that funding has to come from the soccer community, using a resource for launch capital Spangler understandably didn’t mention over two years ago: Kickstarter, a rather fantastic way for creative projects to get off the ground. Hopefully, as soccer grows on this continent, its media will find more and more ways grow up with it.

Look at those numbers again, though. 1,774 posts; 39 selected for the book, with perhaps the same number again of equal quality as those put into print. That’s something like 5% of the blog’s output. Now, the rest was still – I hope – interesting stuff: a lot of photography, quick analysis, your day-to-day link roundups. It became a grind, and everyone else starting doing the same kind of blogging. Producing the really, really good content – the kind worthy of ink on real paper – became an increasing challenge, buried under the avalanche of Twitter and Facebook and Tumblr (and I genuinely love Tumblr) coming at you all day, every day.

No time to breathe, to think, to write, to edit, to explore the bigger picture in truly thoughtful depth.

That’s why myself and two other bloggers who pioneered longform soccer writing in North America before I took my own crack at it – David Keyes (The Culture of Soccer) and John Turnbull (The Global Game) – decided in the fall of 2011 to create a new soccer publication. Not a blog, updated daily; not a topical news magazine, published weekly or monthly; but a quarterly periodical, giving us time to reflect on what we even want to write about before beginning. When it’s in print, every page will have been through many layers of consideration, its graphical look crafted by a gifted creative dedicated to that task, JL Murtaugh.

XI will offer an outlet for story-tellers to explore the game from a North American perspective as the soccer boom continues on this continent, and the game has gone from marginalized to its forthcoming ESPN-ization. There needs to be a space in which to examine the margins of the game as well as the mainstream; the millions of amateurs and how they play, the supporters’ culture still so readily misunderstood, the women’s game, the business behind the scenes, or the play on the field from an unusual angle. The story of soccer in North America is one with a deeper past than many appreciate – that will be a topic of importance for XI – and its present is a more diverse one than the daily media has time to consider.

The first issue of XI aims to illustrate this: eleven pieces (get it?) will delve into how immigration has shaped North American soccer, from the earliest times to the twenty-first century. The eleven pieces will not all be long-form essays: this story will also be illustrated in other arrangements, from photography to poetry. XI’s form will be flexible, its graphic design shaped by the tales it tells.

We hope that eleven out of eleven pieces will be worth treasuring in print in every issue of XI.

For this to happen, XI needs the support of the soccer community: the publication aims to raise $11,000 over the next four weeks to launch, and you can give whatever you can (over $2) on the XI Kickstarter page. Thank you for anything you can give, or any help in spreading the word (find XI on Twitter, Facebook, G+ and Tumblr too).

The Pitch Invasion podcast is based out of Chicago and Milwaukee, the respective homes for the show’s hosts Tom Dunmore and Peter Wilt, covering the world of soccer from a North American angle.

The show is available to stream or download below and is also on iTunes or available via RSS. Check out the PI Podcast archive here.

Please let us know your thoughts on the show in the comments below or drop us a tweet:
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This is the identity that Detroit City FC have pinned themselves to. An instantly recognizable civic symbol of Detroit, and one that suggests sophisticated urbanism rather than suburban soccer.

One of the leading figures behind Detroit City FC, Sean Mann, spoke to Pitch Invasion this week about the new club, who will begin play at the fourth tier of American soccer in the NPSL this May.

You can listen to the full interview with Sean below, or over on iTunes.

Sean explains how Detroit City FC sprouted from an urban soccer league (Detroit City Futbol League) he began a couple of years ago: “When people think of Detroit, they think of a big blob of decay,” Sean said. “But in reality it’s a city with a whole slew of neighborhoods that often get overlooked. So my idea was let’s get people together, let’s build up neighborhood pride and neighborhood recognition. For me, the perfect vehicle for that was soccer.”

That vehicle, according to this piece at model D, quickly proved to be a great success:

Here is a puzzle. Create a program that can achieve the following results:

1) Rally hundreds of motivated, young Detroit residents around a single cause. 2) Highlight 22 different historic neighborhoods throughout the city, and create unique branding for each. 3) Get the crowd out to a different bar, in a different neighborhood, each week. 4) Double the number of participants by the second year. 5) Get 10 people to pack up and move to Detroit.

This sounds like a job that will need a lot of financing, committees and sub-committees, and months planning with a large team in place to implement, right? Wrong. This is what happens when you start up a soccer league in Detroit.

League Commissioner Sean Mann started the Detroit City Futbol League last year as a way to bring city residents together, to celebrate the rich fabric of neighborhoods that make up the city, and to bring the 18-and-over crowd together over something other than frustrating politics.

Detroit City FC aim, at the grassroots level of the NPSL’s essentially semi-pro fourth tier of American soccer, to tap into that urban crowd, and bring them together in the city to support a team consciously striving to appeal to adult supporters and participants already in love with the sport.

“Our core focus is on using this team to build the supporters culture, to boost the supporters culture that’s already here in Detroit and give them a bigger platform,” Sean explained.

Sean tells Pitch Invasion how Detroit City FC’s identity came about, who’s behind it and their hopes for the future. Give the interview a listen to learn about an unusual approach to building a soccer club in North America, and special thanks to Sean for joining us in a special extra episode of the Pitch Invasion podcast.

One correction: we mistakenly identify the Michigan Bucks as playing in USL Pro rather than USL PDL.

But there’s still a problem. Major League Soccer’s uniform font persists, blocking the orderly progression of good design.

The idea that the entire league would use the same font lockups is interesting to begin with. North American leagues largely allow teams leeway in customizing the look of their numbers and letters; that’s how you get Red Sox “3”s, Laker “3”s old Blue Jay “3”s and Steeler “3”s. Thousands of colleges and minor league teams have unique takes too. On the world stage, soccer is far from uniform, and international competitions showcase a range of interesting font design. Conversely, the English Premier League has been perfecting the font lockup for at least 15 years; any international soccer fan will recognize the word “Scholes” set in the Premier Leage’s first universal font (a squeezed Optima, in fact), and “Rooney” set in the present version. These aren’t just Manchester United fonts, of course – they’re league-wide, regardless of club or jersey maker. That “Premier League look” – a classy, professional font, topped off by the lion logo “bug” at the base of each jersey numeral, has gone some way towards giving the league a certain distinction and a somewhat regal air.

In some respects, the first 15 years of MLS is best described as a collection of emulated behaviors; some came from the domestic sports landscape (often the NFL) and some from international sport. In this case, MLS chose to model the English game, right down to the logo-enhanced numerals. This is a pretty good idea, in my estimation; anything that builds league-wide identity and promotes professionalism was and is good for the league. But MLS picked a very different style for the execution.

I don’t know the name of the font, so I’ll call it “Camaro Sans”. It’s fast – so fast, the wind is sweeping over every character, shearing off fore-facing corners and connectors, and even blowing the numerals backwards into italics. The “N”s and “M”s are playfully lowercase even in uppercase applications, and the “I”s have it both ways, with a cute slash that could denote a tittle. Half-piping around the numerals look more like racing stripes. And the numeral logos – not a lion, but the old MLS boot-meets-ball model – are proudly there like license plates at the bottom of each number where you’d expect them.

In short, it is the Camaro of fonts – it’s souped up and sleek and if you’re MLS, maybe you hope it ends up in a poster on an impressionable kid’s bedroom wall. But that same appeal dates quickly and now, after a few years of growing up, when the kid is 25 and wants an S-Class, it’s a bit laughable. MLS design choices may have, in the past, been necessarily bold, but at this point in the league’s history, the font presents a somewhat tacky look.

