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

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

I heaved and strained, my body wouldn’t move an inch. Those pressed tight around me were heavy, some were unconscious. I began to float away, taking in the final seconds of my life.

Hillsborough Memorial

This is the recollection from one Liverpool survivor of the terrible events at Hillsborough Stadium, Sheffield, on April 15th 1989. Lord Taylor’s sweeping report on the disaster led to the ban on standing areas at the top two divisions in English football, amongst many measures adopted that led to the transformation of British stadia in the 1990s.  The dilapidated grounds that disgraced the game in the 1980s and led to several tragedies were soon swept away.

Eastville Stadium Fire (view from the Tote End), Bristol 1980

The Hillsborough disaster became seared in national consciousness as a turning point for the game to the bright lights of the Premier League, and standing on terraces became tarred in the general public’s consciousness with the tragedies and hooliganism of the 1980s, rightly or wrongly. All-seater stadia priced out many traditional fans, and terrace culture was seemingly lost forever at the highest levels of British football.

With the twentieth anniversary of the Hillsborough Disaster approaching, it would seem to be curious timing for a return to standing to be on the national agenda again.

But that’s exactly what is happening.

The movement towards reintroducing standing at the top levels of English football is gaining momentum. A little lower in the ladder, this month it was announced that League Two’s Morecambe are set to become the first English league club to incorporate safe standing areas into their new stadium.

Perhaps more significantly, especially given their proximity to Anfield, Everton’s chief executive Keith Wyness told a parliamentary seminar his club would consider including safe standing areas at their new ground.

“As you can all imagine, this is a very sensitive issue because of where we are situated. We are looking for a new stadium and one of our options is that we could have a standing area.

“I personally went to Germany recently and watched a game at Cologne and was amazed by the atmosphere in the standing area.

“If the Government will discuss it, we may be prepared to offer ourselves as a trial if necessary.”

Everton’s proposed new stadium

Advocates of a return to standing, such as the Football Supporters Federation (FSF), have the support of most football fans (according to a 2007 census) in pushing for this debate.  These advocates are always careful to pay respect to the emotional context of Hillsborough. The FSF’s comprehensive 2007 report on the case for safe standing is prefaced by Dr. Ann Eyre, a survivor of Hillsborough who after touching on the tragedies that plagued British football stadia in the 1980s, maintains that “I believe that the case for safe standing to be introduced at our major grounds needs to be carefully weighed and considered.”

The FSF report notes that nowhere in his report on the causes of the disaster did Lord Taylor attribute it to the fact the Liverpool fans were in a standing, rather than a seated, area of the ground. To emphasise this, the report noted that nowhere in his report did Lord Taylor blame standing as a primary cause of the disaster.  Instead, a series of tragic mistakes by the authorities were deemed responsible, as his report states:

265. The immediate cause of the gross overcrowding and hence the disaster was the failure, when gate C was opened, to cut off access to the central pens which were already overfull.

266. They were already overfull because no safe maximum capacities had been laid down, no attempt was made to control entry to individual pens numerically and there was no effective visual monitoring of crowd density.

267. When the influx from gate C entered pen 3, the layout of the barriers there afforded less protection than it should and a barrier collapsed. Again, the lack of vigilant monitoring caused a sluggish reaction and response when the crush occurred. The small size and number of gates to the track retarded rescue efforts. So, in the initial stages, did lack of leadership.

268. The need to open gate C was due to dangerous congestion at the turnstiles. That occurred because, as both Club and police should have realised, the turnstile area could not easily cope with the large numbers demanded of it unless they arrived steadily over a lengthy period. The Operational Order and police tactics on the day failed to provide for controlling a concentrated arrival of large numbers should that occur in a short period. That it might so occur was foreseeable and it did. The presence of an unruly minority who had drunk too much aggravated the problem. So did the Club’s (Sheffi eld Wednesday FC) confused and inadequate signs and ticketing.

