Open Wide For Some Soccer podcast

Thanks to David McKenzie and former Diplomats and Cosmos defender Bob Iarusci for having me on the latest episode of their excellent NASL podcast, Open Wide For Some Soccer. You can hear the episode here. Among the topics discussed were:

* What inspired me to write a book about the NASL

Celeb meets star

* How I came up with the title for the book

* Why the MLS is disrespectful to the history of the NASL * Indications that people are still interested in the league * The US’ involvement in bidding for the 1986 FIFA World Cup * Decisions to market Pelé while perhaps forgetting some other deserving players * Other mistakes made when trying to promote the league * Celebrity appearances and their help (or not) in growing the game in the US * Gimmicks used to promote the NASL and why I was a fan of them * The corruption of FIFA * Why Bob used to have to spray paint his shoes white before every game * Improvements that MLS has made in marketing the sport * Why Geoff Barnett decided not to play for the Cosmos * The merging together of playing styles throughout the world * Where the NASL has had its most influence on American soccer 

* The increased interest of international scouts towards North America 

Miles, Blondie, ELO, Defunkt - all part of Rock n Roll Soccer

Here's a round-up of some more reviews of Rock n Roll Soccer, and an interview at the US Soccer Players website. This contained my favourite question of all: "If you were going to make a playlist to go along with the book, what would be on it?" In the book, I already came up with an NASL soundtrack. But a playlist is different, right? So I had the excuse to rummage through old CDs and records and re-think the musical accompaniment to the North American Soccer League. Here's a sample:

Miles Davis – Bitches Brew (1972). From the album of the same name because it was, like the NASL, a one-off, revolutionary fusion of styles that drew from the past and the present, and pointed to the future.

Jeff Lynne, singing for the Blues (pic: bcfc.com)

Electric Light Orchestra – Livin’ Thing (1976). The peak years of the NASL coincided with the peak years of stadium rock, and the fan cultures of both shared a lot of features – the game/concert as a big event, the spectacle of mass entertainment, the easy availability of recreational drugs. I’m no fan of stadium rock, but ELO was an exception, and this fine, typically upbeat track from the wonderful and aptly titled A New World Record is a good example of Jeff Lynne’s ease at being cheerfully influenced by US AOR. He’s a Birmingham City fan too.

The International Soccer Network wrote that  Rock n Roll Soccer "is the definitive history on the original NASL. Nothing out there rivals the detail and variety provided by this book. It is easily one of the best soccer titles of 2015, if not the best. Plenderleith, one of the best top journalists anywhere  [Steady on! IP], is a magician with words and history, making the entertaining NASL even more exciting. That is quite a task indeed. You can’t go wrong with this one. This is an absolute must for any soccer fan, regardless of where your allegiances lie. It has the honor of being one of our favorite soccer books of all-time. It’s that good!"

The NY-focused Empire of Soccer looked in particular at chapter seven 'The NASL v s FIFA and the World', which has scarcely been mentioned in other reviews. "One thing," writes Jake Nutting, "is abundantly clear from Plenderleith’s engaging staging of all the many grievances the NASL embroiled itself in – neither incarnation of the NASL has ever been about going with the flow. Owners were openly hostile toward what they deemed intrusive oversight from the overlords at FIFA. Ironically, the league’s focus in the modern era has shifted to aligning American soccer more with the rest of the world, but the bickering within our own shores has remained robust."

"This is a far more substantive book than you’d expect from its title," writes the blog Message In A Bottle at Island Books, an independent outlet in Washington State, "but then the NASL was a far more substantive operation than history has acknowledged. When it’s remembered these days, it’s usually for garish disco-era uniforms, gimmicky promotions, and overpaid, over-the-hill stars from overseas. All of that is at best only partly true, as Plenderleith shows. [He] excels in showing what the teams and players were really like and establishes a historical context for the league, definitively answering the interesting question of how North American soccer compared to the kind played everywhere else on the globe.

"Today MLS trails only the National Football League and Major League Baseball in average game attendance, thanks mostly to the spectacular support of Northwest fans who insisted that their MLS franchises carry the names of their lost NASL forebears. Rock 'n’ Roll Soccer speaks to everyone with football fever, but to us most of all."

