EPISODE 160: “Soccertown USA” – With Tom McCabe & Kirk Rudell

Film producers Tom McCabe and Kirk Rudell (“Soccertown USA”) join the podcast this week to discuss their newly released documentary about the modest working-class New Jersey town with an outsized influence on the history of the sport of soccer in the United States.

In the mid-1980s, as the domestic pro game began to fade with the demise of the once-hot North American Soccer League, and FIFA’s passing over of the US as potential replacement host for the 1986 World Cup – it was three kids from largely-unheralded Kearny, NJ who helped save it.

Native sons Tab Ramos, John Harkes, and Tony Meola – who formed the backbone of a Men’s National Team that willed its way to breakthrough success in both the 1990 and 1994 World Cups, and laid the groundwork for the pro game’s rebirth in 1996 with the launch of Major League Soccer – were products of a uniquely rich soccer-passionate culture dating back to the town’s Scottish immigrant influx in the 1870s.

Kearny’s storied heritage as a fertile American soccer hotbed – spirited factory-sponsored leagues, ASL cup-winning “pro” teams, strong youth programs, a vibrant street-soccer scene, and even local heroes in the 1970s NASL (including a member of the mighty New York Cosmos virtually next door) – not only nurtured these three pioneers of the game, but also continue to help inspire future generations to play and support the “beautiful game.”

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 #64: American Soccer’s “Dark Ages” with Writer Michael J. Agovino

It wasn’t easy being a soccer fan in the United States in the 1980s. 

While the 24-team North American American Soccer League ushered in the decade with an air of stability and momentum (the NASL even sold a pennant labeling the game the “Sport of the 80’s”), it wasn’t long before big-time American pro soccer was dangerously on the ropes (the NASL shrank to just nine franchises by 1984) – and then seemingly gone for good when the league officially sank into oblivion in early 1985.  For a nascent generation of US fans newly hooked on the world’s “beautiful game,” it felt like an abandonment – and an air of disillusionment beset the American soccer scene in the immediate years that followed. 

For Bronx-born writer Michael J. Agovino (The Soccer Diaries: An American's Thirty-Year Pursuit of the International Game), the demise of the NASL and its global flagship New York Cosmos franchise was simply the last nail in the coffin of his soccer “coming of age” during the early 80s – the conclusion of an arc of tragedies: the US Soccer Federation’s unsuccessful bid to replace Colombia as host of the 1986 World Cup; the US national team’s failure to even qualify for the quadrennial event; and the unfathomable death of 41 fans in a riot at the 1985 European Cup Final in Brussels’ Heysel Stadium. 

As Agovino framed it: “Soccer – my new friend – was dead.”

Undaunted, Agovino’s love affair with soccer persisted, while Americans slowly got wise – qualifying for the 1990 World Cup in Italy, hosting the event in 1994, and re-birthing the pro game with Major League Soccer in 1996 – and ultimately turned it into one of the most popular sports in the country.

We chat with Agovino about US soccer’s mid-1980s “dark ages” and subsequent phoenix-like rise from seeming oblivion, including memorable stops like: New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal; the NASL’s Trans-Atlantic Challenge Cup; the 1991 Cosmos Reunion Game; Tony Tirado’s lyrical Spanish (and broken English) SIN-TV broadcasts; “Soccer Made in Germany;” and the legacy/enigma of Giants Stadium.

Thanks Audible, SportsHistoryCollectibles.com and Podfly and for your support of the show!

The Soccer Diaries: An American's Thirty-Year Pursuit of the International Game - buy book here