In today’s MLS, there are teams trying to be modern and sleek – and also classic, and traditional, and brazenly original. While the EPL found a look that blends into teams’ identities, the MLS lockup aggressively pushes an aesthetic onto every team that, today, rarely fits. Soccer isn’t a new idea on the American landscape anymore; the public doesn’t need to be hit over the head with “sport of the future” or “soccer is super cool!” metaphors any longer. American soccer fans are ready to accept more refined design ideas.

I think the league-wide lockup should stay. But it’s time to iterate. My ideal?

How about a look that’s distinctive, but a little less jarring and single-minded? This is set in Mentone, and it’s a simple, professional look. I really like how the x-height of the nameplate is far less pronounced, and the numerals are flat and simple – much more timeless and adaptable.

Or,

Here’s a sportier style, set in Cuprum, which gives the name a bit more prominence and allows the numerals some spring (with the offset shadows) without going too far down the racing-stripe path.

Or perhaps:

Here’s a very all-American, almost collegiate look, set in a combination of Dezen Pro (for the letters) and Inconsolata (for the numerals). The numbers retain a bit of definition with a very subtle knockout-offset.

And finally, the compromise. If you must retain that sport-of-the-future feel (or just evolve slowly from today’s look),

Update the current look with a lockup that retains the italics (as much as I dislike that idea), but brightens everything up and brings it forward to a more modern era of design. (This is set in Agency, by the way.) I don’t much enjoy this part of the design spectrum, but it may be a more practical iterative direction for MLS if they are irretrievably hooked on the idea of a speedy, brandable design.

MLS has some great individual identities, and they continue to get better. I think that their instinct to follow the Premier League’s uniform font-lockup is inspired, and appropriately unique for North American soccer. I’d even keep the logo bugs in each and every uniform numeral (the MLS logo itself is another topic). And there is plenty of theory on legibility, weight and balance to get right. But the days of appealing to some vague notion of speedy, futuristic, teenage coolness are over for MLS. They need to concentrate on fostering tradition, connection, and professionalism. One easy way to do that is with a new, league-wide font that leaves today’s model out in the parking lot to rust.

The 1960 season had featured network television coverage on Saturday nights, and a crowd of 25,000 for the final, won by Bangu of Brazil at the Polo Grounds. Its appeal had been high-quality soccer aimed at ethnic audiences who retained a love for the sport and would cheer on teams often billed by nationality (“Italy”, or really, Sampdoria for example).

In a lengthy interview early in the 1961 season, the league’s impresario Bill Cox was interviewed by Arthur Daley of the New York Times. Cox was described as “polished and urbane”, a man who “communicates confidence in success with the convincing assurance of an astronaut.”

Cox explained that though he was not making money from the league, he saw the ISL as a “long-term investment.”

In this vein, Cox asked “How do you define success? Is it measured by profits or by the fact you broke even and can see a bright future ahead? Everything included, gate receipts and television income, made us quite happy with our first year of results.”

Cox was open and honest about exactly what the league needed to do in order to be sustainable fiscally. An average crowd of 8,500 would be needed, he said, at an average ticket price of $3.25 per spectator – good value given most match-ups were double-headers. Cox compared this favorably to a game in Milan he had seen – $8 a head, and featuring teams “that couldn’t win a game in our league” – or $8 for a Broadway show.

The expensive business of flying in teams from around the world was also revealed by Cox: totaling $800,000, $100,000 of that went on chartered planes alone. The ISL covered hotel bills, and $6 a day per man for meals: “They can eat well enough at that price,” Cox said, “because we have the recreation director we assign to the hotel supply them with lists of restaurants catering to each nationality. Only the French might find it low and only if they insist on fancy wines with their meals.”

Wages for each game well-exceeded the $1,000 per game foreign teams had been used to in the days before the ISL, and reports from various teams suggest they were paid somewhere between $1,500 and $3,000 per game, while Cox said his New York Americans made more than $100 a man each per week.

Overall, the New York Times concluded that for Cox, “the launching of the soccer capsule went off beautifully.” The only doubt in Cox’s mind, it seemed, was “how soon he’ll get into orbit.”

Take-Off?

Once again, in 1961 the league was divided into two separate mini-leagues, with the winner of each playing in a grand final – though this time, the final would be contested over two games instead of a single game.

The first mini-league, section one, contained defending champions Bangu of Brazil, who were joined by a strong Everton team from England, West Germany’s Karlsruhe, Romania’s Dinamo Bucharest, Turkey’s Besiktas, Scotland’s Kilmarnock and two North American representatives: Montreal Concordia of Canada and the New York Americans.

It was Everton – the “Merseyside Millionaires” – who came most feted, and with a match fee of $2,500 per game, a considerable amount at a time that England had only just ended its restrictive maximum wage for players.

In the early weeks, Everton took charge of the league with a string of victories. Meanwhile, the Romanians quickly earned a reputation as a physical and aggressive team. These might be summer exhibition games for the Europeans in theory, but the practice of the ISL was for tough games marred by expulsions and with rowdy crowds sometimes interfering with the play on the field.  Their opening game, a 0-0 draw with Bangu, saw the Romanians called for 22 fouls.

Yet they were hardly alone in their rough approach to play. On June 11th, Everton suffered a 2-0 loss to Bangu at the Polo Grounds, in a game that saw 34 fouls called. The physical play resulted in Darcy de Faria, Bangu’s left-back, fracturing an ankle: he was rushed to Columbia Medical Center. Everton’s Northern Irish international, Billy Bingham, was sent-off for punching Bangu’s Carlos Beto.

“Bangu’s infractions,” the New York Times commented, “were not nearly so glaring as Everton’s.”

Perhaps there were scores to be settled: the two teams had actually met two months earlier, at Goodison Park in Liverpool, a 1-1 tie.

This, after all, was an era when international club play was still feeling its way; there would be many more, higher profile violent battles between European and South American clubs with their different understandings of “fair play” to come later in the decade.

When Everton faced Dinamo Bucharest, sparks inevitably flew. A 4-0 win for the Liverpudlians was described as a “very brutal affair”, with fisticuffs breaking out more than once. Both teams had a man expelled, Everton’s Bobby Collins and Bucharest’s Ivan Dimitru.

This was hardly the sort of play that Cox was paying good money for. Meantime, the New York “Americans” were still little more American than they had been in 1960, mostly made up of British players on tour for a dollar, though they did include some players from the American Soccer League: Ukrainian Nationals’ Gene Vinyei and New York Hakoah’s Alex Chantraire and Ben Zim.

The Americans achieved a mediocrity that was hardly likely to win over a New York enthralled by a magical season for the Yankees, on their way to a World Series win, with Roger Maris breaking Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record. ISL games often went up against Yankees’ games on Sundays.

Meantime, there were problems in Montreal. Crowds were poor at Molson Stadium, with one rain-sodden game between Concordia and Karlsruhe seen by less than 1,000 fans in June. The home team, Concordia, won only two of its seven games.

Section one’s limited excitement ended in Montreal in mid-June with a one-sided affair. Everton crushed the New York Americans 7-0, sealing the section one title before the mini-league’s final two games with six goals in the second half. Bangu, in second place, could not catch Everton whatever they did in their final game the next day, the defending champions unseated.

Cox’s high hopes had taken a hit in the first section. Most talk had been about foul play rather than good soccer, and crowds had been sparse at times. The North American teams had performed without distinction. Would the second section and the grand final revive the prospects for America’s major soccer league?

To Be Continued . . .

