EPISODE 333: "Soccer Tom" Mulroy

We buckle up this week for a wild and revelatory ride across 50+ years of big-time soccer in the United States with one of the biggest unsung heroes of the American game - and unquestionably, one of its most prominent "keepers of the flame."

The professional and personal life journey of "Soccer Tom" Mulroy ("90 Minutes with the King: How Soccer Saved My Life") virtually parallels the 1970s-to-1990s boom-bust-and-boom-again roller coaster of soccer's early modern history in the US - and today thrives in tandem with the sport's long-overdue cultural acceptance.

In a pro career spanning five leagues and nearly a dozen franchises (including Good Seats bucket-list stops with the MISL Hartford Hellions, ASL Cleveland Cobras, NASL Miami Toros & 1986-87 AISA champion Louisville Thunder) Mulroy's on-field exploits mirrored the chaotic nature of a game still struggling to find its footing among North America's competitive sports landscape. 

After his playing days, Mulroy evolved into the sport's indefatigable go-to goodwill ambassador, bringing Pied Piper-like enthusiasm to the domestic masses yearning for soccer literacy in the wake of breakthrough milestones like World Cup '94, the launch of MLS, and the international success of both the US Women's & Men's National teams.

To understand the life of Tommy Mulroy is to understand the growth of US soccer itself!

90 Minutes With the King: How Soccer Saved My Life - buy book here

EPISODE 308: Soccer Sojourns - With Thomas Rongen

American followers of the "beautiful game" undoubtedly know the name Thomas Rongen - but can easily be forgiven for not remembering just exactly how.

Of course, there's his current color commentary work for today's Major League Soccer Inter Miami CF - but fans of a certain age will recall the Dutch-born, mop-topped midfielder from his on-field (and in-arena) antics during the halcyon days of the old North American Soccer League alongside international greats like Johan Cruyff, George Best and Alan Willey on clubs like the Los Angeles Aztecs, Washington Diplomats, and two flavors of Strikers - Fort Lauderdale and Minnesota. 

Younger aficionados might place their earliest recollections of a fiery presence on the sidelines coaching a wide array of pro clubs ranging from successor ASL/APSL versions of the Strikers in the late 80s/early 90s, to early MLS sides like the 1996 Tampa Bay Mutiny, 1997-98 New England Revolution, 1999-2001 DC United, or even 2005's version of Chivas USA - not to mention his two stints helming the US Men's U-20 National team before and after.

However, most will undoubtedly know Rongen from his memorable turn as the head coach of the American Samoa national team during FIFA World Cup qualifying in 2011 - forever immortalized in the epically joyous 2014 documentary "Next Goal Wins", and soon to be refashioned as a major motion picture drama of the same name this fall - in which he wills one of the world's perennial soccer minnows into surprising respectability.

We cover all of it - and more - with one of the country's most endearing soccer personalities!

EPISODE 285: The Rise & Fall of Admiral Sportswear - With Andy Wells

In 1974, a small Midlands underwear firm changed soccer forever when it won the contract as official kit supplier for England's national team - featuring a tradition-busting combination of bright colors, definitional striping, and, uniquely, prominently positioned manufacturer's logos on both shirt and shorts.

Admiral Sportswear’s bold designs and distinctive branding - soon outfitting storied club sides like Manchester United, Leicester City, Norwich City, West Ham, and Sheffield United - quickly caught fans' attention with their detailed "replica" versions, which offered the most ardent supporters a novel opportunity to literally dress like their favorite pro players.

Sports documentarian/author Andy Wells ("Get Shirty: The Rise & Fall of Admiral Sportswear") tells us the story of how Admiral unwittingly invented today's now-multi-billion-dollar replica jersey industry - while revolutionizing the worlds of sports commerce and street fashion alike.

If you followed any of the franchises from the late 1970s/early 1980s North American Soccer League or Major Indoor Soccer League (or even the American Soccer League's Columbus Magic) - chances are you remember (or even owned) an Admiral shirt!

