Different Kind of Team Retiring Willrich Jersey : Sockers: Former star says game has changed much since his departure.
It wasn’t the perfect match between club and player, but it might appear that way at halftime of tonight’s Sockers-Baltimore game when the jersey of Jean Willrich, who wore No. 15 throughout his seven-year indoor career here, will be retired.
One reason it wasn’t perfect, of course, was because Willrich’s athletic abilities led him into a team sport that in the United States gets little recognition outside bankruptcy courts.
The league in which Willrich first played upon his arrival in this country from his native West Germany, the North American Soccer League, folded in 1984. What emerged in its place, the Major Soccer League, threatened to follow the NASL several times in the past five years if players did not accept drastic salary cap reductions.
“First it was $1.2 million,” Willrich said of the cap. “Then it was $1 million, then $750,000 and now it’s $550,000.”
Willrich was as much a victim of the downward spiral as anyone.
After watching his salary grow to six figures through the mid-1980s, he was asked to take a considerable reduction before the 1987 season.
Or he was given the option of becoming a free agent. Thus Willrich unceremoniously left the Sockers for Wichita, the only MSL city that, by comparison, makes Cleveland an attractive destination.
“Dante’s Inferno was written in Wichita, wasn’t it?” asked Juli Veee, who before tonight was the only Socker to have his jersey number (22) retired. “Wichita destroyed Jean. He was a young man when he went there.”
Willrich lasted two years in the MSL’s backwoods before asking the Sockers if he could wear his old jersey one more season and then retire. His request for a one-year contract was turned down; the club told Willrich, then 36, he would have to try out.
“Inside here I am proud,” Willrich told team officials then. “I’ve played 10 years and you tell me to try out? That’s an insult.”
And the career of the Sockers’ third all-time leading scorer ended.
Two years have gone by, and, as time has a way of doing, it has soothed the pain of a once acrimonious relationship.
Willrich will be on hand tonight to help hoist the same jersey denied him two years ago into the Arena rafters. Upon Willrich’s insistence, the Sockers also will retire No. 10, which was worn by the late Kaz Deyna, a teammate of Willrich for six years and a part of the Sockers’ first five championships.
It will be that Jean Willrich, the one who put his teammates ahead of himself, who will be honored tonight.
Bob Bell, the first Socker owner, will be on hand.
“Jean’s whole personality was sparkling,” Bell said. “He was so underrated because he was always the second- or third-best player on a team with guys like Juli and Kaz and Steve Zungul and Branko Segota. But you could always tell he was so sincerely happy for for his teammates.”
Willrich was also an instigator of some of the Sockers’ legendary pranks, most of which cannot be written about in the mainstream press, one of which even brought the FBI to Los Angeles International to meet a Sockers’ flight, and some of which were as harmless as walking up to strangers in the Dallas airport and asking, “Who shot J.R.?”
Harmless is the way one former teammate thinks of Willrich.
“Jean is a sweetheart,” Veee said. “He couldn’t hurt anybody--except when he let his right foot go.”
Added Bell, “No matter what you asked Jean to do, he would always go along with it. Owning the Sockers was my first experience in professional sports, and Jean was one of the guys who made it a pleasure.”
That Bell is able to speak highly of his experiences could be called ironic. He lost more than $10 million trying to make soccer go in this country. He now owns a cable television company in the Los Angeles area.
Willrich has settled down in Clairemont with his wife, Bridgit, and three children: Michaela, 10; Gene Michael, 5; and Kristin, 2. He earns a living coaching youth soccer.
He has settled down, but he has not been able to put the game behind.
To do so, some of his former associates say, would be out of character.
Randy Bernstein, Socker executive vice president/general manager, said he remembers Willrich for his intensity.
“The neat thing I always liked about Jean,” Bernstein said, “was that Jean always took the game so seriously. He was like Tony Gwynn. Some players would show up 10 minutes before warmups, change, and hurry on to the field. But Jean was always there an hour and a half before, sitting at his stall, talking with (locker room attendant) Johnny Gardner, chatting with the locker room boys. And Jean loved every minute of it.”
When Willrich returned to the Sports Arena for a regular-season game last year, he realized how much he missed his playing days.
“That emotion was coming back, and my heart was pounding,” Willrich said. “I realized I miss the hype of a big game . . . that feeling you get when you walk on the field for a championship game . . . the feeling you have during a close game.
“I don’t have that any more, but it’s still inside. I still feel soccer inside.”
Willrich still ranks third all-time on the Sockers in goals (166), assists (191) and points (357). But he is not remembered for his scoring touch as much as he is for being the team player.
Veee, in fact, remembers Willrich in relation to Deyna, who died two years ago in an auto accident.
“Kaz would do all the finesse--the surgery,” Veee said. “And Jean would do the running.”
Added Bell, “He never had to be the star. He was always willing to meld into the system.”
It is a system that no longer exists. Willrich was part of the Sockers when they dominated the indoor NASL and MSL with a control game--with quick, precision passing. He bemoans the advent of the kick-it-and-run-after-it soccer that has taken root in the MSL since he left.
“In our day,” Willrich remembered, “we could make it fast, or we could make it slow. We could take people on and play control soccer. We played smart and nobody could run away from us no matter how fast they were. As long as we controlled the flow, somehow, somewhere, somebody was going to get a one-on-one and we were confident we could score then.”
Willrich knows he probably never will see that style of indoor soccer again--there simply are no more Jean Willriches and Kaz Deynas coming over from Europe. He also knows a possibility exists that indoor soccer could disappear--there simply are not enough fans paying to see the guys who replaced the Willriches and Deynas.
Which is one reason Willrich decided to return to the Arena tonight. He hopes some attention that used to be afforded the sport will follow.
“The other day I saw Bob Bell,” Willrich said. “He told me ‘I could not say goodby to you (when he was forced out as owner in 1987).’ It was sad. He was the owner for so, so long, and he was a very good owner, a very nice man and he loved soccer very much. It’s just sad to see soccer’s decline. I hope one day soccer gets big and he gets his due, he gets the recognition he deserves.”