• Read Part One of the International Soccer League story
• Read Part Two of the International Soccer League story
• Read Part Three the International Soccer League story

I have the perspective of being intimately involved in the creation and launch of WPS from 2007 through 2009 as founding President of WPS’ Chicago Red Stars.  I also have some strong opinions about the sport’s future direction.  Frankly, my own failure, along with that of my WPS colleagues, to rein in expenses is the reason WPS is on the verge of collapse.  While I was preaching fiscal responsibility from the beginning, it wasn’t enough.   I took a sizable pay cut to join the Chicago Red Stars, but I was still paid too much (as was just about everyone else associated with the League) relative to where the revenues ended up.

Current WPS players, supporters and administrators are now begging US Soccer and anyone else who will listen for another chance, an extension, another year to get on its feet.  Specifically WPS is asking US Soccer to extend its waiver of an eight team minimum standard for classification as a first division professional league even though the League has shrunk from six teams to five since the end of its third and perhaps final season.  Most, if not all people commenting or considering this issue believe that there are no alternative ways to save professional women’s soccer in the U.S. other than having US Soccer grant WPS its waiver.

I disagree.

It may sound cruel, but I believe the best thing for the future of women’s professional soccer (lower case) in the U.S. is pulling the plug on Women’s Professional Soccer (upper case) as we know it and replacing it with an improved streamlined model that would entice more investors throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Here is why WPS is failing:

• Spent too much money on players
• Spent too much money on coaches
• Spent too much money on front office personnel
• Spent too much money on advertising
• Spent too much money on League operations and promotion

OK, so I could have saved some space there and simply written “Spent too much money”.  WPS didn’t spend too much money as in “WUSA has American cable TV’s checkbook” too much money, but WPS expected that it could maintain revenue levels from WUSA while reducing overhead.  It couldn’t.  The spending did many good things – necessary things.  It lured Marta and a host of other top international players, it kept the US Women’s National Team players in the League and it attracted a few major sponsors and a national broadcast deal.  But in the end, it wasn’t enough.

It’s ironic that WPS’ cause of death will be the same as its predecessor WUSA.  WPS thought it learned lessons from WUSA and spent much less than WUSA.  WPS indeed did spend less than WUSA, but was dealt fatal blows on two accounts: 1) revenues fell in proportion to expenses and 2) ownership wealth had been replaced by passion.  Passion can’t pay the bills.

Bay Area CyberRays' Sissi, left, of Brazil, and Thori Staples Bryan, right, carry the Founders Cup around the field after they defeated the Atlanta Beat at the inaugural WUSA Championship at Foxboro Stadium in Foxboro, Mass. Saturday, Aug. 25, 2001. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

The League successfully sold 11 franchises, but six folded, left or were kicked out of the League.  I made the prediction before WPS kicked its first ball that it would add teams faster than MLS, but it would also lose teams faster than MLS.  Sadly that prediction came true and the losses exceeded the gains six to four.  To put it into football terms, after three seasons WPS was -2 in takeaways.

WPS could continue another year as it is, but frankly it would be more of the same and would lead back to the same place. Five teams confined to the eastern time zone playing a shortened schedule to avoid Olympic conflicts is just plain ugly.

Puma has opted out of its seven figure annual agreement that paid most of the League’s central office bills.  Sponsors aren’t lining up to replace that funding and the league no longer has its partnership with Soccer United Marketing to fall back on.  If WPS does manage to hold on another year, it will be small, obscure and unlikely to improve its economic condition.  Attracting one, two or even three more teams the following year is possible.  There are legitimate inquiries to make commitments to join WPS, which could help US Soccer justify an extension of the minimum team waiver and buoy the League’s hopes for growth and survival.  But any additions could just as easily be offset by losses of existing teams.

I also don’t see that simply adding investors to the current business model which has failed every team every year will change the future of the League.  Believing that last summer’s FIFA Women’s World Cup or next year’s Olympic games will change the economic condition of the League is delusional.  Any bump is short term and not enough to overcome the inherent weakness of the model.  Again, 11 teams have tried it over three years and none of them have come close to breaking even with this business model and the League’s top sponsor is gone.  Adding teams to “Save WPS” without radically changing the model would simply put off the inevitable.

Suffice it to say the future’s not bright and you don’t gotta wear shades to view WPS’ future…and that’s not even considering the legal and public relations quagmire with magicJack and its owner Dan Borislow.

Chicago Red Stars' Women's Professional Soccer player Ella Masar, left, and 2010 draft pick Whitney Engen model their new uniforms for the Chicago Red Stars at Puma's 2010 WPS uniform unveiling hosted at the Trust building in Philadelphia Friday, Jan. 15, 2010. (AP Photo/Mark Stehle for Puma)

A new model is needed that will attract not just a handful of teams, but as many as 20 teams and a coast to coast footprint for the sport.  I was always told that if you’re not a part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.  So, for your viewing pleasure I present to you my bullet point solution for a new professional women’s soccer league in the United States and Canada that would solve the current mess and launch the sport into a positive era that would grow the sport for the long term (warning: the following contains recommendations that some may consider grotesque and may cause idealistic supporters of women’s soccer to become ill):

• Base player salary budget of $100,000 to $150,000 per team.  18 players per team.  $0k to $3k per month in season per player.
• 2-3 designated players per team.  $4k to $10k per month in season per player. DP salaries are off budget.
• Recommended annual operation budget of $200,000 to $400,000 not including player compensation, though teams that are willing and able could spend more on the business end.
• No NCAA eligible players
• April though August season (extension through September in Olympic and WWC years)
• Invite all current members of WPS, W-League, WPSL and MLS to place teams in the new League.
  • No entry fee for inaugural season.
  • $100,000 entry fee for expansion teams in ensuing seasons.
  • Must commit by last day of previous season to be eligible for following season.
  • $100,000 letter of credit for all teams to guarantee finishing season if teams can’t pay bills mid-season.
  • Operate league for the first year on a cooperative basis by US Soccer, USL and MLS.  USL and MLS operate the league going forward after the first season.
    • US Soccer would establish new, more realistic standards for a professional women’s league comparable to top women’s leagues in Europe.  This would allow both low budget and medium budget teams to compete on a relatively level playing field. In the first year, US Soccer would provide an overriding layer of governance similar to the 2010 D-2 League.
    • USL would use its infrastructure to manage the league’s administrative needs similar to its MISL relationship. USL’s compensation coming from low five figure annual league dues and a percentage of new franchise fees.
    • MLS/SUM would handle the league’s broadcast, marketing, sponsorship and communication responsibilities. MLS’ compensation coming from a percentage of sponsorship fees it generates.
    • If enough teams apply, play will be regional until the playoffs to limit travel expenses and increase rivalries.

