EPISODE 391: The NASL's Chicago Sting (& More!) - With Karl-Heinz Granitza

Live and direct from Pottsdam, it's the one-and-only Karl-Heinz Granitza — the prolific German striker who became the face of the North American Soccer League's iconic Chicago Sting — and a transformative figure in American soccer during his seven outdoor seasons across the late 1970s & early 1980s.  

A 2003 National Soccer Hall of Fame inductee and one of the NASL's all-time leading scorers, Granitza opens up about his remarkable journey from West Berlin to the Windy City — where his powerful left foot, fiery personality, and unshakable will to win helped ignite a soccer revolution in the US.

Granitza shares the challenges of joining the Sting in 1978, a year that began with a record-setting 10-game losing streak, only to pivot dramatically under mid-season replacement coach Willy Roy. With a new influx of German talent and a renewed sense of purpose, Granitza led a cultural and competitive shift that culminated in one of the most exciting eras in Chicago pro sports history.

Among the stops: the tension-filled triumph of the NASL's 1981 Soccer Bowl championship match, where the Sting edged the star-studded New York Cosmos in a nail-biting, scoreless encounter that culminated in a dramatic tie-breaking shootout. Granitza recounts the euphoric aftermath: Chicago’s first major pro sports championship in nearly two decades, a ticker-tape parade attended by over 100,000 fans, and the moment he realized that soccer had finally taken root in America’s heartland.

We dive into Granitza’s reputation as both a clutch performer and a demanding teammate; with humor and honesty, he reflects on his passionate leadership style — his perfectionism, on-field outbursts, and deep loyalty to teammates like Arno Steffenhagen, Ingo Peter, and Pato Margetic.  

We also explore Granitza’s dominance in the 1980s indoor game (for both the NASL and MISL versions of the Sting, as well as the American Indoor Soccer Association's Chicago Power), his record-setting scoring streaks, and his perspective on the bittersweet demise of the NASL — especially the (often overlooked) legacy it still provides today's American soccer landscape.

Chicago Sting NASL T-Shirt (from Old School Shirts) - buy here

Soccer Bowl ‘81 T-Shirt (from Old School Shirts) - buy here

EPISODE 383: The Original San Jose Earthquakes - With Eric Gouldsberry

We're positively kvelling over the brand new anthology from this week's guest Eric Gouldsberry - "Our Life and Times with the Earthquakes" - which vividly (and lovingly) portrays the thrilling early days of the original San Jose Earthquakes franchise (1974-84) of the old North American Soccer League, and the transformative impact it brought to the Bay Area's fast-growing Santa Clara Valley.

Through his personal journey as a devoted fan and with never-before-seen images captured by his father - "official unofficial" team photographer Ray Gouldsberry - Eric brings to life the magic of a team that ignited an untapped soccer fan base in the South Bay and helped define the 1970s-era pro version of the "beautiful game" in America.

We explore the club's ingenious marketing tactics, pioneering players, eclectic fans, and the various highs and lows of the original Earthquakes both on and off the field - all set against the meteoric rise and ultimate collapse of the enigmatic NASL.

It's all here: cozy Spartan Stadium, its painted field, cheer instigator (and Episode 7 guest) "Krazy" George, the "Shakers," indoors at the Cow Palace - plus, the little-known origin story of 1978's expansion Oakland Stompers and the intense-but-brief rivalry that time forgot!

Our Life and Times With the Earthquakes: Images and Memories from the Glory Days of San Jose's Original Pro Soccer Team - buy here

EPISODE 378: US Pro Soccer's "League 1 America" - With Jim Paglia

Spurred on by a hugely intriguing article in The Athletic penned last November by Episode 274 guest Pablo Maurer (as well as another by Guardian soccer writer Jack Williams back in 2016), we delve into the fascinating story of the visionary, yet controversial 1990s American pro soccer league that never was - League 1 America - with its mastermind Jim Paglia. 

Born in the wake of the 1989 awarding of the 1994 FIFA World Cup to the United States, League 1 America was an ambitious attempt to reimagine a post-Cup pro soccer league for an American audience that gravitated toward fast-paced, high-scoring sports like football and basketball. Paglia’s vision centered on blending traditional soccer elements with entertainment-focused innovations and dedicated mall-like facilities, aiming to build a league that prioritized marketability and fan engagement above all else.

The league’s format featured radical rule changes, including shootouts to resolve ties, shortened match durations, and scoring modifications to encourage more goals and continuous action. Paglia also planned to lean heavily on corporate sponsorships, creating a business model that integrated entertainment and commercial viability, with aspirations of competing against America’s major sports leagues for both fans and television audiences.

