By Bill Turianski on the 4th of December 2024; twitter.com/billsportsmaps.
Links…
-1977 North American Soccer League season (en.wikipedia.org).
-NASLjerseys.com. {Recommended.}
-Kits: NASL 1977 (kitbliss.co.nz).
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Note: This is the first of a series. I have also completed a 1978 NASL map, and a 1979 NASL map (both slightly expanded), and intend to continue on.
The map is a location-map of the 18 teams of the 1977 North American Soccer League.
To the right of the map is a chart of 1977 NASL Home Average Attendance, by team. Teams’ regular-season-points totals and playoffs results are listed.
In the upper-right corner there is a section that shows thumbnail team profiles (years the team existed [including franchise-shift information], NASL titles, venue & capacity, location, 1977 average attendance & percent-capacity, 1977 playoff highlights). Below that is the 1977 NASL standings. And next to that is a section for Soccer Bowl ’77 (New York Cosmos 2, Seattle Sounders 1, in front of a full capacity crowd of 35,548 at Civic Stadium in Portland, Oregon, on August 28, 1977).
At the foot of the map-page is a long horizontal chart showing the 1977 NASL All-Stars, First Team & Second Team (23 players shown, with brief player-profiles).
At the center of the top banner there is listed the 1977 NASL awards: Most Valuable Player: Franz Beckenbauer of the Cosmos. Coach of the year: Ron Newman of the Ft. Lauderdale Strikers. Rookie of the year: the Seattle, Washington-born Jim McAlister of the Seattle Sounders.
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Unattributed at pinterest.com.
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1977 NASL season
18 teams (including 2 teams from Canada). 26-game season/12 playoff teams (6 teams per Conference). Rosters: 17 players, 6 of which had to be either U.S. or Canadian citizens. New rule: matches that ended in a draw were decided by a 5-second/35-yard-penalty-shoot-out.
2 franchises folded (Boston Minutemen, and the 1973 NASL champions, the Philadelphia Atoms). 4 franchises moved: San Antonio to Hawaii (Team Hawaii, who only lasted one year), San Diego to Nevada (Las Vegas Quicksilvers, who also only lasted one year), Hartford to New Haven (Connecticut Bicentennials, who folded after the season), and Miami to Ft. Lauderdale (Fort Lauderdale Strikers). 1 name-change: as befitting their Diva-like status, the New York Cosmos were to be now known as simply “the Cosmos” (that lasted two years).
The Miami Toros franchise moved 25 miles up the Florida coast to become the Fort Lauderdale Strikers. The Strikers wore striking amber-and-orange-horizontally-striped gear; they drew modestly, at 8 thousand per game, but were the surprise of the 1977 NASL regular season, as regular-season champions. Fort Lauderdale’s coach was Ron Newman, newly arrived from the semi-pro ASL, and he was given the Coach of the Year award. The Strikers’ goalkeeper was 1966 World Cup champion Gordon Banks, and Fort Lauderdale had the best defense in the league (29 goals allowed in 28 games).
But in the playoffs, the Strikers would have to face the Cosmos, who had been in disarray early on, with warring clubhouse factions. But the Cosmos began performing well after West German World Cup winner and two-time Ballon d’Or winner Franz Beckenbauer arrived in May (followed soon after by a coaching change in the form of South Africa-born Eddie Firmani). (Beckenbauer was 1977 MVP.) Ft. Lauderdale got a bye in the playoffs 1st round, then in the Atlantic Conference divisional championships’ 1st leg, the Strikers got blown out 8-3 by the Cosmos in front of an astounding league-record crowd of 77,691 at Giants Stadium, in East Rutherford, New Jersey. In the 2nd leg, before 14-thousand at Lockhart Stadium in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, the Strikers and the Cosmos were knotted 2-2, so it went down to the shoot-out, and the Cosmos prevailed.
In the Atlantic Conference Finals, the Cosmos would face the Rochester Lancers. To get to the conference finals, the underdog Rochester Lancers had first beaten the St. Louis Stars (in a shoot-out). And then, in the divisional finals’ 2nd leg, the Lancers, down to 9 men, beat their hated rivals, Toronto Metros-Croatia (the reigning champions). In the Conference Finals’ 1st leg, the Cosmos beat the Lancers 2-to-1 in Rochester, NY in front of an overflow-capacity crowd of 20,005 at Holleder Stadium. And in the 2nd leg, in front of 74-thousand at Giants Stadium, the Cosmos won 4-1.
Meanwhile in the Pacific Conference, the Dallas Tornados were the top team going into the playoffs. But Dallas lost to the Los Angeles Aztecs in the first round. The Aztecs had a league-best 64 goals, and boasted 2 of the 3 top scorers in the NASL that year – Trinidad-born striker Steve David, and legendary ex-Manchester United player and 1968 Ballon d’Or winner George Best.