Implications (bad and good):

• WPSL would be left out of the professional game and will likely lose teams to the new league. WPSL could more legitimately be pitched as a feeder league to the pro circuit.  New investors could start with a WPSL team and the learning curve to jump to the pro league wouldn’t be as great.  Could be a good selling point for new WPSL franchises.
• WPS as an entity and its office personnel would disappear and be replaced. The name could continue, but personally I’d prefer a fresh brand such as WMLS or anything else.
• Dilution of talent spread over more teams.  I believe as many as 20 teams could be assembled in this model between in the first three years and with that comes a spread of talent, which will reduce quality of play.  WPS, W-League, WPSL and MLS each likely have at least five teams that would very seriously look at joining this model.  If MLS is on board, they will add credibility and stability that would risk little to MLS and offer tremendous potential benefits in sponsorship and added integration into its local and national footprint.
• Some USWNT players may choose to play in Europe if they feel the competition won’t be as good in the new league or if enough teams don’t use their designated player slots as generously as needed to compete with European offers.  With up to 20 teams, there could be as many as 60 DP slots, which may or may not be used.  This is more than enough to accommodate full USWNT and many international stars – if the owners are willing and able to pay the $4k to $10k per month to keep this level of player in the new league. USWNT players receive their US compensation wherever they play.  Club salary usually increases their compensation by an additional 50% to 100% for most.  This proposed model shouldn’t change USWNT compensation much if at all.  More teams means it could actually increase competition for them and drive up their compensation.
• Second tier US players forced into retirement, because non DP compensation would top out around $3k per month.  Playing for a pro team provides a “business card” of sorts that gives players credibility and networking opportunities that help them gain decent paying coaching positions in youth and collegiate soccer.  This augments their “pro” compensation and provides a stepping stone to a post playing career.
• Top international players less likely to play in US.  DP slots would allow many to still play in the league.  And truth is, the depth of international talent has exploded over the last five years meaning those that choose not to stay can be more easily replaced than in the past.
• Many experienced coaches and administrators won’t be able to continue in women’s professional soccer at lower compensation.  There are only five teams, so there can’t be that many coaches and administrators that will lose their jobs.  Plus many more jobs, albeit low paying, will be created to seed a new generation of coaches and administrators.  Others will be able to finad a way to make it work by double dipping with other coaching or administrative positions.
• Lower salaries and operational budgets will create a semi-pro image that will further reduce sponsor, fan, broadcast and player interest.  It’s a step backward in image, but the reduced expenses are needed to bring fiscal sensibility to the business.  Increasing the number of teams will result in a growth of the base, get more people involved as investors, players, administrators and cumulatively as fans.  Critical mass of teams will ultimately generate more interest from sponsors, supporters and broadcasters in the future at which time teams can justify increases to their operational and player compensation budgets. If MLS teams indeed do join this League, they would be able to provide infrastructure that would be more professional than what WPS teams now offer and would serve to improve the image of the League for all stakeholders.

So there you go, my proposal to blow up what I helped create and start something new intended for long term growth and sustainability.  Some WPS teams are already embracing some of these recommendations, but not all.  Atlanta, for instance, is now a leader in controlling player costs.  Sky Blue FC has been a leader in business austerity from the beginning.  The current leaders of WPS should take control at this critical juncture and work with US Soccer, MLS, USL and the thousands of “Save WPS” petitioners to lead professional women’s soccer to a new and sustainable future.  It will require collaborative and unselfish work with great sacrifice for many, but I believe it can work.  What do you think?

The question as 1961 began was how the ISL would take the next steps to embed itself into American sporting culture, and spread from its sole base so far in New York. The ISL’s impresario, Bill Cox, said the league had made a small profit in 1960, despite spending a fortune bringing over teams from Europe and South America. The ISL was ready to expand its horizons.

The Future of American Soccer?

Cox also faced the challenge of working with the existing soccer infrastructure. Could he find a way to develop the league for the long-term benefit of American soccer? Or would he have to take on the entrenched forces head-on, and beat them dollar for dollar? The American Soccer League – the country’s existing, established national league, albeit one of lower quality than the ISL – had long been making its money by arranging exhibition tours with high-profile teams from overseas. This was precisely the market Cox was trying to corner.

Cox had, though, so far kept relations with the ASL warm enough. A few of the New York Americans’ own ethnic players had come from ASL teams, and the ISL had a formal tie to the ASL.

Cox continued his efforts to keep the ASL and the United States Soccer Football Association (the USSFA – later to become the USSF) onside with his venture. In January 1961, he went on a media blitz offering support for the future of American soccer, especially the Olympic team, struggling on an international level.

“In every year from now to the next Olympics in 1964, our league is willing to help with clinics, travel expenses for amateur players and other expenditures to a modest degree,” Cox said in widely quoted remarks. “The International Soccer League is prepared to contribute money, ideas and personnel toward the development of improved amateur players. In its first season, the league has stimulated interest in this sport on the secondary school level.”

His efforts bore fruit, at least for his own league in the short-term. In the summer of 1961, the American Soccer League only scheduled one international exhibition game during the ISL season. And the USSFA would soon play a key role in ensuring the league could continue without FIFA sanction.

Montreal Concordia

Crucially, the league also took its first step to expansion outside of the New York metropolitan area. Concordia Club of Montreal would play at the 25,000 capacity McGill University Stadium in the 1961 season, Cox revealed. Indeed, Cox’s aim was to make Montreal a second base for the league, with the initial plans stating that seven games would be played there, along with the first-leg of the two-legged final, scheduled for August 3rd.

Concordia were backed by Joe Slyomovics who was, according to the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, a “millionaire Czech immigrant.”

Concordia also played in one of Canada’s two small-time professional soccer leagues, the National League, containing six teams from Toronto along with Concordia of Montreal.

The ISL saw an opportunity for soccer to establish itself in Canada as baseball had declined in popularity, the attendance numbers for the Montreal Royals in International League baseball having collapsed. The Star-Phoenix confidently asserted in January 1961 that “Pro soccer, making a second bid for a Canadian foothold, has recorded uneven progress, but the roots are apparently firm and the future bright. The game still has a long way to go but already it has supplanted baseball as one of Canada’s Big Three in team sports, joining hockey and football.”

Slyomovics announced that Concordia would only retain half-a-dozen of its players from 1960, including left back Hector Lopez, left half Tommy Barrett, inside forward Hector Daderio, two goalkeepers and fullback George Savage.

Like New York, the Canadians would look to stock most of their roster with quality international players, especially from the Britsh Isles. Cox stated that because of the ISL’s success in 1960, foreign teams were far more confident in loaning out their top players.

“All doubt has vanished now,” Cox said confidently. “We are being offered not the reserve players we had to take last year but the foremost ones. This means our New York team should be the equal of the foreign invaders, and that Concordia also will be well stocked with the best foreign performers as [well as] its own Canadian stars.”

The rumour mill began to spin. Saskatchewan’s Leader-Post reported that Concordia had offered Leicester City’s Welsh international forward Ken Leek – who had been in Wales’ 1958 World Cup squad as an eighteen-year-old – £50 a week to join them. Leek, only 20, had requested a transfer after being dropped for Leicester’s defeat to Tottenham Hotspur in the 1961 FA Cup final. The speculation was spot-on, as Leek soon signed on loan with Montreal (during the ISL season, Leicester would transfer Leek permanently to Newcastle United).

The wages being offered by the ISL were, by 1961 standards for British professionals, enormous. In 1960, the maximum wage in the Football League stood restricted at £20. Led by Jimmy Hill, England’s professionals were agitating hard for the maximum wage restriction to be abolished. In January 1961, the Football League capitulated and the maximum wage was abolished.

The New York Americans stocked their roster with talent that their player-coach, Welshman Alf Sherwood, described in glowing terms: “We had only six chaps from England on the team last season,” he explained. “all young and not with a great deal of experience. This time we not only have more English players, but more formidable, well-known performers as well. Every man in this group has been playing top-level soccer for eight or ten years.”

The imports included Ken McPherson, a prolific scorer for Newport County and Scottish centre-forward John McCole of Leeds United.

But the ISL’s growing stature and appeal to leading players had begun to cause international irritation. Cox received a blow in January when the West German league became the first to bar its clubs from entering the ISL. Bayern Munich would not return for a second season, though the league would eventually lift its ban, allowing Karlsruhe to represent West Germany in the 1961 ISL season, replacing Eintracht Frankfurt, who had originally been scheduled to play.