Get Shirty: The Rise & Fall of Admiral Sportswear - buy book here

EPISODE 251: The Indoor Soccer Travails of Keith Tozer

We traverse a fascinating litany of top-tier North American professional indoor soccer leagues with pioneering player, record-setting coach and now, current Major Arena Soccer League (MASL) commissioner Keith Tozer.

In a pro career spanning more than 40 years, Tozer has literally done it all in the indoor game:

• Playing on original Major Indoor Soccer League (MISL) sides like the Cincinnati Kids, Hartford Hellions and Pittsburgh Spirit;

• Dually playing/coaching for the American Indoor Soccer Association's (AISA) Louisville Thunder and Atlanta Attack; and

• Coaching both the last two seasons of the MISL's Los Angeles Lazers and, legendarily, winning six titles in 22 seasons across four leagues with the Milwaukee Wave

Tozer is not only the winningest coach in indoor pro soccer history (amassing over 700 wins), but one of the most successful overall US soccer coaches of all time.

Buckle up for a wild ride across the rocky terrain of professional indoor soccer - including an outdoor detour with the American Soccer League Pennsylvania Stoners, coaching US teams for international futsal tournaments, and whatever happened to Mark Cuban's much-hyped Professional Futsal League.

And, of course, an analysis of the present state of the pro indoor game - and where Tozer hopes the MASL can take it in the years ahead.

EPISODE 219: Graham "Buster" Tutt

We knock out a bunch of previously unexplored US soccer franchises of yore with the delightful Graham "Buster" Tutt ("Never Give Up: The Graham 'Buster' Tutt Story") - whose tragically derailed, but ultimately persevering pro soccer journey across three continents serves as the backdrop for intriguing tales of the modern-day American pro game's formative years.

A promising young goalkeeper for England's Charlton Athletic in the early 1970s, Tutt turned pro with the London club the day after graduating high school at age 17, ultimately making 78 first-team appearances and helping the Addicks vault from the FA's Third Division to the precipice of the First in just three seasons.

However, during a promotional bid game against Sunderland in 1976, Tutt suffered a brutal kick to the face that broke his cheekbone and nose, internally damaged his right eye, and permanently damaged his right eye - effectively ending his playing career.

Yet, after two eye operations and 18 months of difficult recovery, Tutt found redemption as a two-time Goalkeeper of the Year in the rough-and-tumble South African League - before springboarding to the burgeoning American pro soccer scene in 1980.

Join us for Tutt's Stateside adventures with the ASL Columbus Magic, outdoor/indoor NASL Atlanta Chiefs, ASL Georgia Generals & the AISA/NPSL indoor Atlanta Attack - and the sport’s legacy he’s still helping build today.

Never Give Up: The Graham “Buster” Tutt Story - buy book here

EPISODE 149: “America's” Soccer League – With Steve Holroyd

Society for American Soccer History board director Steve Holroyd returns to help us decipher the last decade of the enigmatic second incarnation of the American Soccer League (1933-83) – the longest-lasting “professional” soccer circuit in US history prior to today’s MLS.

A smaller-scaled reboot of the original ASL (1921-33) that, for a time, rivaled the fledgling sport of pro football in terms of fan interest – “ASL II” began its more-modest life playing in the urban centers of the Eastern Seaboard during the height of the Great Depression. 

For much of its 50-year existence, the ASL was a relatively loose but heartily competitive amalgam of ethnically-identified clubs concentrated primarily in the immigrant-heavy neighborhoods of the industrial Northeast.  Teams came and went with regularity – and changing identities or even folding in the middle of a season was not uncommon.

As the “big league” NASL gained popularity in the early 1970s, the American Soccer League began to expand its geographic footprint and more professionally emulate its younger cousin.  By 1972, the league had mostly abolished its ethnic team names (out: Newark Ukrainian Sitch, New York Greeks; in: New Jersey Brewers, New York Apollo), and league president Eugene Chyzowych began steering the ASL to a more pronounced embrace of American players, while aggressively pursuing national expansion.

