Thrill Is Gone for Soccer Fans
“Catch Pro Soccer After The World Cup”--that’s how the ad copy reads.
Except there’s a catch.
No Romario.
No Bebeto.
(Though there is a Paulinho, a midfielder from Criciuma, Brazil, who once played in the same league with Romario and Bebeto).
No Alexi Lalas.
No Tony Meola.
(Though there is Jeff Agoos, a defender from the University of Virginia who used to play with Lalas and Meola before he was cut from the 1994 U.S. World Cup team.)
No Brazilian samba drums beating in the stands.
No blue-and-yellow painted Swedish faces beaming in the stands.
Not much of anything, or anyone, in the stands. Just an announced gathering of 2,564 die-hards and/or motorists who happened to be driving by Cal State Fullerton Thursday night and wondered why the lights were on.
“The Legacy Continues,” the ad copy teases, “With The . . . L.A. Salsa.”
Well, not quite.
The action at Titan Stadium this evening was lively enough; the Salsa erased a 2-0 deficit with goals in the 87th and 89th minutes to force overtime and a shootout, a running-start version of the World Cup’s penalty-kicks decider. And on this, the American Professional Soccer League has the World Cup beaten no-hands down. By forcing the kickers to start dribbling from 35 yards out, the goalkeepers actually have a fighting chance in this mano a mano .
Ten shots were taken, nine failed and Ft. Lauderdale won the shootout, 1-0.
Neither goalkeeper had to be outfitted with a cigarette and a blindfold.
Yet, from an atmosphere aspect--and this leads directly to the survival aspect--the post-World Cup APSL looks no different from the pre-World Cup APSL.
What happened to Soccer Nation--the swelling World Cup fever that was supposed to leave the newly addicted panting for a corner-kicks fix once Brazil and Italy split Pasadena?
Where did the house of Hagi go? The cult of Baggio? The Valderrama wanna-bes?
Wasn’t the most popular, most wildly successful World Cup in history supposed to lend a healthy bounce to those lagging APSL attendance totals--at least until Alan Rothenberg’s MLS steps in to fill the gap, if and when?
“The World Cup didn’t help us,” said Dr. William De Le Pena, owner of the Salsa. “We never expected it to. I think that was a misconception about the World Cup. There was not going to be any big bonanza.
“If the World Cup was going to help us, it was going to do it in two ways--stimulate sponsors to come in and help us get us a TV contract. If not, it was going to be the same as it always was--with us working from the ground level up and building patiently for the five or six years.”
David Bolton, the Salsa’s director of communication, thinks the World Cup actually worked against his team in the ticket-count department.
“After the World Cup, people are soccered out,” Bolton said. “It’s tough. We’ve got the (indoor soccer) Splash playing right down the street. We just had 52 World Cup soccer games. Right now, it’s a saturated market.
“The World Cup was great for exposure, but again, you had 52 games in a month. Suppose you went to the beach every day for a month. After a while you say, ‘Give me a break.’ ”
One other point, as Salsa ticket manager Al Mistri made outside the gates 30 minutes before Thursday’s game:
“Remember, that’s not gonna be Argentina-Romania out there.”
That’s Problem 1 with post-World Cup Syndrome: Our newly awakened taste buds have been spoiled rotten. For five weeks, the best soccer players on the planet invaded our shores and we surrendered, gladly, blissfully seduced by gravity-bending bicycle kicks and kamikaze headers.
Now Stoichkov and Klinsmann are gone and what are we left with? The Salsa and the Ft. Lauderdale Strikers.
How good is the caliber of play in the APSL? A sampling of expert opinion:
“We’ve played maybe 10 games against Mexican first-division teams,” De La Pena said, “and we won half and lost half. So I’d put us somewhere in the middle of the Mexican first division.”
Bolton pegged the level of play closer to a “competitive second-division squad” in Europe.
And Mistri, who also is the head soccer coach at Cal State Fullerton, places the APSL “somewhere between the second and third divisions in Europe. My dad saw a game last year and said it reminded him of a good third-division game in Italy. I think that’s a good opinion.”
But is that good enough to drag more than a couple thousand through the turnstiles on a mid-summer weeknight?
“This is not the issue,” Mistri said. “We know what the level of play is. The issue is: What else is going on?”
“This is the best this country has in outdoor soccer,” De La Pena said. “Paulinho was one of the leading scorers in Brazil three years ago. He led Botafogo to the Brazil championship. We beat the Cameroon national team in a friendly before the World Cup.
“The level of play is quite good. And we’re doing something for soccer here. We’re keeping it going in this country. And we’re going to keep on playing.”
Now, somebody just needs to notice.