Despite its innovative ideas, League 1 America never materialized. The league faced a skeptical sporting landscape, with the demise of the North American Soccer League in the mid-1980s still fresh in the public’s memory and doubts about soccer’s viability as a mainstream American sport. Financial hurdles, coupled with resistance from soccer traditionalists and a lack of institutional support, doomed the project before it could get off the ground. Critics dismissed Paglia’s vision as an overly commercialized distortion of soccer’s essence, while fans of the global game balked at the Americanized rule changes.

Yet, the story of League 1 America remains a fascinating “what if” in the history of U.S. soccer. A number of its ideas - especially the building of experience-driven soccer-specific stadiums - can be seen in today's Major League Soccer.  Paglia’s efforts highlighted both the challenges and opportunities of growing soccer in the U.S., underscoring the tension between preserving the sport’s global traditions and adapting it to local tastes. Today, as soccer continues its steady rise in America, League 1 America serves as a reminder of the bold experimentation and resilience that helped lay the groundwork for the sport’s future.

EPISODE 375: NASL, MISL & MLS Soccer - With National Soccer Hall of Famer Johnny Moore

It's a holiday gift-wrapped conversation with American soccer pioneer and US National Soccer Hall of Famer Johnny Moore - whose professional career as a player and coach across the original versions of both the North American Soccer League (San Jose Earthquakes, Oakland Stompers), and Major Indoor Soccer League (Detroit Lightning, San Francisco Fog, Phoenix Inferno & a one-game/one-goal stint with the Kansas City Comets), and as General Manager of the original Major League Soccer incarnation of the 'Quakes (formerly Clash, now Houston Dynamo) - is the stuff of legend.

Also: the "outlaw" 1969 Oakland/California Clippers; San Francisco's infamous Cow Palace; the mid-70s US Men's National Team; the real origin story of the NASL 35-yard line (and Shootout); and how Mexico's Club America almost became another Chivas USA.

Soccer Fever: A Year With the San Jose Earthquakes (Richard Lyttle) - buy here

EPISODE 353: The NASL v. US Soccer/MLS Case - With Steven Bank

Most US and Canadian domestic soccer fans are certain that the second incarnation of the North American Soccer League (2011-17) officially met its untimely demise in early 2018, just a few months after the first-year San Francisco Deltas beat the New York Cosmos in the 2017 Soccer Bowl - and amidst a seemingly desperate/last-minute antitrust lawsuit alleging collusion between US Soccer and Major League Soccer to keep the league down.

While the NASL hasn't played another game since, the lawsuit - largely ideated and funded by spurned billionaire/Cosmos owner Rocco Commisso - is still very much alive, and now officially headed to trial beginning January 6th of next year. 

At issue: whether the governing body of soccer in the US and/or its officially designated top-tier professional league conspired to exclude the NASL from Division I-sanctioned play, and schemed to monopolize the market for men’s pro soccer.

At stake: the future direction, competitive landscape and legal structure of American professional soccer.

We get a full primer on the history, rationale and likely outcomes of this stealthily persistent case, with UCLA law school professor, sports/soccer legal expert (and 1970s-era ASL Cleveland Cobras fan) Steven Bank - whose influential Twitter/X feed is an essential follow on all things law + soccer. 

EPISODE 338: 50 Years of San Jose Earthquakes Soccer - With Gary Singh

It's a "retcon" special this week, as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of one of the most colorful and persistent franchises in American pro soccer history - with a return visit from Episode 40 guest Gary Singh (The Unforgettable San Jose Earthquakes: Momentous Stories On & Off the Field).

As one of four West Coast expansion teams (along with the Los Angeles Aztecs, Seattle Sounders and Vancouver Whitecaps) added for the North American Soccer League’s breakthrough 1974 season, the original San Jose Earthquakes were an immediate hit both on the field (finishing second in an all-new Western Division, led by league-leading scorer [and Episode 35 guest] Paul Child) - and in the stands, where they averaged 15,000+ fans a game to a less-than-modern Spartan Stadium, more than double the league average at the time. 

Though never regular championship contenders, the ‘Quakes cultivated a rabidly loyal fan base that became the envy of clubs across the league – until the NASL’s ultimate demise ten years later. 

Fragments of the club soldiered on semi-professionally in the following years, but the appellation (along with some of the previous cast) returned in earnest in 1999, when the management of San Jose’s struggling (and unpopularly named) Major League Soccer “Clash” sought to rekindle some of the original NASL team's magic; by 2001, the second iteration of the Earthquakes were contending for and winning MLS Cup and Supporters’ Shield titles.   