The league even hired former Boston Celtics basketball legend Bob Cousy as commissioner in a bid to raise the ASL’s national PR profile.  Freely admitting he knew little about soccer, Cousy nevertheless elevated the league’s ambitions – adding franchises to the West Coast by 1976 and relocating league headquarters to media-friendly Manhattan.

Still, “America’s Soccer League” was mostly relegated to de facto second division status vs. the bigger-budgeted NASL; it was not uncommon for ASL teams to lose top players to the freer-spending NASL – though a number of aging marquee players like Eusebio, Rildo, and Phil Parkes found the reverse path just as remunerative.

Ultimately, the ASL’s major league aspirations were financially unsustainable (just like the NASL’s), and the league collapsed after the 1983 season – ushering in a dark period for the pro game that lasted until the launch of Major League Soccer in 1996.    

Thank you VisitArizona.com for sponsoring this week’s episode!

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EPISODE 130: St. Louis: The Original Soccer City USA – With Dave Lange

On August 20, 2019, the city of St. Louis, MO was officially awarded the 28th franchise in Major League Soccer, with an anticipated inaugural season beginning in 2022.  And while the club begins its efforts to get its team name, new downtown stadium and initial soccer operations in place, we take some time this week to reflect on the city’s deep and rich soccer history – perhaps unmatched by any locale in the United States.

Dave Lange (Soccer Made in St. Louis: A History of the Game in America’s First Soccer Capital) joins the ‘cast to trace the undeniably symbiotic relationship between the Gateway City and the Beautiful Game – as well as its impact on the development of the sport (especially professionally) across America.

As we root for the new St. Louis MLS team (our name suggestion: Gateway FC!) to meaningfully recognize and incorporate this important past, Lange helps tide us over in the interim as he discusses:

• The St. Louis transplant who help launch both the USA’s first governing body for the sport, as well as its first professional league (the American Soccer League) during the Roaring Twenties;

• The deep-rooted amateur, scholastic and collegiate landscape that kept the city at the center of the nation’s soccer development (including occasional US national team flashes of brilliance);

• The seminal, but oft-forgotten St. Louis Stars of the 1967 NPSL and 1968-77 NASL;

• How “soc-hoc” evolved into a professional indoor soccer explosion in the 1980s & 90s with St. Louis (Steamers, Storm, Ambush) as its epicenter; AND

• The “invisible hand” of Anheuser Busch executive Denny Long.

PLUS:  There “Ain’t No Stoppin’” our tribute to the MISL’s iconic St. Louis Steamers!

Soccer Made in St. Louis: A History of the Game in America’s First Soccer Capital - buy here

EPISODE 127: A British View of US Pro Soccer History – With Tom Scholes

UK sportswriter Tom Scholes (Stateside Soccer: The Definitive History of Soccer in the United States) joins host Tim Hanlon to discuss the surprisingly long, colorfully vibrant and regularly misunderstood history of the world’s most popular sport in America.

While even the most erudite of the game’s international scholars mistakenly (though understandably) define the US pro game’s epicenter as the chaotic, post-1966 World Cup launch of the North American Soccer League – the roots of organized soccer actually date as far back as the American Civil War, around the time when the first rules around “American football” were also coming into focus.

In fact, US soccer’s actual first “golden age” can be traced to the Roaring 1920s when immigrant-rich corporate teams in the first American Soccer League rivaled the nascent National Football League in popularity, and US national teams regularly qualified for the first-ever FIFA World Cups in 1930 (finishing third) and 1934.

While a heavily ethnic successor ASL and regional semi-pro circuits kept American soccer’s flickering flame alive (not to mention an international headline-grabbing 1950 World Cup upset of then-world power England), the organized game in the United States continued to grow – albeit regionally niche and nationally inchoate – especially at the pro level.

Yet, the Bill Cox-created International Soccer League of the early 1960s proved that American fan interest in top-flight professional soccer played by the world’s premier clubs was real – setting the kindling for the NASL’s eventual wildfire during the following decade, yet eventual flameout in 1984.

