It all began as a working vacation for David Gillett. In 1974, the 23-year-old Scotsman first stepped foot in Seattle, where pro soccer had never existed. He was coming to play central defense, but Gillett was soon all-in as a missionary for this emerging sport, conducting clinics and making plentiful promotional appearances.
Back in Britain, where he played for Crewe Alexandra, the
job was pretty much two hours of daily training, with a match or two each week.
It had been much the same for Adrian Webster when playing
for his hometown club of Colchester, in England. He moved to Vancouver to play
semi-pro and then heard about the NASL coming both there and Seattle soon
after.
“I was very fortunate that it was the Sounders and John Best
and Jimmy Gabriel that I played under,” Webster offers. “Not all of the clubs
in the NASL were run as professionally.” Soon Webster was starting on the
backline with Gillett, and the city adored their new team and their tradition
of applauding the fans each night from the center circle.
The original Seattle Sounders, pictured in 1974. Adrian Webster is front row, third from left; David Gillett is back row fourth from right. (Frank MacDonald Collection)Continue reading Land of Opportunity→
In 1944 – at the height of WWII – Italian POWs arrived in Puget Sound. Their Allied captors allowed many freedoms, including formation of multiple teams in Washington state amateur soccer’s top division.
On the evening of April 17, 1945, players, coaches, sponsors and officials of the Washington State Football Association gathered at Seattle’s stylish Olympic Hotel to celebrate winners of the various competitions held during the preceding six months. During the social hour, guests undoubtedly discussed the latest news of the world, of which there was no shortage. World War II was being waged in two theaters, and while an Allied victory appeared at hand in Europe, President Franklin Roosevelt would not live to see it. Five days earlier Roosevelt had died from a massive stroke, and now the United States had a new leader, commander-in-chief, Harry Truman.
Aerial view of Fort Lawton, taken in 1965, 20 years after World War II ended. In 1973 , much of its 534 acres in Seattle’s Magnolia neighborhood was given to the city and became Discovery Park. (Courtesy City of Seattle Municipal Archives)
Since
the bombing of Pearl Harbor, news of the war had been inescapable. It dominated
headlines and everyday dialogue. Now the war was having a profound effect upon
the state’s top amateur league, evidenced by the parade to the podium to
pick-up the WSFA trophies. A previously non-existent club was being presented
three pieces of silverware, including the ancient (1906) McMillan Cup.
At
the end of this day, members of this triumphant team would not go home. Instead
they would be remanded to their supervising officer and returned to their
barracks. Known as the 28th Italian Service Unit, these were officially
prisoners of war. Prisoners of a onetime enemy. Prisoners with privileges, yet
prisoners just the same.
A
World Power (On the Pitch)
Just 10 years earlier, Italian football had announced itself on a much larger stage. Without question, the Azurri were the Team of the Thirties, making a triumphant entrance to World Cup play by not only hosting the tournament but also becoming the first European nation to claim it. From that date until the outbreak of World War II, no national team was more revered than Italy which followed with a gold-medal performance at the 1936 Summer Olympics and another World Cup victory in 1938. During that stretch they ran roughshod, winning 38 and drawing six in 48 full internationals. Such success only served to further fuel a dictator’s desire for a new Roman empire.
Poster promoting Italy hosting the 1934 FIFA World Cup.
Benito Mussolini wanted the Azurri to be the embodiment of his Fascist movement, exhibiting a strength, cunning and physicality reflective of the new, merging Italy. As noted in David Goldblatt’s The Ball Is Round, the national team was exploited, used as a tool to create a warlike spirit. The manager later said, however, that players were generally not interested in their play making a political statement. They loved the game. Soon enough, however, war was a reality.
A Beating on Battlefield
Mussolini
joined Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Japan in forming the Axis powers yet was
comparatively ill-equipped, undermanned and poorly trained. Many soldiers were
unwilling combatants. Consequently, Italy took repeated beatings on the
battlefield.
Many
of these unenthusiastic conscripts to Mussolini’s army were among the 200,000
taken prisoner by the Allies in May 1943 following the Battle of Tunisia. If
being shot at and losing comrades while fighting for a deluded dictator was not
sufficiently demoralizing, some Italian prisoners were subjected to torture and
starvation under a blazing sun by Tunisian guards. Allied forces eventually divvied
up the POWs, and by January 1944 over 50,000 were bound for detention in the
United States. Some, however, would soon be given privileges previously
unheard-of.
It was a big game, for sure. A chance for the Little School by the Canal to once again burnish its image as a collegiate soccer upstart. Oh, yeah, and have witnesses coast-to-coast.