However, stymied by an inability to construct a soccer-specific stadium in the area, owner-operator Anschutz Entertainment Group pulled up stakes and relocated the club to Houston (Dynamo) for 2006 – taking further championships with them. 

Nonplussed San Jose fans revolted – and a new “expansion” franchise was quickly announced by MLS officials, with plenty of structural caveats that ensure today’s now-third incarnation of the ‘Quakes rightfully retains all of its accumulated heritage and rich legacy.

The Unforgettable San Jose Earthquakes: Momentous Stories On & Off the Field - buy book here

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 331: The NASL's San Antonio Thunder (+ More!) - With Derek Currie

It's the adventure-filled story of how a late-60s-era Scottish top-league footballer helped start the first-ever professional soccer circuit in the then-British colony of Hong Kong - punctuated by an unexpected off-season loan to one of the most forgotten franchises in North American Soccer League history.

Derek Currie ("When 'Jesus' Came to Hong Kong: The Remarkable Story of the First European Football Star in Asia") joins us live and direct from his home in Bangkok, Thailand for an anecdote-rich romp through the international pro soccer scene of the 1970s/early 1980s - including his memorable Texas summer of 1976 wearing the "Stars and Stripes" for the NASL's oft-overlooked San Antonio Thunder!

When 'Jesus' Came to Hong Kong: The Remarkable Story of the First European Football Star in Asia - buy book here

EPISODE 322: The New York Cosmos' "Pelé Years" - With Charles Cuttone

Veteran New York-based sports writer/public relations pro Charles Cuttone has seen just about everything in his nearly 50 years of promoting professional sports across the Gotham sports scene - dating all the way back to 1974 as a fresh-faced elementary school intern with the World Football League's ill-fated New York Stars.

While the WFL gig (and team, for that matter) didn't last long, it was his next experience that following spring - with a rag-tag but ambitious pro soccer outfit called the New York Cosmos - that both solidified a budding career interest in sports PR, and yielded a ring-side seat to one of the most indelible stories in 1970s sports history.

In his new book "Pelé, His North American Years: A Tribute" - visually co-created with the exquisite imagery of legendary sports photographer George Tiedemann - Cuttone recounts the three-season, two-and-a-half-year phenomenon known as Pelé - and how the world's then-greatest player (and arguably, most famous athlete) transformed not only a earnest club and its backwater league, but also a "foreign" game into the mainstream consciousness of American sports.

Pelé, His North American Years: A Tribute -  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 305: "Goodbye Oakland" - With Andy Dolich

If anyone's qualified to weigh in with authority on the current Oakland A's relocation imbroglio, it is our guest this week - long-time professional sports marketing executive and Bay Area-based industry consultant Andy Dolich ("Goodbye, Oakland: Winning, Wanderlust, and A Sports Town's Fight for Survival").

Dolich spent 15+ years in the Athletics' front office from 1980-94 during the Walter Haas era - inheriting the remnants of Charlie Finley's parsimonious ownership, ushering in "Billy Ball", nurturing a promising farm system, and ultimately, reaping the rewards with a 1989 World Series championship over the market's "other team" - the San Francisco Giants.

But before we get there, we take an important introductory detour into Dolich's other exploits, replete with notable stops of keen interest to a certain little podcast - like the NASL's Washington Diplomats, the original National Lacrosse League's Maryland Arrows, and the NBA's Vancouver Grizzlies.

Goodbye, Oakland: Winning, Wanderlust, And A Sports Town’s Fight For Survival - Buy Book Here

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 274: "Absurd" Pro Soccer History - With Pablo Maurer

The Athletic Major League Soccer staff writer Pablo Maurer steps into our vortex of what-used-to-be in professional sports this week, with a look back at some of the more confounding and overlooked stories of the not-so-distant past of US pro soccer.

It's our deepest dives yet into memorable North American Soccer League gems like 1977's one-year wonder Team Hawaii; 1983's divisive US Men's National Team-as-pro-franchise Team America; the curious Stateside detours of world greats like Bayern Munich superstar Gerd Müeller, Dutch legend Johan Cruyff and Manchester United icon George Best - plus, of course, the NASL's inventive ahead-of-its-time 35-yard-line Shootout tie-breaker.

We also tackle some of the already forgotten early days of Major League Soccer - including its own version of the Shootout; LA's ill-fated "first" second franchise Chivas USA; and impossible-to-forget franchise monikers like Wiz, Burn, Clash, and MetroStars.

PLUS: the unheralded pre-MLS rules experiments of the mid-90s USISL minor league pyramid.

AND: the incomparable (if not incomprehensible) Socker Slam!