Since then, Scholes suggests, the US has finally entered its third golden age of soccer – as the no-longer “new” Major League Soccer closes in on its 24th consecutive season of growth (recently adding history-rich St. Louis as its 28th North American market) – while the women’s national team extends its unprecedented dominance on the international stage.

Still, soccer’s future success in America is by no means guaranteed – and the frequent travails of America’s long history with the game provide ample lessons of what might ultimately lie ahead.

Enjoy a FREE MONTH of The Great Courses Plus streaming video service – including the new series “Fundamentals of Photography” – created in conjunction with National Geographic!

Stateside Soccer: The Definitive History of Soccer in the United States - buy here

EPISODE #115: The North American Soccer League’s Rochester Lancers – With Michael Lewis

After more than 40 years of covering the “beautiful game,” Newsday sportswriter and FrontRowSoccer.com editor Michael Lewis (Alive and Kicking: The Incredible But True Story of the Rochester Lancers) knows more than a thing or two about the evolution of soccer in this country.  A self-professed “Zelig of soccer,” the NYC-based Lewis has covered some of the sport’s most important events, including eight World Cups, seven Olympic tournaments, and all 23 MLS Cups (and counting) – not to mention an endless array of matches and related off-the-field activities across leagues and competitions on both the domestic and international stages over that span.  If it happened in American soccer since his start as a cub reporter at the Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle in 1975, Lewis was probably there.

It was in Rochester that Lewis got his first taste of US pro soccer as the assigned beat reporter for the North American Soccer League’s fledgling Rochester Lancers – a team that literally helped save the down-to-four-team league from extinction in 1970 when owner Charlie Schiano moved the club from the regional semi-pro American Soccer League (along with the similarly-situated Washington Darts) where it had played since 1967.

The Lancers promptly won the title in their first NASL season, and featured the circuit’s first breakout star – 5′ 4″ Brazilian scoring sensation Carlos “Little Mouse” Metidieri, who nabbed league MVP honors in both 1970 & 1971. 

By 1973, however, Metidieri had been traded to the expansion Boston Minutemen, and Schiano was forced to sell controlling interest in the club to bolster its finances – and the Lancers promptly descended into mediocrity.  Though Schiano re-acquired majority ownership in late 1976, the team rarely achieved more than middling success thereafter – save for an anomalous 1977 season that saw the small-market Lancers fall one playoff game short of reaching the NASL title game, despite compiling only an 11-15 regular season record. 

The Lancers’ final seasons were also marred by internecine warfare between an increasingly cash-strapped Schiano and new investors John Luciani and Bernie Rodin – exacerbated by the team’s off-season moonlighting in the semi-rival Major Indoor Soccer League as the Long Island-based New York Arrows.  The two factions faced off in court during the 1980 NASL season, with the league terminating the franchise at season’s end.

While outdoor soccer soon returned to Rochester in 1981 with the ASL Flash, the indoor Arrows went on to win four consecutive MISL titles with much of the Lancers’ late 1970s NASL outdoor roster, including notables like Branko Segota, Shep Messing, Dave D’Errico, Val Tuksa, Renato Cila, Damir Sutevski, and head coach Dragon “Don” Popovic.

Thank you 503 Sports, SportsHistoryCollectibles.com, Streaker Sports, Audible, and OldSchoolShirts.com for your support of this week’s show!

Alive and Kicking: The Incredible But True Story of the Rochester Lancers - buy here

EPISODE #66: Sports Broadcaster JP Dellacamera

Fox Sports soccer play-by-play broadcaster extraordinaire JP Dellacamera joins the podcast this week to discuss a pioneering career in sports announcing spanning over 30 years – including calling this year’s 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia – his ninth consecutive men’s quadrennial assignment since Mexico ’86.

