Bookshelf: Soccer in a Football World (Chapter 4)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soccer in a Football World: The Story of America's Forgotten Game (David Wangerin)

Chapter 4: 'We Will Become Phenomenal'

Wangerin analyzes how television revenue and jet travel in the 1960s served as the foundations for modern sports in the U.S., including soccer.

Specifically, the efficiency of air travel allowed internationally-known clubs like Celtic, Manchester United, Munich 1860, and Napoli to complete well-attended tours in the U.S. in a matter of weeks instead of months. And the success of those tours led to the International Soccer League, a U.S.-based summer league that existed 1960-1965 and mostly featured middling European sides. 

And when it came to the potential promise of television riches, well-known entrepreneurs like Jack Kent Cooke and Lamar Hunt submitted one of three proposals for a domestic soccer league that was considered by today's equivalent of the U.S. Soccer Federation. After some backroom intrigue featuring negotiations between the federation and prospective leagues, the North American Soccer League backed by Cooke and Hunt was selected as the preferred league in 1967.

Subsequently the NASL engaged in the now-familiar soccer wars among leagues in the U.S. with the National Professional Soccer League (NPSL), a battle that included competition for mostly foreign players to populate their rosters, a name change for one of the leagues (the NASL briefly renamed itself the patriotically-themed United Soccer Association), and an ever-constant fight for the hearts and minds (and eyeballs) of American fans.