Expansion

As the winter of 1961 moved on, Cox soon began announcing the final line-up of teams to the league, now to be enlarged to 15 teams from 12 in 1960. Everton were the marquee English representative, a real coup for Cox, the Liverpudlians having made a considerable splash with their transfer spending in the previous 12 months (they would eventually finish fifth in the First Division, shortly before the ISL began play). Also from the British Isles came Ireland’s Shamrock Rovers, League of Ireland champions in 1959.

Along with Montreal representing Canada and Karlsruhe of West Germany, six other nations would make their debuts in the ISL with Turkey’s Besiktas, Romania’s Dinamo Bucharest, Czechoslovakia’s Dukla Prague, France’s Monaco, Israel’s Petah Tikvah and Spain’s Espanyol all scheduled to take part.

Returning were champions Bangu of Brazil, along with the defeated finalists, Scotland’s Kilmarnock. Yugoslavia’s Red Star Belgrade also made their second appearance as did Rapid Vienna of Austria (the latter would hope to improve on their 1960 performance, where they had lost all four of their games).

The ISL divided the 15 teams into two sections of play once again, with the winner of each section to play in the final. Montreal competed in both sections.

Field of Dreams

Yet before the season even started, the ISL’s long-term plans received a considerable blow. The City of New York had taken over the ISL’s main venue, the dilapidated Polo Grounds in Manhattan, and in March 1961 confirmed its plans to demolish the stadium and build a public housing project on the land. The City did confirm that the 1961 sports’ schedule would go on as planned, but the future suddenly looked less clear for the ISL beyond that.

The Polo Grounds were a mess. The ISL’s attendance in 1960 – averaging well over 10,000 at the Manhattan stadium – did not look so bad when the brand new professional American football team in the city, the Titans of New York, only drew around 15,000 fans for their debut season in the autumn of 1960, also played at the Polo Grounds.

The owner of the Titans, Harry Wismer, later recalled the poor conditions, worsened for his team by the ISL’s games in the summer of 1960.

“From our clean, sunny, New Hampshire camp we were scheduled to make our league debut in the shabby, desolate Polo Grounds, which had been deteriorating steadily since the New York baseball Giants moved to San Francisco for the 1958 season. A soccer league had played on the “pitch,” but that merely aggravated conditions for football. The stands and seats were encrusted with grime. There was not enough parking space. The neighborhood was not good. In brief, this was the worst possible place to attract paying customers.”

The Polo Grounds, April 1963

A Renegade League?

International entanglements caused other problems. On May 21st, only four days after the ISL’s season opener, FIFA suddenly announced that the ISL was an unauthorised league and any club competing in it would be suspended from playing in all affiliated leagues; Everton, waiting to play their ISL opener against Montreal, became very nervous and said they would wait to hear official word from the Football Association before taking part in the league.

FIFA had passed a new rule in April, stating that international tournaments had to be under the control of national associations. The controversy erupted due to comments made by Stanley Rous, a FIFA Vice-President (and soon to be president), that the league had not sent in the correct papers showing it adhered to this rule. Montreal’s owner Joe Slyomovics was dubious about the concerns: “Each team participating in the International Soccer League has received permission from the governing bodies in their own countries,” he commented, adding “Rous is only one man, and I don’t see in what capacity he made the statement.”

The ISL said that there had been a “technical difficulty,” with its paperwork lost somewhere between between New York and Switzerland. It was affiliated to the USSFA, it said, through its relationship with the ASL. Not having heard back from FIFA after sending in the required schedule and affiliation information, the ISL said it had presumed it could proceed. James McGuire, the Vice-President of the United States Soccer Football Association, stated that he had asked FIFA officials in Zurich to “phone me collect” to clear up the misunderstanding, explaining that he had sent a cable stating any obstacles to the ISL proceeding as planned “would be extremely harmful to the sport in this country.”

At 4am New York time on the morning of Everton’s game against Montreal on May 23rd, McGuire received his collect call from Zurich, FIFA’s executive secretary Dr. Helmuth Kaeser calling to say that “as long as the rules and regulations are on the way, we have no intention or desire to stop the tournament.”

The ISL’s second season could, after all, continue as scheduled.

To be continued. . .

• Read Part One of the International Soccer League story
• Read Part Two of the International Soccer League story

As summer drew on, much of the city still mourned the absence of National League baseball, especially the Brooklyn Dodgers, who had moved to Los Angeles less than three years earlier, while the Giants had also moved to California around the same time.

Only the Yankees were left, and they played in the American League. Roger Maris led the league in RBIs and slugging percentage, but it was not a particularly remarkable year for the New York Yankees, though they still reached the World Series, losing in game seven to the Pittsburgh Pirates, Bill Mazeroski hammering the winning home run for Pittsburgh in the ninth inning. The Maris and Mantle magic would really start the next year.

A new football team was on the horizon – the Titans of New York (later to become the Jets) would begin play in the autumn of 1960 in the brand new American Football League at the Polo Grounds. The New York Giants, meanwhile, were already playing a key role in the growing popularity of professional American football – far from the behemoth it would later become – reaching but losing in the NFL championship game in both 1958 and 1959.  The Giants had moved from the Polo Grounds in Manhattan, their home from 1925 until 1955, and now played at Yankee Stadium in The Bronx.

In ice hockey, Original Six member the New York Rangers had not won the Stanley Cup since 1940, in the early decades of suffering through the “Curse of 1940″.

All in all, the ground appeared fertile for the International Soccer League (ISL), one of four major attempts to create a lasting outdoor professional soccer league in the United States during the twentieth century before the formation of Major League Soccer, according to the Society of American Soccer Historians.

As Sports Illustrated put it in early summer 1960 in a piece titled In Lieu of Giants, “Sport drew the world a little closer together last week when some of Europe’s top footballers arrived in New York City for an off-season of international soccer. This experiment in global unity was no bit of dreamy idealism on the part of well-intentioned do-gooders, but a solidly businesslike and sense-making piece of sports promotion, and as such we applaud it.

“Since the defection of National League baseball to the West Coast, New Yorkers have been hungry for a good summertime sport. Since New York is a cosmopolitan town, veteran Sports Promoter William D. Cox concluded it might prove a fertile field for soccer.”

As we saw in the first part of this series, the ISL was put together by former Philadelphia Phillies owner Bill Cox, aiming to appeal to newly-arrived immigrants on the east coast already keen on soccer. They would, he thought, flock to see the world’s best teams play in America, importing 11 teams from overseas while founding one local team, the New York Americans. His business plan, while not skimping on expenses, was not outrageous: the league could break-even with average crowds of around 10,000 per game.

The ISL kicked off in 1960, with the schedule dividing the teams into two sections of league play, with the winners of each facing each other in the championship game in early August. Kilmarnock won section one, finishing ahead of Bayern Munich, Nice, Glenavon, the New York Americans and English champions Burnley in June, and we left off our account just before the start of the second section’s season in early July.

In  May and June 1960, the ISL had gotten off to a decent, if not remarkable start. All the competing international teams sent their best players – including several national team stars – and attendance was strong at the games at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan. Games were competitive and hard-fought. The reviews of television broadcasts proved positive. Few fans, though, showed up in Jersey City for games at Roosevelt Stadium. Cox’s dream would depend on how the rest of the season panned out, but so far, he had shown a strong head for marketing and promoting professional soccer in North America.

Importantly, the ISL had become the first American league to feature regularly on national network television, with ten games broadcast in primetime on a Saturday night. High profile media coverage was evident in the extensive coverage given to the league by the New York Times.