In the Pacific Conference Finals, the LA Aztecs would meet the Seattle Sounders. The Sounders had a squad that was packed with British players, players who had been on 1st or 2nd or 3rd tier clubs in England (two of whom made the 1977 NASL First Team: Newcastle-born MF Mel Machin, and Flintshire, Wales-born DF Mike England). To get to the conference finals, the Seattle Sounders had beaten the Vancouver Whitecaps, and then the Soccer Bowl ’76 finalists the Minnesota Kicks. In the Conference Finals’ 1st leg, in front of an embarrassingly paltry crowd of 9-thousand at the vast Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, the Sounders beat the Aztecs 3-to-1. In the 2nd leg up in Seattle, at the 66-K-capacity Kingdome, the Sounders beat the Aztecs 1-0, in front of a massive crowd of 56-thousand.
Soccer Bowl ’77
Photo by Peter Robinson/EMPICS via Getty Images) via oregonlive.com.
-The New York Cosmos Win Soccer Bowl ’77 (3:11 video uploaded by NASL 1968-1984 Soccer History at youtube.com).
Soccer Bowl ’77 was to be played at the Portland Timbers’ home field, Civic Stadium in Portland, Oregon. 170 miles up the road, in Seattle, demand was high for tickets, but only 10,000 were allocated to the Sounders, so many Sounders fans had to buy scalped tickets. The stadium ended up being so packed that fans were sitting on the astroturf, only a few feet from the touchlines. In front of an overflow-capacity crowd of 35,548, the Cosmos beat the Seattle Sounders 2-1. In the 20th minute, the Cosmos’ Stephen Hunt capitalized on a goalkeeping error to score (the Seattle ‘keeper had been rolling the ball a little to close to Hunt). But just 4 minutes later, the workman-like Sounders engineered an equalizer via a neat 3-way passing play (Jocky Scott to Mickey Cave to Tommy Ord). It stayed knotted until the 78th minute, when Giorgio Chinaglia headed in the winner, on a cross by Stephen Hunt, who had whipped the ball in from outside the left side of the box near the touchline. Stephen Hunt got the MVP award for the game. This was Pelé’s last competitive match. The Cosmos would repeat as champions in 1978.
1977 was a pretty successful year for the NASL. Attendance was up 33%, to 13,558 per game. And despite poor playoff crowds in LA, teams averaged an impressive 29,251 per game in the playoffs. Regular season: Cosmos averaged 34.1-K (in their first year at Giants Stadium in New Jersey). The Minnesota Kicks (who had been Soccer Bowl ’76 finalists) drew an amazing 32.7 thousand per game, up in Bloomington, Minnesota [just down the road from the Twin Cities]. Third-best draw were the Seattle Sounders, at 24.2-K-per-game. And there were 6 more teams that drew in double figures: Tampa Bay Rowdies (19.4-K), San Jose Earthquakes (17.7-K), Dallas Tornado (16.5-K), Washington Diplomats (13.0-K), and Vancouver Whitecaps (11.8-K). The following year of 1978 would see the ambitious NASL expand from 18 to 24 teams.
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NASL Regular Season Attendance – 1967 to 1984
Listed: Number of Teams / League Average / Median Average / Best-drawing Team / Champions…
Chart by billsportsmaps.com. Attendance figures from kenn.com/blog/soccer/all-time-nasl-attendance-2/.
The North American Soccer League (NASL) existed from 1968 to 1984. The NASL’s glory years were between 1975 and 1981. As you can see in the chart above, yearly attendance figures show that as the 1970s went on, the NASL was steadily attracting more paying customers. By 1974 four teams were averaging over 10,000 attendance (San Jose Earthquakes, Seattle Sounders, Philadelphia Atoms, Vancouver Whitecaps). By 1975, the San Jose Earthquakes were drawing 17,927 per game. Boosted by the huge impact of Brazilian star Pele’s 3-year career with the New York Cosmos (1975 to ’77), the NASL broke the 10,000-per-game mark in 1976. And 3 teams in 1976 drew over 20,000 per game (Seattle Sounders, Minnesota Kicks, Portland Timbers).
In 1977, the Cosmos won the second of their 5 NASL titles, and drew a then-league-record 34-thousand per-game. In 1978, the NASL expanded to 24 teams (some would say that the league over-expanded). And in 1978, the New York Cosmos drew a league-record 47,856 per game. By 1979, the NASL’s median average attendance was 10,772. In 1980, the NASL’s attendance peaked at 14,440 per game. Also in 1980, 16 of the 24 NASL teams drew above 10-K per game. At that point, the Cosmos had been the highest-drawing team for 4 straight seasons, and the Cosmos had won 3 of the previous 4 titles (the other title in that 4-year-span went to the Vancouver Whitecaps, in 1979).
But the owners of many of the franchises aped the Cosmos, chasing the success that the Cosmos had in signing such world-renowned players as Pele, Franz Beckenbauer, and Carlos Alberto. In other words: overspending on aging internationals and letting young domestic talent languish on the bench. When the crowds fell off, the owners bolted. And the recession of the early 1980s hurt the league. And so in 1981, the league began contracting (from 24 teams to 21). In 1981, the league’s median average attendance peaked, at 11,465. But meanwhile, 7 of the 21 teams folded, so the league went from 21 teams in ’81, to 14 teams in ’82. Some believe that when, in March 1983, FIFA awarded the 1986 World Cup to Mexico, instead of the USA, it hastened the league’s demise. The NASL contracted even more, until the league limped through the final season of 1984 with just 9 teams.