The deeper causes of the disaster laid not in standing per se, but in the complete disregard for fan safety typical of the attitude of the football authorities in their 1980s towards their customers, who were treated more like a burden barely to be tolerated. Sheffield Wednesday’s safety certificate for Hillsborough was out of date, and the capacities for the pens at the Leppings Lane end were set far too high. Taylor’s report castigated the club for its serious breaches of the safety code.

Another key point the FSF report makes is that Taylor’s recommendation for all-seater stadia to be introduced in Britain was based on what has been proven to be an incorrect assumption: that “spectators will become accustomed and educated to sitting.”

As the FSF notes, and as anyone who attends matches in England can attest, this has not proven to be the case for a large minority of fans: “It is now clear with the benefit of hindsight that this prediction was wrong. Eleven seasons on from the introduction of all-seated stadia in the top two divisions, significant groups of fans regularly stand at matches.”

This creates a serious safety issue in itself and a problem for fans nearby who do want to sit with an unobstructed view. As the Stand Up Sit Down campaign argues, the law is currently not in tune with the reality of football supporters experiences, who wish to either stand or sit safely and comfortably.

Meanwhile, the model of the Bundesliga — with their technologically impressive convertible standing/seating areas to meet UEFA mandates for European matches — has been much praised by advocates of standing. Schalke 04′s amazing Veltins-Arena can accommodate 61,524 spectators (standing and seated) for Bundesliga games, and 53,994 for European matches. Domestically, the North stand provides standing (capacity: 16,307) and is converted to seats for European competition (capacity: 8,600).

The remarkable Veltins-Arena, home of Schalke 04, in its hockey configuration

The FSF report has had a considerable impact on the debate in the public sphere.  Praising the FSF report, football’s self-regulatory body the Independent Football Commission concluded that “It is difficult to find any sort of evidence which indicates that allowing people to stand in a seating area is inherently unsafe.”

An Early Day Motion to remove the ban on standing is gaining momentum in the House of Commons.

Aside from safety, the question of cost is a serious issue. Safe standing would increase revenue by increasing capacity with thousands of extra tickets possible in the same space, but at lower price points, and the kind of convertible seating that has worked in Germany (meeting the UEFA mandate for all-seater games in European competition while converting to standing for domestic games) is not cheap. A 2001 study by the Football Licensing Authority into the convertible “Kombi” seating in Hamburg noted the “Kombi” seats cost £90 each, which compares with around £21 for a typical tip up seat.

Kombi convertible seating in Germany

English stadiums would require significant work to make them safe for standing, as Simon Inglis told Play the Game:

“I am in favour in principle but because I understand the technical issues I simply can’t see it happening in the UK. It would require legislation, and which government would give up time to achieve this whilst the Premier League is coining it in

“Then there would be the question of clubs paying to convert existing seating areas. They could not hold more people than currently sit or the loadings would be too heavy. Exits, etc, would have to be modified. It’s no simple matter.”

It could well be that the cost of this investment would be worth the extra value of supporter-satisfaction and the increase in a vibrant atmosphere standing undoubtedly brings. Bundesliga stadia are admired across Europe as the fan-friendliest, as SoccerLens recently propounded: “The average attendance for a Bundesliga match in 2008 was 40,880 compared to the 35,269 in the Premier League – the atmosphere is second to none with supporters having the option to stand on the terraces and have their beer topped up for you from the numerous vendors dotted around — plus there’s not a prawn sandwich to be seen.”

Indeed, it’s almost become a European cliche to praise the atmosphere of the Bundesliga over the Premier League.

It seems unlikely that current British stadia will be retrofitted for standing, and with Hillsborough still so vivid in the public memory, it would take some balls from a British government to push through legislation to allow standing at the top levels again — even though most football fans are for it, it’s their opinions still least often considered important by the authorities (a shameful echo of the fact that the true cause of Hillsborough was not standing, but the lack of respect for football fans collectively).

Can Morecambe’s stadium set an example for safe standing in the league, albeit at a lower level?  Will Everton ever be able to push on and become the guinea pig for constructing a Bundesliga-type convertible standing model in the Premier League?