The first section had consisted of a majority of British teams and players (even the New York Americans featured six British professionals). The second section Cox put together was far more multi-ethnic. It would put to the test Cox’s belief that appealing to numerous ethnic minorities in New York by bringing over high-quality teams from their homelands would bring out big crowds for the round-robin games to be played between July 2nd and July 30th by the six teams in section two, with the winning team to play Kilmarnock on Saturday, August 6th. This time, all the games would be played in Manhattan at the Polo Grounds.

From Yugoslavia came Red Star, league champions, featuring the enormously popular and gifted Dragoslav Šekularac, known as a showman. From Austria came Rapid Vienna, champions of Austria. The important Italian representative was Sampdoria, who had just finished eighth in Serie A. Also arriving were Sporting Club of Lisbon, who had just been pipped to the Portugese title by Benfica, and the Swedish champions, Norrköping. The division was completed by perhaps the most interesting team, the only South American side in the ISL, Bangu of Rio de Janeiro – who would later play in the 1967 United Soccer Association as the Houston Stars.

Cox had originally invited the state champions of Rio and São Paulo, Fluminese and Palmeiras respectively, but both were already committed to another tournament. Bangu, runners-up in Rio, were the next to be invited, and quickly cancelled their plans for a tour of Europe to head to New York instead – seeing the competition as a genuine club world championship that would establish an international reputation for themselves. Bangu sent 17 players, along with a radio journalist to cover the event and the club’s president, Cesar Mauricio Buscácio. Amongst the 17 was Zózimo Alves Calazans, who had been part of Brazil’s 1958 World Cup winning team.

Bangu began with a, uh, bang – they won their first two games comfortably, and even more importantly for Cox, helped to draw the league’s largest crowd to date at the Polo Grounds on July 10th as they took on Rapid Vienna: 19,804, paying between $2 and $4 each, provided strong gate receipts. The game was half of a double-header that also saw Sporting defeat Norrköping 4-3. Bangu’s game was no less exciting, as they defeated the Austrians 3-2, in hot, humid weather.

Notably, the New York Times reported the results not by using the club names, but by the respective nationalities, emphasising the ethnic nature of the intended appeal (see lineup cards to the right).

The physical play that had peppered the first section of games in June appeared again in the second section. Against Rapid Vienna on 13 July, three times the Swedes were reduced to ten men for extended periods as players received treatment on the sidelines, though their neat and tidy passing still led to a slightly surprising 3-1 win.

Bangu soon proved they were the class of the competition by crushing Sporting 5-1 at the Polo Grounds in front of 8,441 fans on 16 July. Bangu’s stars were their tricky wingers, brothers Beto Rinalho Macedo and Luis Carlos Macedo. The former had scored five goals in just three games. The game was marked by an unsavoury incident when several Portugese players chased around the referee, who had overruled his linesman to allow a Bangu goal. In the New York Times, Gordon White reported that  the Sporting players pushed the referee and “had some help from eager fans who pushed a bit, too, but gave up, after a few minutes.” Before the end, a Sporting player was sent-off for kicking the ball away after a Bangu goal: this, according to White, “gave the fans a chance to sound as if they were old Brooklyn Dodgers rooters.”

The second double-header of the second section, on July 20th, attracted a solid 12,338 fans to the Polo Grounds. They saw Red Star defeat Sporting 3-0 while Norrköping – the surprise package so far – held Bangu to a 0-0 draw, the first game the Brazilians had failed to score in a game.

Sampdoria’s third game against Norrköping – they had been poor so far with one draw and one loss – was eagerly anticipated due to the arrival in America of Sergio Brighenti, an Italian international forward just purchased by Sampdoria, who had scored 43 goals in 95 games for Padova before his transfer (he would go on to be the top scorer in Serie A in 1960-61).

The game, though, was overshadowed by fan violence that left Norrköping goalkeeper Rune Lind unconscious and with a broken tooth. After a challenge in the box on Italian forward Bruno Mora that left him in a heap, 20 irate Italian fans ran onto the field and attacked the Swedish team, some – including the spectator who struck Lind – wielding sticks, swinging wildly. Order was soon restored – amazingly, no arrests were made – and the game continued, Sampdoria winning 6-4.

The Italians would have to win their next game, against Rapid Vienna, to retain any hope of catching Bangu at the top of the division. This they did on July 23rd in a controversial game. Gordon White was again forced to lead with a report of spectator misdeeds instead of the exciting play on the field: this time, right after a goal by Sampdoria in the first half, “a half-dozen fans in the crowd of 6,129 ran onto the field and attacked one linesman from the rear.” The linesman reportedly received a “hard punch” to the face.

This was quite a shame, as the crowd trouble deflected attention from the brilliance of Brighenti: he struck a hat-trick  in Sampdoria’s 3-2 win.

That result kept the Italians alive, just, in the race for the title: along with Red Star, they sat two points behind Bangu heading into the final round of games.

Ahead of the last set of games, Cox gathered his investors and the media for a luncheon at the Playbill Room in the Manhattan Hotel to outline his future plans. The league had been a success so far, Cox said. Once the league had moved past its initial error in scheduling games in New Jersey, moving all the matches for the second section to Manhattan, attendances had risen and the league might even break even, despite the expenditure of $400,000 in 1960 money. The league would be back in 1961, he said.

One thorny topic, though, was the fan violence marring the competition. A Brazilian suggested the ISL build a moat around the pitch to keep invaders out. Increased policing was more seriously discussed.

The next day, July 28th, the final round of games began with a double-header. Sampdoria lost to Sporting 2-1, eliminating them from contention for the title. Red Star, though, not only won but moved ahead of Bangu on goals scored average with an impressive 4-0 defeat of Norrköping.

That set up the competition’s final game perfectly. Red Star would meet Bangu on July 30th at the Polo Grounds, with a bumper crowd expected for the winner-takes-all match up, though the Yugoslavians also knew a tie would secure them the section two crown.

A fierce thunderstorm ruined the scene in Manhattan on Saturday night. The game was postponed, and rescheduled for the afternoon of the next day.

Over 20,000 fans still attended (20,017 to be precise), by far the largest crowd the ISL had attracted. The Brazilians were superb, and controlled play from start to finish. Bangu won 2-0, their second goal scored by José Maria Fidélis dos Santos, who would go on to play for Brazil at the 1966 World Cup. Eighteen-year-old Ademir da Guia, who later played nine games for Brazil and starred for Palmeiras, was named MVP of the second section.

Bangu had won section two, and would now face Kilmarnock of Scotland in the final. Little-known now both teams might be, but both unbeaten sides had generated considerable attention and praise for their achievements in this summer of international soccer in New York.

The Scottish team flew back for the game on August 3rd, greeted enthusiastically by KLM Airlines:

The ISL’s expectations were more than met by the crowd at the Polo Ground for the first ISL championship game for the “American Challenge Cup”: 25,440 enthusiastic fans saw a high-quality contest that raised hopes for the league’s future. Gordon White reported that “Competition next year is virtually certain. The fans left with the realization that they had seen what was probably the best match played in the United States in many a year.”

In a tight game, Bangu, in their red and white stripes, scored early on, but their second, title-sealing goal did not come until the 87th minute, with both goals scored by inside-left Valtor Santos. After a season with many games showing ill-feeling, there were no reports of crowd trouble, and mutual praise flowed following the final whistle. The Bangu players said Kilmarnock were the best team they had ever played, and the Scots returned the compliment. White concluded that “By winning, Bangu added considerably to Brazil’s growing prestige as an international soccer power.”