For the American fan (such as myself) the NASL was an interesting league to follow, with colorful characters and cool teams. And live games had an energy and excitement that was abetted by the offense-friendly rules that the NASL invented. (Those rules included: A 35-yard-line offside rule. Points in the standings for goals [6 pts. for a win, 0 pts. for a loss but 1 point for each goal up to 3]. No ties [draws]…matches that ended in a draw were decided by a frenzied 5-second/35-yard-penalty-shoot-out.)
The NASL laid the foundations for soccer in the United States and Canada. Which helped lead to both the hosting the 1994 FIFA World Cup and the establishment of Major League Soccer (MLS) in 1996, as well as creation the Canadian Premier League (Can PL) in 2019. The NASL ultimately contributed to the overall improvement of the quality of American and Canadian players, and their national teams. The US national team has been transformed from also-rans to a competitive force. After a 36-year drought, Canada finally qualified for a World Cup (in 2022). And no American ever played in the English 1st Division before the NASL. Now, American- and Canadian-born players regularly play on the squads of big first-division clubs in Western Europe and elsewhere.
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Credits on map page…
-Blank map of North America, unattributed at pinterest.com.
-NASL attendance from kenn.com/the_blog.
-1977 NASL standings, from statscrew.com/soccer/standings/l-NASL/y-1977.
Soccer Bowl ’77…-20′ Stephen Hunt, with Pele (at left), Giorgio Chinaglia (#9), and Tony Field (#7), celebrating after scoring (20′): photo by Eric Schweikardt /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images at gettyimages.co.uk. -24′ Tommy Ord equalizes for Seattle, on a 3-way passing play (Trevor Hockey to Mickey Cave to Tommy Ord.): photo unattributed at goalwa.wordpress.com. -(78′) Giorgio Chinaglia heads in the winner, on a tight cross by Alan Hunt from just outside the left side of the box: screenshot of video uploaded by NASL 1968-1984 Soccer History at youtube.com.
Photo credits of 1977 NASL All-Stars…
First Team…
-Gordon Banks, Ft. Lauderdale Strikers (GK), photo unattributed at facebook.com/naslisfifty.
-Franz Beckenbauer, New York Cosmos (DF), photo unattributed at nasljerseys.com/[Beckenbauer, Franz].
-Mike England, Seattle Sounders (DF), photo (from 1976 pre-season) by Scott Butner via goalwa.wordpress.com.
-Bruce Wilson, Vancouver Whitecaps (DF), photo unattributed at nasljerseys.com/[Wilson, Bruce].
-Mel Machin, Seattle Sounders (DF/MF), photo (from Soccer Bowl -77 in Portland, OR), unattributed at nasljerseys.com/[Machin, Mel]/
-Alan West, Minnesota Kicks (MF), photo unattributed at nasljerseys.com/Players/[West, Alan].
-George Best, Los Angeles Aztecs (MF/AMF/W), photo by Masahide Tomikoshi via x.com/[@tphoto2005].
-Wolfgang Sühnholz (MF), Las Vegas Quicksilvers, photo unattributed at nasljerseys.com/Rosters/Quicksilvers.
-Derek Smethurst, Tampa Bay Rowdies (FW), photo unattributed at nasljerseys.com/[Smethurst, Derek].
-Steve David, Los Angeles Aztecs (FW), nasljerseys.com/[David, Steve].
-Pelé, New York Cosmos (FW), photo unattributed at nycosmos.com/news.
Second Team…
-Alan Mayer, Las Vegas Quicksilvers (GK), photo unattributed at nasl.com/news.
-Ray Evans, St. Louis Stars (DF), photo from 1975 FKS Soccer Stars trading card at tcdb.com/[Gallery-Ray-Evans].
-Steve Pecher, Dallas Tornado (DF), photo from tcdb.com/[Gallery-Steve-Pecher].
-Humberto Coelho, Las Vegas Quicksilvers (DF), photo unattributed at nasljerseys.com/Rosters/Quicksilvers.
-George Ley, Dallas Tornado (DF), photo unattributed at nasljerseys.com/[Ley, George].
-Arsène Auguste, Tampa Bay Rowdies (DF), photo unattributed at mytampabayrowdies.blogspot.com.
-Charlie Cooke, Los Angeles Aztecs (MF/W), photo unattributed at nasljerseys.com/[Cooke, Charlie].
-Vito Dimitrijević, New York Cosmos (MF), photo unattributed at nasljerseys.com/[Dimitrijevic, Vito].
-Rodney Marsh, Tampa Bay Rowdies (MF), photo unattributed at mytampabayrowdies.blogspot.com.
-Buzz Parsons, Vancouver Whitecaps (FW), photo unattributed at nasljerseys.com/Rosters/Whitecaps.
-Mike Stojanović, Rochester Lancers (FW), photo unattributed at nasljerseys.com/[Stojanovic, Mike].
-Steve Wegerle, Tampa Bay Rowdies (FW), photo unattributed at nasljerseys.com/[Wegerle, Steve].
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