Sport Needs Pro League of Its Own to Succeed : Soccer: Role models and a promising living would help keep budding stars from turning to other careers.

Ryan Moreau of Fountain Valley is an excellent soccer player, a 12-year-old who is good enough to start on a 14-and-younger all-star team, but he’s quitting soccer this year to concentrate on basketball.

Matt Friend, a sophomore at Corona del Mar High School, will play varsity soccer next winter, and his coach thinks he has the potential to play in college. But Matt says he will give up the sport after high school to pursue a baseball career.

If there was a viable professional soccer league in the United States, one that could provide role models for budding stars to emulate and a good living for them to aspire to, perhaps Ryan and Matt would remain in soccer.

But the American Professional Soccer League is too young and obscure to have that kind of stature. In addition, the pro league that the U.S. Soccer Federation was supposed to have in place as part of an agreement with FIFA, the worldwide governing body for soccer, to bring the World Cup here still has not been established.

So, the Ryan Moreaus and the Matt Friends of this country are turning to other sports, slightly eroding soccer’s talent pool with each defection.

And those in the soccer business can’t blame them.

“We’ve got to get a strong pro league up and running before we can criticize people for choosing other avenues,” said Rick Davis, general manager of the APSL’s Salsa. “We want kids in high school to pursue soccer careers, not drop out because they’re equally good in other sports.”

Soccer isn’t losing all of its best athletes. Tony Meola, a goalie on the U.S. national team who played in the 1990 World Cup, was a third-round draft pick of the New York Yankees as a high school senior but passed on a pro baseball career to play soccer and baseball at Virginia.

Meola quit the baseball team after his sophomore year of college to devote himself to soccer. And Brad Friedel, another national team goalie, chose soccer over a potential pro hockey career.

“But we’re still losing a lot of good athletes,” UCLA Coach Sigi Schmid said. “The World Cup is running an ad with Cal Ripken saying soccer made him a better baseball player. Maybe if he could have made $5 million in soccer he would have stayed with it.

“If I was 16 or 17, unless I had a great desire to play in Europe, I’d choose other sports I was talented in because I’d have a better chance for success,” Schmid said.

The lack of a stable pro league has not affected participation at the lower age levels, but it has not helped at the higher age levels. According to a Soccer Industry Council of America survey, soccer drops from second in youth team sport participation rankings to fourth when going from the 12-and-under group to 18 and under.

High school soccer players often begin to feel peer pressure to play other sports. Football, basketball and baseball are deemed more popular by most students and usually generate the most attention.

“I have a lot of friends who play basketball, and I like it because it’s more popular,” Ryan said. “If there was a good pro soccer league I’d probably stick with it. It was a hard decision, but I think I have a better chance of getting somewhere, playing in college, in basketball.”

Meola was an exception. His soccer games at Kearny High in New Jersey attracted thousands of fans, outdrawing the school’s football team, and Meola grew up idolizing New York Cosmo players.

“Ultimately, people have to say they want to be like Tony Meola or (national team defender) Paul Caligiuri,” Meola said. “Every football player wants to be Troy Aikman or Joe Montana, every basketball player wants to be Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan or Larry Bird.

“You have to have some kind of ambition. Five years ago, you could never look at anyone in America and say you wanted to play soccer like him. Now, I think we have that and we need to expand on it.”

A strong U.S. showing on home turf in the World Cup next summer would help, but the United States has not exactly been a force in world soccer. The best finish for the United States was the semifinals of the first World Cup in 1930, and the U.S. team did not make it out of the first round in the 1990 World Cup in Italy.

“If we’re successful in 1994, people will support us,” Meola said. “It will build excitement in America if you can turn on the TV and see the U.S. in the quarterfinals or semifinals of the World Cup.”

A good World Cup finish might spark more interest in soccer, but a solid pro league would keep the best athletes in the sport.

“When you get to high school, the only place you can look to is college, but you can’t go and make much money after college like you can in baseball or another sport,” said Joe Max-Moore, a U.S. national team midfielder. “If you make it in those sports, you’re set for life. Soccer isn’t that way. Hopefully that will change.”

Max-Moore is not expecting baseball-like, million-dollar salaries, though. Soccer players would be satisfied with much less.

“I think a salary of $100,000 a year, even less than that, would keep a big percentage of players in the game,” Max-Moore said.