G Gordan Banks -- Fort Lauderdale Strikers D Franz Beckenbauer -- NY Cosmos D Mike England -- Seattle Sounders D Bruce Wilson -- Vancouver Whitecaps D Mel Machin -- Seattle Sounders M George Best -- Los Angeles Aztecs M Wolfgang Suhnholz -- Las Vegas Quicksilvers M Alan West -- Minnesota Kicks F Steve David -- Los Angeles Aztecs F Pele -- New York Cosmos F Derek Smethurst -- Tampa Bay Rowdies Banks, Pele, Beckenbauer and Best.... England was one of Wales' greatest player. Smethurst was the greates player in South Africa. I had no idea who were the rest of the players. what an era?
This is an impressive Best XI. However, if you made a "Worst XI" of guys who played regularly for their teams, you'd come up with a side that would be worst than a mediocre A-League team. NASL was top-heavy in so many ways. For every time the Cosmos or the Rowdies or the Kicks drew 50,000+, a team like Memphis was pulling in 800 and calling it 3800. For every Beckenbauer or England there were a handful of guys who make Kenny Arena look like Rio Ferdinand. No two aways about it, though: "what an era?" is right.
Steve David was a favorite of mine. I saw him score a hat trick at what was Pele's final apperance w/Cosmos at the Coliseum. (I actually had a picture of Pele leaving the field giving his shirt to the ref, but lost it years ago.) I believe he was from Trinidad, but you might double check. He was one of the best strikers mid/late 70's.
Re: Re: 1977 NASL All-Star Team Steve David was the real deal alright, but his career was short-lived. Unfortunately he was virtually kicked out of the League because the referees' refusing to protect him. David is example A of why thuggary should be nixed from soccer.
Re: Re: Re: 1977 NASL All-Star Team The fact that Steve could only score in odd-numbered years might have had something to do with that, too. Great names, yes...but feel free to post the average age. Banks was 37 (not necessarily old for a keeper, but still) and the NASL got him by default; he'd lost an eye several years earlier and had retired. Pele was close to 40. Suhnholz, Beckenbauer and Best were in their thirties, as was England and a few of the others. As another poster remarked, "top heavy" was a good way to describe the NASL. Finally, see any Americans on that list? No? Maybe that's because, for the most part, they weren't allowed to play. (Wilson was Canadian.) Don't get me wrong. I loved the NASL. Lord knows, I spend enough of my time researching and writing about it. But I'll take MLS any day.
I would second Steve's point about MLS vs NASL. But I will say that those players elevated the sport to a level in America that the MLS guys still have yet to do. I was looking through some old SI's when I saw this ad from the 10/13/75 issue: As you can see, Pele is featured with five NFL player. No baseball players, no basketball players, no hockey players. You had 6 player posters to pick from: Pele, Steve David, Paul Child, Bob Rigby, Kyle Rote Jr., and Julie Vee. If we are honest with ourselves, today (or the last few seasons) you would not see an MLS player displayed like this, and only player poster available would probably be Mia Hamm's This should change over time of course, but I think this ad gives you a sense of Pele's impact on NASL and how its profile was raised in the US sporting world.
Without the NASL, I'd be a regular on BigBaseball.com these days. The Rowdies are a kick in the grass!!
Wow, my brother and I had that Pele poster on our bedroom wall! Those all-stars were great players, but past their prime by 1977. Trevor Francis and Peter Beardsley were about the only players who came over in or before their primes that I remember. I cringed when I heard Gazza was looking to play here, because those former greats were good for raising the awareness of the game in the US but kept young Americans from getting the playing time they needed to get better. MLS is a much better situation. They need to continue to keep a lid on signing old "stars". Stoichkov has done very little I can see for either Chicago or DC. Better in the long term to promote the league through young American players. Sure they will probably leave to go overseas, but then you bring in a new cycle, because the casual fan (the kind that actually have to be marketed to) only has a certain attention span anyway.
I had Mean Joe Green on my wall. Didn't get into soccer until a year or two later. I agree with pretty much everything you say, though as I Fire fan I have to point out that Hristo was tremendous in 2000. He left everything on the field for MLS Cup 2000, and was crushed by the defeat. He was taking his job quite serioiusly. Since then... well, I think he's gone down hill. He hasn't hit the depths of Mattheus, but that's only because Lothar pretty much put that bar on the floor, so it will be tough to go under it.
Perhaps I was a bit harsh on Hristo (probably because of that awful foul on the kid from American Univ.) because Beasley and Bocanegra have really picked up their games in the last 2-3 years. Maybe he's had something to do with that. Mattheus, ouch, you'd really have to slither under that bar!
Regarding the Pele poster...I am a teacher and I have it on the wall in my classroom. I've had that poster for at least 20 years. Regarding the NASL, the Kicks sure knew how to throw a party...it felt like British soccer inside the stadium and out. It was a great time for me who at 12 had just found the game. Filling the old Met Stadium. And almost never able to beat the hated Tulsa Roughnecks. Cosmos games were great, too. Whatever happened to Roberto Cabanas? He scored one of the greatest goals I ever saw...jumping horizontal and backheel-flick into the net.
I think Cabanas later played along with another Cosmos ex on the Paraguay team in the World Cup in 86. My favorite NASL player was Johan Cruyff. He had an injury plagued year the year he was in DC, but his class was evident even playing at a jog. I'll bet my mother still has our Pele poster; she never throws anything away.
An entire page, with VIDEO CLIPS, dedicated to the 1977 Seattle Sounders is here: http://soundercentral.com/museum/1977OriginalSounders.htm It's a part of The Puget Sound Pro Soccer Museum, which features every year/season of every Seattle-area soccerteam! http://soundercentral.com/SoccerMuseum.htm
I see Cabanas playing for Paraguay [and scoring] on a video I have on all the goals of the 86 world cup. He was magic. I'm surprised he didn't get any more famous.
a picture of Roberto Cabanas scoring the goal I refered to is at this page: http://www.soccernova.com/images/activism/cosmos_campaign/gallery/players/cabanas.gif
If I remember correctly Smethurst spent an off season or two as place kicker for the Cincinnati Bengals.
I don't know about Smethurst, but I think Chris and Matt Bahr (Walter's sons) both played in the NASL and kicked in the NFL. I'm not sure they did so at the same time.
Chris Bahr was the 1975 NASL Rookie of the Year with the Philadelphia Atoms, his only NASL season: Matt played with Colorado in 1978 and Atlanta in 1979. After that, he played in the ASL for a year or two. Unlike Chris, Matt played NASL and NFL ball at the same time. Smethurst may have tried out with an NFL team, but I don't remember him actually making one.
No mention of Smethurst at www.pro-football-reference.com Also, this is what the 1978 Complete Handbook of Soccer had to say in Smethurst's bio:
While admitting I had the Beckenbauer poster on my wall when I was a kid, I do want to point out that there are MLS posters available. My sons have a Donovan poster in their room that didn't come from the Quakes. Tony