Widely acknowledged as the original voice of US Soccer, Dellacamera’s calls have become synonymous with some of modern-day American soccer’s most indelible moments – including his accounts of the US Women’s National Team’s dramatic penalty kick shootout victory over China in the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup, and Paul Caligiuri’s historic “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” against Trinidad & Tobago in the final game of 1989 CONCACAF qualifying that punched the US Men’s National Team’s ticket for Italy ’90 – ending a 40-year World Cup finals drought, and reorienting the sport’s trajectory in the ‘States for decades to come.

The road to broadcasting global soccer’s marquee events has by no means been a straight and narrow one, however, and we (of course) chat with Dellacamera about some of the more memorable “forgotten” stops made along the way, including:

• Talking his way into his professional debut calling local TV games for the 1978 NASL expansion Detroit Express;
• Handling radio play-by-play for the American Soccer League’s ALPO dog food-sponsored Pennsylvania Stoners;
• Parlaying years of minor league hockey broadcast experience into lead announcing duties for indoor soccer’s Pittsburgh Spirit of the fledgling MISL;
• Cementing his stature as the voice of US women’s soccer as the play-by-play lead for the 2001 launch of the WUSA; and   
• Returning to his first love of pro hockey – finally at the NHL level – with the short-lived Atlanta Thrashers.  

Our sponsors for this week include: Audible, Podfly and SportsHistoryCollectibles.com.

EPISODE #35: National Soccer Hall of Famer Paul Child

Former NASL, MISL, CISL (and even ASL) soccer great Paul Child becomes the fifth National Soccer Hall of Famer to join the podcast – and regales host Tim Hanlon with a bevy of eyebrow-raising anecdotes from a 25+ pro career as a player and coach across teams and leagues in both the outdoor and indoor versions of the game, including: 

• Taking a chance to get first-team play as a 19-year-old via loan with the Atlanta Chiefs in the fragile 1972 North American Soccer League;
• Learning to love the narrow confines and uniquely spray-painted burgundy and black penalty areas of San Jose’s Spartan Stadium;
• Laying carpet for and dodging chicken wire during the NASL’s primitive inaugural indoor tournament in San Francisco’s Cow Palace in 1975; 
• Wondering if sellout crowds in Atlanta’s Omni for Chiefs indoor games in the early 1980s were for spirited play, or cheeky promotions like “Who Shot J.R.?” night;
• Taking the early 1980s Pittsburgh sports scene by storm – and regularly outdrawing hockey’s Penguins – with the MISL’s Spirit; and
• Earning two caps for the US National Team – despite not being an actual American citizen!

This week’s episode is supported by our friends at Audible and Podfly!

EPISODE #29: The American Soccer League’s Cincinnati Comets with Writer/Photographer Ronny Salerno

While the meteoric rise of the United Soccer League’s FC Cincinnati franchise caught many pro sports observers by surprise, keen observers of soccer’s unique history in the Queen City note that the foundation of the team’s current success actually dates back to 1972, when an ambitious little club called the Cincinnati Comets won the American Soccer League championship in the team’s inaugural season. Cincinnati writer/photographer/native Ronny Salerno (The Extraordinary Story of the Cincinnati Comets; Fading Ads of Cincinnati) joins Tim Hanlon to delve into the curious story of this surprisingly notable squad, whose motley cast of characters included:

• Dr. Nico “Nick” Capurro, a strong-willed Italian-born surgeon and county coroner whose passion for the sport led him to not only buy a Cincinnati ASL franchise, but also become its head coach;
• Julio “Ringo” Cantillo, a 16-year-old Costa Rican midfield phenom who immediately became the team’s (and league’s) most valuable player – despite still being a high school student;
• Jim Scott, the long-time king of Cincinnati morning radio, whose simple offer to help with some publicity mushroomed into the presidency of the team – and later the ASL itself;
• Bob Cousy, the legendary basketball hall-of-famer, who Scott recruited to become ASL commissioner – despite a mixed reputation in the Queen City, and an admitted ignorance about the sport of soccer; AND
• Lamar Hunt, the patron saint of AFL football and the then-nationally ascendant North American Soccer League, whose dogged efforts to get the Comets to move up to the NASL came up short.

Our thanks to Audible and Podfly for their support of this week’s episode!