EPISODE #270: US Soccer's "Generation Zero" - With Hal Phillips

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 league even sold a pennant proclaiming 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. 

Slowly and awkwardly, Americans slowly got wise – miraculously qualifying for the 1990 World Cup in Italy, hosting the event four years later, and re-birthing the pro game with Major League Soccer in 1996 – and ultimately evolved it into one of the most popular sports in the country.

Sportswriter/author Hal Phillips ("Generation Zero: Founding Fathers, Hidden Histories & the Making of Soccer in America") joins the podcast this week to help trace the timeline of events that led to this epic transformation in American sports, by spotlighting the national team players and fans - raised on the game and tempered by hardship - who made it happen.

PLUS: Your chance to win a free copy!

Generation Zero: Founding Fathers, Hidden Histories & The Making of Soccer in America - buy book here

EPISODE 268: Behind the Scenes - With Charlie Evranian

Chicago sports fans of a certain age may remember the name Charles Evranian atop the masthead of the executive suite (behind inimitable owner Lee Stern, of course) of the 1981 outdoor version of the North American Soccer League's Chicago Sting - when that club delivered the first major pro championship to the Windy City since 1963's NFL Bears.

(Not to mention the team's first two barn-burning indoor NASL seasons at the former "Madhouse on Madison".)

But Evranian's time leading the Sting of the early 1980s was merely a brief mile-marker along a fascinatingly peripatetic 20+ year journey across a litany of (mostly forgotten) teams and leagues in both the majors and minors of professional sports management - laden with unbelievable twists and turns that only a podcast of a certain genre could love.

Charlie takes us on a wild ride alongside the likes of legendary front office figures like Bill Veeck, Ted Turner, Pat Williams, and Earl Foreman - for memorable stops including:

• leading baseball's Class A Greenwood (SC) Braves to two league championships;

• co-founding AHL hockey's minor league Richmond Robins;

• reinventing the mid-70s' Chicago White Sox; AND

• cleaning up an endless array of messes as the Major Indoor Soccer League's deputy commissioner.

EPISODE 255: Minnesota's Metropolitan Stadium - With Stew Thornley

Baseball historian, Minnesota Twins official scorer and Episode 114 guest Stew Thornley ("Metropolitan Stadium: Memorable Games at Minnesota's Diamond on the Prairie"), returns for a fond look back at the semi-iconic structure that helped secure "major league" status for the Twin Cities in the early 1960s.

Known simply as "The Met" by area locals (or even the "Old Met" to distinguish from the downtown Minneapolis Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome that effectively replaced it in 1982), Bloomington's Metropolitan Stadium opened in April of 1956 with the stated hope of luring a Major League Baseball franchise to the region - just as the sport was beginning to chart its modern-era manifest destiny.

While ultimately luring Calvin Griffith's Washington Senators to become the Twins in 1961 - as well as the expansion NFL football Vikings that same year - the Met was mostly the exclusive home of the minor league American Association Minneapolis Millers for its first five years of existence, save for a handful of annual NFL preseason exhibition games and two regular season Chicago Cardinals matches in 1959.

In 1976, it also became the popular outdoor home of the North American Soccer League's Minnesota Kicks - and its legions of young tailgate-crazy fans.

Ahead of its time in the mid-50s, Met Stadium was nearly obsolete by the end of the 70s - decent for baseball, not so much for football - and rumors of at least the Vikings absconding for another to-be-built stadium in the area (including concepts for a domed enclosure or a new football-only facility between it and the nearby indoor Met Center) swirled around the community as early as 1970.

Alas, after only 21 seasons each for the Twins and the Vikings (six for the Kicks), Metropolitan Stadium succumbed to poor maintenance and the allure of a new, winter-proof Metrodome. Demolished in 1985, the Met gave way to what is now the country's largest shopping center - the Mall of America.

Metropolitan Stadium: Memorable Games at Minnesota’s Diamond on the Prairie - buy book here

EPISODE 249: New York Cosmos Soccer - With Werner Roth

It's another bucket-list conversation with one of Tim's favorite players from the legendary New York Cosmos of the original North American Soccer League - defender extraordinaire​ (and de facto club keeper-of-the-flame) Werner Roth.

A childhood émigré of his native Yugoslavia in the mid-1950s, Roth spent the bulk of his youth in New York City - cutting his semi-professional teeth in the heavily ethnic, regionally competitive and historically influential German American Soccer League with German-Hungarian SC - where he eventually caught the attention of the new local NASL expansion franchise in 1971.