Such was the set-up 40 years ago, when Seattle Pacific met Southern Illinois-Edwardsville in the second game of the 1979 season. The Falcons were defending NCAA Division II champion and SIUE arrived in Seattle ranked No. 4 in all the land, having reached the Div. I quarterfinals the previous season. And a new cable network, hungry for live content, saw fit to televise it.
SPU coach Cliff McCrath, left, next to opening goal-scorer Mark Metzger.
The yellowed newspaper clippings reference the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network. Before long, it would become known by its acronym, ESPN.
“We were told, and we believe it was the first soccer game televised by ESPN,” says Cliff McCrath, the legendary SPU coach. ESPN had only been on the air for four days by September 11. Cable TV was relatively new and not available in many neighborhoods in Seattle, so in some ways the broadcast was no big deal at the time.
Only 20 million U.S. homes had cable at the time, and just 1 million carried ESPN. In Puget Sound, Viacom and Teleprompter cable systems served 73,000 homes, though not all had – or were aware that they had – the new all-sports station whose first live game broadcast was from the Slow-Pitch Softball World Series.
In American soccer, it ain’t easy to know your history. So many fits and starts; it’s been a sport interrupted, and often the second act forgets the first.
Locally, unless it’s St. Louis or the swath of pitches
stretching from Philadelphia north and east to Boston, soccer’s past is likely
buried in an attic, far from public consumption.
That goes for the great soccer state of Washington, as well.
We could begin chipping away at our own Rushmore with hall of fame players like
Akers, Higgins and Keller, yet most are unaware that five prior inductees were
among those who poured the foundation of what was to come.
Nowadays, of course, the multitude of fans supporting
Sounders FC are world-class and, consequently, have grabbed the world’s
attention and made Washington impossible to ignore. Still, the footing for this
fan base, this pipeline of top-class footballers and our undying love for the
game has been left unexplored. Until now.
Washington State Legends of Soccer is bringing this history back to life. There’s enough to fill a few hundred pages in a book, but time marches on and more and more history is being made. So, instead WA Legends is telling tales through a legacy platform designed by Seattle’s DCGone. There, visitors from across the globe can dive headlong into a pool of knowledge about Washington, whose roots in the game extend back some 130 years, practically to our territorial days.
Professional sports travel in North America can be arduous what with all the time zones and long distances between destinations.
But sometimes the road is where a team discovers itself, its character. Within the confines of airliners, buses, hotel rooms and shared meals can come a newfound camaraderie. Constant interaction can act as an incubator, speeding the development of relationships, on and off the field. Of course, this all assumes the chemistry elements are correct in the first place.
The Reign just returned home after playing four consecutive road matches. They have seven more points than when they last played at Memorial.
The Sounders, meanwhile, are outbound to a pair of imposing away matches at Toronto and Portland. The Reds have apparently sorted things out and are coming off a 3-0 win over Philly. The Timbers have won three straight, scoring six goals in their last two home wins.
What’s been Rave and white and red all over? Ah, that would describe the inauspicious start to the Sounders’ MLS season so far.
Two games, two red cards; no goals, no points. Even for historically slow-starting Seattle, this is a bit unsavory for the faithful. But when referees are showing cards, might as well go all-in. In other words, let’s dive in to an anecdotal history of notable Sounders walks of shame.
First Impressions
In the beginning, there was Dave D’Errico. Seven games into the original Sounders’ existence and, personally, just his second appearance, top draft pick D’Errico decked Toronto’s Gene Strenicer. It did not go undetected. While D’Errico sat in the locker room, Davey Butler scored late to give 10-man Seattle the road victory.
Tommy Jenkins no sooner arrived in Seattle than he saw red flash before his eyes.
Newly-imported from England, Tommy Jenkins was billed as an elegant playmaker to support Geoff Hurst. Yet when the pair debuted in 1976 at St. Louis, Jenkins introduced himself to the NASL by getting stuck-in, way in. He saw red then, but never again in his four seasons. Three other openers were marked excessive force, most recently Tony Alfaro’s double yellow versus LAFC.
Early? You want an early shower? Leo Gonzalez had barely broken a sweat in Columbus before his seventh-minute sending off in 2013. You probably don’t remember that; instead that game is best known for Eddie Johnson’s winner, celebrated by his ‘show-me-the-money’ mime.
Note: This originally ran in The Seattle Times shortly after Mike Ryan’s passing, on Nov. 28, 2012.
Today’s local soccer landscape is associated with Hope Solo, Sounders FC and, yes, large, loud crowds. Yet to reach the zenith and become the continent’s capital of the sport required a huge amount of underpinning.