Only a couple of months after the final, the momentum of an exciting event was not something Cox was going to let dwindle. Sensibly, his first move to ask fans what they wanted, with more than 450 responses to an ISL questionnaire. Fans responded that they wanted more double-headers, and more games on Sundays instead of Saturday nights, and Cox moved to accommodate this. Instead of a single-game final, Cox announced the 1961 championship final would be a two-game series, with total goals determining the winner.

Another fan-friendly move came with the announcement by the City of New York that it would run special soccer trains to the Polo Grounds on gamedays, to reduce parking problems, leaving from 168th Street and Jamaica Avenue in Queens, stopping along the way in Manhattan to pick-up up to 2,000 fans per train.

Most importantly, Cox announced the league had made a small profit in 1960, and was expanding in 1961. The ISL would also feature on national network television again.

Cox held a media luncheon at the Manhattan Hotel, and his ambition seeped into his verbiage: “Soccer will be a new major sport here in 1961. Instead of six clubs in each of the league’s two sections, we will have eight teams, not necessarily all from Europe.”

Cox announced that Bangu would return, while the newcomers would be Besiktas of Turkey, Espanyol of Barcelona, an Israeli team, and possibly a French and a Canadian team (a Montreal entrant was soon announced). Most of the 1960 teams would return, Cox revealed, a sign the tournament had been successful for the competing clubs as well.

What about the Americans? Perhaps recognizing that New Yorkers had not identified with a team called the “Americans” with barely a native-born North American on it, Cox said that in 1961 “we’ll have five or six top American players”.

As 1960 drew to a close, Cox would have been happy to see the ISL featured in the New York Times review of 1960 in sports, a dramatic year of expansion in professional sports across the United States. Soccer hoped to catch this wave, while taking advantage of unusual room in the New York market for a summer sport. The International Soccer League “burst on the New York scene” in 1960, the Times enthusiastically mentioned. What would happen next?

To be continued. . .

Click here for Expanded Dreams: The International Soccer League, Part Three

The 102nd Mayor of New York City, Robert F. Wagner, was at the announcement at City Hall on October 28th 1959 that a new professional soccer league would begin play exclusively in his city the next summer, with all the games to take place at Downing Stadium on Randall’s Island. $75,000 would be spent to upgrade the floodlights at the 25,000 capacity venue. Tickets would be priced at $2 for general admission and $3 for reserved seating, while 1,200 box seats would also be installed. One American team would play alongside star teams from Britain, continental Europe, and possibly South America. All expenses would be paid for the visiting teams, with cash prizes for the winners. The total cost of the venture was estimated at around $2 million in today’s money.

At the same time, in London, Cox – to be president of the league’s only American team, a New York entry – made the same announcement. The Times of London reported that “The Football League, the Scottish League, and the Northern Ireland and Eire leagues have approved the proposals subject to the agreement of their clubs.”

The competition was planned to take place between May 25th with its first section (comprising six teams), ending June 26th, with the second section (also comprising six teams) beginning June 29th and ending August 3rd. The winners of each section would then play each other for the championship title.

Mayor Wagner was enthusiastic: “Many of our citizens in the city are foreign born. They all are fond of soccer and they have instilled that fondness in their children. This new league will give us a chance to see the greatest players in the game competing against a New York team. The city will cooperate in every possible way to help this league succeed.”

Cox, the league’s impresario who had made his money in the lumber business, had a mixed track record as a sports promoter. His involvement in American football in the 1940s with football teams the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers had not been a success, and nor had his involvement with the Philadelphia Phillies in Major League Baseball: though the team improved under his tenure in 1943 and attendance rose, Cox was forced to depart when it was found he had bet on his own team (“sentimentally”, he claimed).

Cox announced that the ISL would begin play with section one featuring Scotland’s Kilmarnock, England’s Burnley, France’s Nice, West Germany’s Bayern Munich and Northern Ireland’s Glenavon.

While those names outside of Bayern Munich may not sound all that glamorous, that was not the case. Burnley, in fact, were the reigning champions of England. The timing of Burnley’s triumph, mere weeks before their opening game in the ISL, showed either great serendipity or remarkable foresight on the part of Cox. As Brian Glanville wrote, “Burnley, whose colors are claret and blue, is thus a most happy and long-sighted selection for the tournament in New York.”

Burnley featured the flair of Irishman Jimmy McIlroy, and the stoutness of Jimmy Adamson.

Glenavon, meanwhile, were the champions of Northern Ireland. Nice had finished ninth in Ligue 1 in 1960, but had been champions in 1959 when they’d been recruited for the league. Kilmarnock had just finished as runners-up in the Scottish Cup.

Each brought strong teams. Nice, for example, regularly fielded almost the entire XI who had recently taken on Real Madrid at the quarter-final stage of the European Cup, including Georges Lamia, Alphonse Martínez, César Gonzales, François Milazzo, Jacques Foix, Héctor de Bourgoing, Omar Keita Barrou and Victor Nurenberg.

Glenavon, Bayern Munich, Kilmarnock and Nice arrived in New York by chartered plane, while Burnley took a leisurely steam ship journey across the Atlantic.

New York’s entry was coached by Al Stubbins, a former Newcastle United and Liverpool forward. Stubbins is best known for being the only footballer to feature on the cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. The forty year-old hoped he could help show the beauty of soccer to a new American audience.

“The new fan should observe both the individual play and the team play,” Stubbins told the media ahead of the ISL’s inaugural game. “When a player has the ball to himself, he can employ great dexterity with his feet, deception, and tricky ball-maneuvering. No player except the goalie may touch the ball with his hands. While the individual is showing his own style, he is at the same time advancing the fortunes of his team. In team play, the thing to watch for is the pass patterns. These are short and executed with a minimum of delay.”

Al Stubbins, New York Americans' Coach

The media supported the ISL in at times breathless style. A month before kick-off, Allison Danzig wrote that “Soccer is making a comeback in the colleges and being taken up by thousands of high schools. The International Soccer League matches Cox is bringing to New York may be the greatest shot in the arm the game has known in this country.”

The hype helped Cox earn the fledgling league a television contract, with ten games to be televised on WPIX in New York, nine of them live in a prime Saturday night spot. That left WPIX the challenge of finding an announcer who could both explain the game while relating to an American audience. The Vice-President of WPIX’s Operations Department Levitt Pope admitted that “The best soccer experts are British. But I suspect British announcers are too reserved for our purposes. We need someone to talk it up and give the game color. On the other hand, I don’t know if it would work out in trying to take an American announcer and make a soccer expert out of him. What we are looking for is a British Mel Allen, if you can imagine such a thing.” (Mel Allen was the well-known voice of the New York Yankees)

The teams playing in section one were introduced to the media on May 24th 1960 by Mayor Wagner, and a lady described by the New York Times as “Miss Soccer 1960″ – Dolores Armada, Brooklyn-born of Spanish descent, who played on the women’s team for Club Espana and was a secretary of the Dutch Airline that had flown the teams in.

Not everything had gone to plan for the ISL. The games did not take place as promised at Downing Stadium. Instead, the schedule was split between games at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan and Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, New Jersey. Each of the six teams would play each other once in a round-robin format, with two points awarded for a win and one for a tie.

10,444 fans attended the inaugural game at the Polo Grounds on May 25th 1960, as Kilmarnock – trailing 1-0 at half-time – defeated Bayern Munich 3-1, a deserved win by all accounts. The ISL had been anticipating a crowd of over 15,000, leading to some disappointment, though far from despair. Those that did attend were engaged in the game; Michael Strauss reported that “They cheered, they applauded and they rooted. . .The fans were soccer-wise ones. They knew the game. They booed decisions they considered unjust in the same way that a baseball crowd reacts on close calls made at home plate. They cheered plays at midfield as well as near the nets. They even cheered technique.”