"I didn't know who the hell FIFA was and I didn't care"

The North American Soccer League’s relationship with FIFA was fractious from the go, and it barely progressed to the point of cordiality in the next two decades. NASL Commissioner Phil Woosnam was forever lobbying to innovate at the behest of owners such as the Atlanta Chiefs chief executive Dick Cecil who initially, in his own words, “didn’t know who the hell FIFA was and I didn’t care”. The NASL meddled with the points system, the offside law, shirt numbers, and the number of permitted substitutions, and it became wholly opposed to the idea of ending any game in a draw. The NASL knew that to sell the sport to a new market, it had to understand what it was that the fans – unencumbered by 100 years of history and tradition – wanted from 90 minutes of sporting entertainment.

Sport imitating art: Subbuteo-style, the NASL
 experimented with a 35-yard line to spread
 play and decrease offside calls.

Not all of its ideas worked, or were necessarily beneficial to the game as a spectacle, but at least this was a league prepared to instigate a discussion and then take action at a time when FIFA took (and still takes) years to even contemplate the possibility of change. And it happened in a decade, the 1970s, when football was at its nadir of negativity in terms of tactics and goalscoring. In this excerpt from Chapter 7, The NASL vs FIFA and the world, we look at the changes that the NASL, with FIFA’s eventual (but reluctant) approval, made to the field of play. By adding a 35-yard offside line (think Subbuteo), the league attempted to stretch the play, minimize offside, and avoid the tight and frenzied midfield stalemates so prevalent in Europe at the time:

One of the rumours that did the rounds in the 70s was that ‘the Yanks want to abolish the offside law’. This was another supposed example of how the Americans wanted to mutilate and destroy our game, and although it was mooted by a couple of teams at the League’s inception, it was voted down by those who had a vague clue about soccer and its place in the world. However, anyone who recalls the offside trap of the 1970s and 1980s in European soccer might grant the idea of even discussing a change to the offside law a little sympathy. For the benefit of those who weren’t there, or who have shut out the memory, lines of defenders would step forward at the apposite moment with their arms simultaneously raised in appeal, usually catching an opponent clear through on goal, but yards offside. This could happen time and time again, and would prompt much agonizing among television pundits about what to do. The answer, as always from the European game, was nothing. On the other hand, it was of course a wonderful sight when one or more of the defenders got his timing wrong, the linesman kept his flag down, and all of a sudden the forward was through on goal with only the keeper to beat. If the forward scored, the defenders would jaw at the linesman as if he had personally advised them to step up like line dancers and ignore the ball in favour of a negative, under- handed tactic which had never been envisioned when a more Corinthian generation had devised the law as a way of avoiding goal-hangers.

For the unique case of the NASL, though, a modification was in order. In the middle of the 1972 season FIFA allowed the NASL to experiment with an offside line in line with the penalty area, but it was a fiasco – defenders played so deep that play became entrenched in the penalty area and goals per game actually decreased. It was brought upfield to become a 35-yard line for the 1973 season. Long-serving NASL coach Ron Newman explains that one of the reasons the offside line was introduced ‘was mainly down to the fact that we kept playing in high school arenas and they were so long and narrow. You were fitting a soccer field inside a running track, and it was hard in this country, because the running track was a different shape here – more narrow, and you’d get things like a long jump pit down the edge of the field and you had to cover it up.’ With the game already constricted by narrow pitches, having the offside line on halfway squeezed play still further. Despite its introduction being designed to fit the unique case of US soccer, Newman believes ‘without question’ that a 35-yard offside line would have worked for the rest of the world.

Phil Woosnam explained the rationale when FIFA, after a year of deliberation, finally gave the League the go-ahead to try the experiment. ‘By opening up the play with this change in the offside law, we feel that spectators will be treated to a more exciting and enjoyable brand of soccer,’ he said. ‘The entire world of soccer recognizes that changes in the laws that produce greater goal-scoring opportunities must be considered. It is our belief, shared by many European officials, that the ultimate answer is to make a change in the offside rule and the size of the goal.’ Some years later, he explained to Observer journalist Hugh McIlvanney another reason for the offside line: ‘An increasing influence of coaches and players from England in North America was resulting in an increase in the use of offside tactics, congestion of players in midfield and tight marking of skilful players by extremely physical defenders.’