Mike Ryan was the first coach of the U.S. Women’s National Team.
Several unsung individuals have served as pillars, and none played a more prominent role than the late Mike Ryan. From his arrival in Seattle 50 years ago to his passing last week, Ryan went about building a foundation spanning virtually every area of the sport. Whether it’s youth, college, women’s or professional soccer across Puget Sound, you will find his handiwork.
“Mike did a world of good and Seattle soccer is his legacy,” says Jimmy McAlister, one of Ryan’s star pupils, a breakthrough professional and now Seattle United coaching director. ‘There are a lot of legendary players for the (original) Sounders, but we didn’t get this started. The cornerstones of this success were guys like Mike Ryan.”
[Part One] Guatemala City’s Estadio Mateo Flores is a classic, midsize, nondescript bowl, with the playing field surrounded by a running track. The participants enter through a tunnel at one end.
In October 1996, Estadio Flores had drawn world attention for all the wrong reasons. Counterfeit tickets and breached entrances resulted in an estimated 60,000 fans jamming into the facility for a World Cup qualifying match between Guatemala and Costa Rica. Mateo Flores capacity was listed at 45,800. The crowd surge began one hour before kickoff; eventually the stampede resulted in 83 dead and 180 seriously injured.
By the time the 1997 Champions’ Cup was held, further security and crowd control measures were in place, and pale blue plastic seats had replaced the concrete terraces, reducing capacity to 26,000.
Awaiting the Seattle Sounders at Estadio Flores on this hot, muggy, summer Sunday afternoon was Mexico’s star-studded Cruz Azul, seeking its fourth Concacaf Champions’ Cup title but the first in 25 years. La Maquina (The Machine) needed a victory versus Seattle to secure first place in the group and, thus, lift the trophy.
There may have only been an inch of copy in The Seattle Times, but in Mexico City there was no missing the score.
For anyone associated with the already eliminated Sounders, a sense of foreboding would be understandable. Yet as Preston Burpo and his teammates made their way through the tunnel entrance, their spirits were lifted.
“I’m a big believer that any game you walk into, you can get a result,” states Burpo. “When we’re walking out the tunnel, all the local fans were rooting for us because if we got a result against Cruz Azul, then (host Comunicaciones, playing Necaxa afterward) had a real chance to win.”
Sitting in his living room, watching the catastrophic match unfold on the TV, Neil Megson had a growing feeling this would be his last day as head coach of the Seattle Sounders.
This was his team being shredded, gutted and embarrassed before its biggest audience and on the greatest stage to date.
Megson’s father, a former coach himself, sat with him, staring at the screen in shock. Neil broke the silence.
“Holy s***. Holy s***,” he repeated. “I think I’m going to get fired in the morning.”
His father, Don Megson, went further, stating, “You deserve to get fired.”
Neil Megson, Seattle’s player/coach, was obligated to coach the A-League West All-Stars rather than take his team to Guatemala.
If Sounders lore could bury a single score line from the past 44 years, certainly this selection would be weighted heavily. There are many reasons, the 11-nil beating being first and foremost. However, there’s more to it.
In some ways it was Exhibit A of where American professional soccer existed in the mid-Nineties; the scarce resources, skewed values and naiveté. It’s also a story of the Concacaf Champions League’s past and Seattle’s first encounters with Mexican powers and playing abroad. Stir it all together and it’s one hot mess, even if some failed to recognize it at the time.
Even by standards 50 years ago it was a modest match day program. Yet it matched the surroundings and, some might say, the fare that was on display that afternoon.
Still, it was a start. Turning the page, maybe spectators took pause from watching the stocky, commanding figure standing astride of the benches, to let the significance of the day soak in.
In a simple font, probably prepared on someone’s personal typewriter, flow the words: “We are sure that this game will be a milestone in the history of soccer in our state.” It goes on: “It is with pleasure and a feeling of satisfaction we are able to act as hosts to the first all-professional soccer game held in our state.”
West Seattle Stadium’s main stand is virtually the same as 50 years ago, when Vancouver met Bonsucesso.
It’s actually easy to picture the setting today. West Seattle Stadium sits virtually untouched, not only in the 50 years since but the 80 since being erected. The main stand, wooden and covered, could serve as a stunt double for a mid-20th Century British ground. The weather on that February 11, 1968 was practically spring-like: Bright sunshine and mild temperatures after a cold, soggy start to the new year. The grass is a bit long and ungroomed while the ground itself is soft from repeated rains.
