LA Aztecs (USA)
When I think of America and football, a few
different things come to mind. First and foremost will always be that glorious
day back in 1994, when Ray Houghton broke Italian hearts in Giant’s Stadium.
Another is an episode of The Simpson’s in which Homer and his family go to
watch a “soccer” game. Just before kick off, Pelé turns up to promote some sort
of kitchen paper and is handed a large back of cash. The game kicks off and
eventually the crowd riots because they are so bored by what they are seeing.
The scene perfectly encapsulates Americans relationship with football up until
the millennium.
Generally though, my impression of football in
America is that it is where bright stars go to burn out, while getting paid
handsomely to do so. I still feel this is the case today. This was a trend that
started back in the NASL ( North Amercian Soccer League ) in the mid seventies.
Yes that’s the league that eventually brought in all those crazy rule changes
such as a 35 yard offside line to help attacker’s and hockey style penalties to
make the game more palatable to it’s American audience.
The most famous team in the league was the New York
Cosmos, who also had the league’s biggest draw in Brazilian superstar Pelé. The
world cup winner was 34 years old when he signed for the Cosmos on a three year
contract worth $2.8 million. Which made him the highest paid athlete in the
world at the time. Only in America.
But it is not Pelé and the Cosmos that i am going to talk about in this
piece. Plenty has been written about them already and it is one of the most
well documented transfers ever to have happened in the game. Instead I am going
to discuss another club from the NASL that went down a similar route to the
Cosmos. That team is the L.A Aztecs.
In 1974, Dr Jack Gregory an avid football fan,
practising Doctor and real estate developer, who was based in Los Angeles, with
the help of some of his friends, organised for a few International team’s
including Mexico and Poland to travel to the United States for a series of
Exhibition games. These games turned out to be a huge success, drawing massive
crowds at the time. Buoyed by the success of these exhibitions, Gregory decided
to enquire about buying a franchise in the NASL, which was expanding the league
by eight team’s that year. Forgotten Clubs was lucky enough to get in
contact with Dr Gregory to discuss his time as owner of the club.
“ I rang the commissioner at the time Phil
Woosman, who was in New York, and asked him was their any franchise available.
He told me L.A was available and it was mine if I had the money, which I had,
and just like that I had bought a football team",Gregory told
Forgotten Clubs.
He named his team the L.A Aztecs, chosen because of
the large Mexican population in the city at the time that he thought he could
tap in to, and the fact that the Aztecs were warriors as he wanted his team to
be. The colours chosen were those that were traditional in the Aztec cultural.
The club was to play it’s games at the Weingart Stadium for their first season.
One of many stadiums they would come to play at.
Gregory had gotten to know a lot of people that were involved in the
game such as player’s and coaches while he was setting up International matches
that year. This helped him enlist the help of Alex Perolli, an Albanian coach
to manage the team. He gave him full control of the team, which is a rare thing
for an owner to do, even nowadays.
“Perolli asked me did I want this team to win and I
told him that I did. Leave everything to me then he said “ Gregory recalled. “
So I let him do his thing"
Perolli managed to put together a team of 28
players, representing over ten nationalities.
Gregory remembers the team’s first training session
together vividly -
“ The manager ( Perolli ) asked me to make
an appearance at the first training session as all the players would be
present. The session was due to start at 9am sharp. Two player’s, who were
probably two of our best and both Brazilian were late to arrive. When they did,
Perolli told them that they were to train with the team and after go to his
office and pick up two plane tickets back to Brazil, that would be waiting for
them. Your fired he told them. I shit my pants! But straight away the team knew
to respect him and that he was the boss. It was a show of strength"
The Aztecs played four pre-season friendlies
against some of Mexico’s top team’s, including C.F Monterrey and Club
América. In their first year they won the Western Division Trophy, which
included an eight game winning streak. They pulled in crowds averaging over
5000, which was good for a debut season. They then went on to win the NASL
Championship Trophy, in what was the first ever nationally televised
professional football final in the United States. They beat the Miami Toros 5-3
on penalties after a thrilling 3-3 draw in normal time. This was to be
the Aztecs most successful season. Almost immediately after that final, Gregory
sold the club.
“ The whole thing grew way bigger than I could have imagined and way to
fast. I was still a licensed Doctor and was running the club on the side. It
was a lot of work. I was approached to sell the club after the final and the
guy wrote me a cheque their and then. It was a very good offer and I couldn’t
turn it down “ recalls Gregory to Forgotten Club’s .
And just like that the club was sold. Gregory still
attended games as a fan once he sold the team , and is still an avid football
fan today, citing Barcelona as one of the team he enjoys watching the most.
As the club entered it’s second season, it did so
with new owner John Chaffetz, a lawyer who wanted to take the club in a new
direction. Despite winning the title in his first season, Perolli was replaced
by Terry Fisher, a 25 years old relatively unknown manager with little
experience. A lot of the player’s from the debut season left and followed
Perolli to his new club. This meant that the team had nearly completely changed
from the previous season and that meant that opposition team’s found them
difficult to scout. The club also traded seven players for a rookie called
Sergio Velasquez , know as “ the little spoon", in a move that generated
national headlines. It was a move that didn’t prove successful as Velasquez
struggled to make his mark. To give the team’s presence a boost, Elton John was
brought in as a co-owner to help promote the club. The singer was living in L.A
at the time and was also chairman of Watford.