Roth joined the Cosmos the next year as one of its precious North American players, helping the club secure its first-ever league title and quickly establishing himself as a reliably solid defensive back whose presence could be counted on - especially as the team's ambitions grew.

By 1977, Roth had become captain of a high-wattage international superstar lineup featuring the likes of Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer, Carlos Alberto, and Giorgio Chinaglia - winning back-to-back Soccer Bowl titles and a global following.

We talk about all of it - plus Roth's time on the US National Team, his role in the cult classic WWII soccer movie Victory, thoughts on the current state of soccer in the US, and the potential for a Cosmos television miniseries in the not-so-distant future.

Victory - rent movie from Amazon Prime here

EPISODE 237: Pro Sports in Atlanta - It's Complicated (With Clayton Trutor)

By the time you hear this week's episode, the Atlanta Braves just may be celebrating their second-ever World Series trophy since moving from Milwaukee in 1956. 

If so, it would be the team's first title in 26 years, and only the second time in the region's modern sports history - or fourth, if you include the titles won by the now-defunct NASL's Atlanta Chiefs in 1968 and Major League Soccer's Atlanta United three years ago - that "The ATL" has been able to boast of any true major pro sports championship. 

That kind of futility can make any sports fan question their sanity, and as this week's guest Clayton Trutor ("Loserville: How Professional Sports Remade Atlanta―and How Atlanta Remade Professional Sports") tells us - in Atlanta's case, that self-doubt dates all the way back to the mid-1970s when one of its major newspapers dubbed the city "Loserville, USA".

As Trutor describes it, Atlanta's excitement around the arrival of four professional franchises during a dynamic six-year (1966-72) period quickly gave way to general frustration and, eventually, widespread apathy toward its home teams.  By the dawn of the 80s, all four of the region's major-league franchises were flailing in the standings, struggling to draw fans - and, in the case of the NHL's Flames, ready to move out of town.

While that indifference/malaise has dissipated somewhat in the decades since then (save for a second attempt at the NHL with the short-lived Thrashers), the dearth of team titles continues to loom over Atlanta's pro sports scene.

The resurgent Braves and their paradigm-changing Truist Park complex may just help change all that.

Loserville: How Professional Sports Remade Atlanta - And How Atlanta Remade Professional Sports - buy book here

EPISODE 234: "Big-Time Soccer" - With Rachel Viollet

We take another crack at the history and mythology of the late, great North American Soccer League - this time through the eyes of sports filmmaker Rachel Viollet, whose new documentary "Big-Time Soccer: The Remarkable Rise & Fall of the NASL" makes its US debut at New York's Kicking + Screening film festival later this week.

If that surname sounds familiar, it won't surprise you that Rachel is also the daughter of the late Dennis Viollet - one of the legendary Manchester United "Busby Babes" of the late 1940s & early 1950s - who later went on to become one of the pioneering coaches in the 1970s-era NASL.

With managerial roles overseeing Washington, DC's Diplomats and two flavors of Tea Men in both New England and Jacksonville, the elder Viollet unwittingly provided his young daughter with a bird's-eye childhood purview into a vibrant and hugely entertaining pro soccer circuit, whose influence is still felt in today's MLS and beyond.

Featuring dozens of first-person interviews, rare video footage, and a mountain of exhaustive research, "Big-Time Soccer" is a love letter to both the best and the worst of the NASL - and the legacy it left behind.

EPISODE 226: The New York Cosmos - With Steve Hunt

Your humble host does his best this week to tamp down his inner fanboy as he sits down for a bucket-list conversation with one of his favorite players from the legendary New York Cosmos of the original NASL - winger extraordinaire Steve Hunt ("I'm With the Cosmos: The Story of Steve Hunt").

Abruptly transferred into the star-studded orbit of North America's burgeoning super-club at the tender age of 20 from his hometown (Birmingham) England First Division Aston Villa side in the spring of 1977, Hunt unwittingly arrived just in time to grab a seat on the rocket ship breakout season that vaulted the Cosmos into the stratosphere of soccer not only across the US, but also worldwide.

Joining an array of international greats like Franz Beckenbauer, Carlos Alberto, Giorgio Chinaglia, and the incomparable Pelé, the speedy Hunt quickly became an instant sensation and vital offensive cog - not to mention a huge fan favorite - for a Cosmos unit that would soon break records both on and off the field, including an iconic MVP star turn in the club's historic Soccer Bowl '77 championship-winning match.

While he only played three seasons in Gotham, Hunt was a crucial component of NASL championships achieved in each of them (1977, 1978 & 1982) - a springboard to a triumphant return to England's top tier and national team caps.

I’m With the Cosmos: The Story of Steve Hunt - buy book here