U.S. Plans Professional National Soccer League : 1994 World Cup: Federation president says he expects 12 to 16 clubs to be operating by 1993-94 season.
FLORENCE, Italy — The United States plans to restore a national soccer league by the time it hosts the World Cup in 1994 but will ensure quick-profit owners do not take over the game, the country’s top soccer administrator said today.
Werner Fricker said American players need the spur of regular professional club competition which they lost when the North American Soccer League (NASL) folded in 1985.
Fricker, U.S. Soccer Federation president and chief executive of the 1994 World Cup Organizing Committee, said he expects a league of 12 to 16 clubs to be in place by the 1993-94 season at the latest.
“It is vital,” Fricker said in an interview. “Otherwise the World Cup comes and goes and we will not have taken advantage of the opportunity (to promote the game).
“But financing the clubs is the easiest and most dangerous part. There are more entrepreneurs willing to invest money in soccer than are needed.”
Fricker said the biggest problem will be stopping some entrepreneurs gambling with soccer clubs to turn a quick profit.
“For some, owning a club would be like a toy. It would be like going gambling,” he said.
Fricker said the USSF will only sanction known owners who are interested in the game.
The NASL, basing its appeal largely on imported players, prospered in the late 1970s but ran into trouble through lack of sponsorship and an inability to match the mass following of football, baseball and basketball.
The NASL also fell foul of FIFA, the governing body of soccer worldwide, for changing rules to boost its appeal to Americans.
Fricker said the USSF would start preparing ground for the new league in the next 12 months by setting up three or four national teams to play against tough international opposition.
“These would gradually be transformed into club sides,” he said. “We need to get more players to play at a higher competitive level, get spectators, TV coverage and make money.”
Fricker did not indicate how the American Professional Soccer League, recently formed out of a merger of the American Soccer League and Western Soccer League, would fit into his plan.
He said foreigners will be welcome in the league but not superstars, like Brazil’s Pele and former West German captain Franz Beckenbauer who played in the NASL, because they would hinder the development of American players.
“We don’t want a Maradona. The problem with young American players in the NASL was they became passive because the superstars in the team were so domineering,” Fricker said.
“The Americans only got the ball when someone else wanted to give it up. Nobody trusted them. We can’t risk that.”
He said he hopes the league will be at the level of the second divisions in England or Italy by 1994 although he would be aiming higher.