The season was an average one for the Aztecs. They moved to a much
smaller stadium called the El Camino Junior College, which only held around
12,000 fans. They managed to finish third in their conference, but were
subsequently knocked out in their first knockout game by the St. Louis Stars,
who beat them on penalties.
Having seen Pelé line out for the Cosmos that
season, the Aztec ownership decided to go down a similar route for the 1976
season. Enter George Best. The Manchester United legend was only 30 at the time
he moved to L.A and still had plenty of football left in him. Only two year’s
earlier he was named both English and European player of the year. Best had a
dark side though off the pitch as everyone knew. Aztecs owner Chaffetz also
knew exactly what he was letting himself in for taking on Best at a huge cost.
He was hoping his bad boy image would entice non football fan’s to come watch
him play. This partnership was only going to end one way, and everyone knew it
at the time. Along with Best, striker Steve David was brought into the club. He
was the league’s MVP and top scorer the previous season. Yet again the club
moved stadium which was something they ended up doing nearly every season in
the end. This time to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which could hold over
40,000 fans. Unfortunately the club never managed to attract much more than
10,000 fans during any season. Unlike Pelé, Best wasn’t known worldwide and
wasn’t a big draw in the end. He had originally got off the plane with his own
cheerleader to drum up a bit of hype.
Best managed to score 15 goals and the Aztecs once again finished third
in their conference. And yet again they managed to fall at the first knockout
hurdle, beaten by the Dallas Tornado. ( aren’t these names just brilliant )
The club was sold yet again in 1977, to a lawyer
called Alan Rothenberg. The team did better in the third season, as they
managed to get all the way to the semi-finals, only to be beaten twice over two
legs by the Seattle Sounders. Best was tied for assists that season with 16,
while David finished top scorer in the league with 26 goals.
And then as everyone had probably expected, Best
went off the rails. He had bought himself a Bar the previous year. He was
spending so much time in other’s he thought why not have his own. He creatively
called it Besties Bar and Restaurant. The Hollywood nightlife scene was
just too tempting for a man who liked to drink and party as much as he did. He
was suspended for missing training at the start of his third season and
eventually the club had had enough. They traded him to Fort Lauderdale Strikers
in June of 1978.
Yet another stadium move was on the cards for the
1978 season as the team moved to the Rose Bowl and actually managed to stay
there for more than one season! Only in America would you have a team
with a constantly diminishing fanbase eventually move themselves into a stadium
that holds nearly 100,000 people.
The 1978 season was a complete right off as the
Aztecs finished bottom of their division. This led them to recruiting the
father of “Total Football” Rinus Michels and another Dutch legend in the shape
of Johan Cruyff for the 79 season. Cruyff was meant to sign for the Cosmos and
had even played a couple of exhibition games for them , before eventually
decided on the Aztecs, thanks to a lucrative contract of around $700,000 per
year. Cruyff was to only play one season for the Aztecs though, but what a
season it was for him. He was their top goalscorer and had the most assists,
and was named the league’s MVP. The team got as far as the semi finals that
season, beaten by Vancouver Whitecaps. The club went on a post season
promotional tour of the Netherlands and England shortly after, their only such
tour. They played Birmingham City and Chelsea while in England. These were the
last games Cruyff would play for the team.
The reason he only played one season? The club was sold yet again! This
time to a Mexican television consortium who wanted to tap in to the Hispanic
market and had no intention of keeping the Dutchman on the books for such a
staggering amount of money. He was traded to the Washington Diplomats for
around a million dollars.
Rinus Michels stayed on for more season as manager
of the Aztecs for the 1980 season, but at that stage the team along with the
league itself had started to hit troubled waters. A dependence on imported
stars on huge wages meant that most clubs business models were unsustainable.
The clubs final season was in 1981. The club hired
Brazilian Brazilian Claudio Coutinho who had managed his country at the 1978
World Cup. He had a similar philosophy to the Aztecs previous manager Michels,
who he had watched knock Brazil out of the 1974 world cup. Coutinho was also
known as a leader in the world of physical fitness thanks to his military
background, which he implemented on the football field. His Aztecs side finished
second in their conference and were knocked out in the first round of the
playoffs by Montreal Manic. ( seriously these names ) Coutinho would only
stay with the Aztecs for one season and was due to take a job in Saudi Arabia
the following season, but he tragically drowned while on holidays just after
the season ended. His season was to be the final chapter in the Aztecs history
as their Mexican owners folded the club shortly after that. Attendances had
dropped by almost half that season and they decided to cut their losses, along
with six other NASL teams that also folded.
And what of an Irish connection I hear you ask?
Well I could only find one Irish international to have played for them. And
like the NASL clubs at the time he also had a brilliant name. That player was
Terry Mancini. Most famously known perhaps for hearing the Irish national
anthem on his debut for Ireland, only to have to ask someone what the song was
playing, as he had never heard it before.
For a club that only survived just shy of nine year’s, the Aztecs
managed to leave quite a legacy behind them. A quick google search these days
will likely lead you straight to one of their lovely retro kits that you can
still buy today. But they are much more than that. They are a classic boom and
bust story. A club that was set up with good intentions, they eventually caved
in on itself while trying to line it’s pockets. For it to be associated with
such names as Best, Cruyff and Elton John though makes it a special club, and
one that never really got a lot of attention, partly down to Pelé and the
Cosmos.