Fancy dribbles by Miloš Milutinović had the crowd shouting “Just like Bob Cousy” at him, referencing the famous Boston Celtics point guard of the time renowned for his ball-handling skills and movement.

The “American” team began play the next day: without a single native American on the team. At the try-outs in late April, Cox had justified the domination of the team by overseas player by saying “It wouldn’t be out of place if we had all foreigners on our squad. After all, the New York Rangers’ hockey team doesn’t have an American among its regulars.”

Ten of those selected were, though, at least New York based, such as John Kriesche, the manager of a Brooklyn butcher shop and a local player for Blau-Weiss Gottschee (a club who still play today).

Referees, meanwhile, were also imported, mostly from Britain.

The New York Americans started out – unsurprisingly – poorly at the first game held at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, losing 5-1 to Glenavon. Discouragingly, only around 3,000 fans showed up, quiet in the face of the poor performance of the home team.

The ISL, though, had certainly attracted attention. The Yankees’ Yogi Berra was reported to hold a considerable interest in the league. “Tell you what we’ll do some night, Howie.” Yogi told his teammates at the end of May. “We’ll go to the Polo Grounds and watch the international soccer. That’s a great game, soccer.” Berra had grown up playing the same in St. Louis, Soccer City USA.

Attendance hovered at levels that meant the ISL would struggle to break even. 5,916 saw Kilmarnock defeat Glenavon 2-0 in both teams’ second games, at Roosevelt Stadium on May 29th.

Encouragingly, June began with a record crowd of 13,013 watching the ISL’s remaining unbeaten teams Kilmarnock and Burnley go head-to-head at the Polo Grounds, the Scots triumphing 3-0 in a foul-ridden game. Michael Strauss reported that “members of both teams shook hands after the game. This sudden cordiality caused considerable merriment in the crowd. For the players had hammered at each other as if they were mortal enemies.”

The disparity in attendance between Manhattan and New Jersey – games at the former outdrawing games at the latter by more than 2 to 1 – began talk that the second series may play only at the Polo Grounds.

Meanwhile, soccer debuted on WPIX Channel 11 on Saturday, June 4th, kicking off at 8.30pm and going head-to-head against professional American football, with the Baltimore Colts playing the Green Bay Packers on Channel 9. WPIX had been unable to find their “British Mel Allen.” Pope had interviewed several Brits, but had been unable to find his man, concluding that “we felt that a combination of presenting a sport relatively unknown to so many Americans and an accent that Americans often find amusing would be too much of a handicap.”

Instead, Canadian Monty Hall – a former soccer player – and veteran sports announcer American Win Elliott presented the show. Cox found a sponsor for the show: F&M Schaefer Brewing Company, brewer of the best-selling beer of its age.

A double-header at the Polo Grounds on June 4th saw considerable improvement from the New York Americans, who held Burnley to a 3-3 tie, with the tying goal coming from a free-kick by the Americans’ Ukrainian star Gene Vinyei in the 83rd minute. Burnley played the final 22 minutes with only ten men, after a leg injury forced out Brian Pilkington, their right-back (substitutions were only allowed for injuries to the goalkeeper).

Matters were not helped by both teams wearing white jerseys: they were distinguished by red shorts in the Americans’ case, and black shorts for the English.

Perhaps not ideally for an American television audience, the televised second game also ended up without a winner, as Bayern Munich and Nice drew 2-2. A solid crowd of 10,414 attended.

The first television reviews proved positive. Jack Gould wrote that “Soccer, the most popular international sport, may turn out to be the newest hit on American television. At least the professional brand of game played Saturday night by Nice of France and Bayern Munich of Germany made for exceptionally good viewing over WPIX.”

Gould continued, “The incredibly deft footwork of the players in the International Soccer League, who will appear on Saturday nights for the next nine weeks over Channel 11, is something to be seen by anyone, whether a sports fan or not. The control of the ball, deception of opposing players and artistry of movement border on the fabulous.”

Unlike many later American commentators, Gould concluded that “The sport, known as football in most parts of the world, appears to be made for TV.”

And similarly, unlike many others who would unfavourably compare the athleticism of soccer to American sports, Gould concluded that “For stamina, the soccer players make most athletes look like weaklings.”

Gould observed that the producers had found ways to impose Schaefer’s beer advertisements into the program without interrupting play too much, with “modest commercials over the action on the field”, determining that “Thoughtfulness is always sound advertising.”

A few days later, play resumed with Nice somehow holding Kilmarnock to a tie: the Scots bombarded Nice’s goal, 27 saves made, but could only score once, and the French found an equaliser. The league was seemingly growing in popularity perhaps thanks to the television coverage, a new record for a single-game set with 12,861 attending. Ill-feeling broke out after the Scots felled two Frenchmen, prompting Nice coach Jean Luciano to rush onto the field, who then apparently spat on the referee, Tom Callaghan, as well as two Kilmarnock players. Luciano was ordered off, but refused to leave the bench, later declaring “I never spat and I will never spit.”

Kilmarnock’s failure to win left the section one title still up for grabs for the next two games at the Polo Grounds two days later. The double-header, with Nice playing the Americans and Burnley facing Glenavon, attracted 11,864 fans.

The Americans secured their second tie in a 1-1 game, though injuries had left Nice playing with only nine men by the end of the game. The Americans did feature a native-born American, with Kevin Hoy in goal.

The second half descended into chaos. Americans’ defender Les Locke was twice headbutted to the ground, with the game stopped three times when the teams began fighting. Vinyei had given the Americans the lead, but Georges Lamia, Nice’s goalkeeper, felled Locke shortly after when he felt he’d been roughly challenged.

The second game went off without incident, Burnley beating Glenavon 6-2.

Nice then defeated Glenavon 3-2 a few days later, another poor crowd attending the game at Roosevelt stadium, with only 3,391 present.

After four games played, then, Kilmarnock led the way with seven points, Burnley and Nice just behind with five points each, New York on four points, Bayern Munich on three points and Glenavon on only two points. One round of games remained to determine the champions of section one. Kilmarnock’s chance to clinch the title would be shown on tape delay on WPIX on Saturday, June 25th.

Burnley put the pressure on Kilmarnock by winning the first game of the double-header at the Polo Grounds, 11,704 in attendance. They defeated Nice 4-0. Kilmarnock, though, continued their fine, speedy play with a 3-1 win over the Americans to capture the section one title. New York were hampered by the departure in the first half of their captain Alf Sherwood, who was later awarded the MVP for section one, concussed and taken to hospital. Sherwood was a Welsh international imported for the tournament from Newport County, and known as the “King of the Sliding Tackle.”

Kilmarnock claimed a prize of $1,000 and advanced to the “America Cup” final, while Burnley received $500 as runners-up.

Days later, the New York Times published a letter from a reader proposing some changes to the way the game was played:

“I am sure the game will appeal to the American public only if some changes are made in the playing rules. For instance: (1) Players should be allowed to charged the goaltender the instant he leaves the goal post. (2) An injured player leaving the game should be replaced. (3) Players should be allowed to charge each other in a legal way. (4) Penalties should be called for two, five or ten minutes, according to the seriousness of the infraction.”

Regardless, Kilmarnock would have to await the results of the second section to know who’d they play on August 5th at the Polo Grounds for the inaugural International Soccer League championship. Cox’s expensive experiment was off to a modest but successful start, and much would hinge on the appeal of the second section and the championship game.

Continue to Part Two of this series, as we look at how the ISL’s debut season shaked out.