Saratoga News

Photograph by George Sakkestad

Quentin Frujhauf (left) and Matthew Marcus fight for control of the ball during a soccer-skills camp.

Goal Keeper

If Saratoga's Peter Bridgwater has his way, soccer will soon become the all-American game

By Sandy Sims

Perennial cheerleader Crazy George, a middle-aged man in cutoff jeans, an old T-shirt and long, thin, scraggly blond hair squats on the perimeter stone wall of Spartan stadium's soccer field. He pounds on his drum. "Clash ... Clash ... Clash!" he screams in his raspy voice. The crowd picks up the chant, "Clash ... Clash ... Clash!" as the men in black skitter back and forth along the enormous soccer field.

The chant dies down.

John Doyle, the San Jose Clash's team captain, has dribbled the ball up to the Chicago Fires' goal.

Saratogan Peter Bridgwater, president and general manager of the Clash, keeps a watchful eye from the team's box. "Careful, John. ... Easy," Bridgwater says under his breath. His tone is patient. His voice embodies the steady, sure commitment he's had while braving the roller-coaster ups and downs of U.S. professional soccer.

Doyle's ball doesn't make it in, and Chicago takes it back down the field, the one Bridgwater fought to have widened to 70 yards to meet the requirements for international soccer competition.

Bridgwater is watching the fans closely, too, because they are the measure of whether the world's most popular sport--soccer--has finally come of age in the U.S.

Some very deep pockets have committed to professional soccer for this third try to push soccer into U.S. major league sports, and some outstanding American players have left lucrative European soccer teams to come back and play for the new Major League Soccer program. The question is, will U.S. fans come around, too?

In past attempts to turbo-boost soccer into a major U.S. sport, top organizers came at the task from the outside. They built teams of experienced foreign players and imported famous international stars such as Pele and George Best. The outcome? Instead of attracting U.S. fans, the leagues went bust. Now, soccer organizers are betting that it might be an inside job after all, and that the soccer fan-base has been gestating for about 20 years.

When moms and dads were carting their one million youngsters to youth soccer leagues in the mid '70s, they were trying to understand things like "offsides, corner kicks and shoot-outs." It was a fast game. It was cheap, and it was fun. Eleven players could be on the field at once, and all players were important. Parents muddled through as coaches by scanning rule books and enduring coaching lessons, but they had no real feel for the game because they'd never played.

As fans, their investment was at the sidelines with sliced oranges for half-time and heart-swelling pride as their little offshoots kicked the ball up and down the field.

Youth soccer has grown today to 14 million players. Dean Adams, the president of the Los Gatos United Soccer League, says that in the last seven years, the number of kids playing in the Los Gatos League has grown from 1,000 to 1,675. Some of these are playing competitive soccer and are grooming themselves for college scholarships--maybe even pro soccer. "Next year," he says "we will have to turn kids away because we don't have enough fields for more teams."

Saratogan Larry Fine, the American Youth Soccer Organization regional commissioner, says that in the last eight years, Saratoga's numbers have gone from 600 to 1,200, and they are already turning kids away because they don't have enough soccer fields.

Youth soccer is so popular that it's actually threatening Little League and youth football in some places. "If there were enough fields for spring soccer here in Saratoga," Fine says, "Little League would die out." He believes most youngsters would rather play soccer than baseball. "A lot of those kids in Little League are playing because that's what their dads want," he contends. He gives as an example Santa Clara's youth soccer. When they opened a spring soccer program, Little League teams lost many players and had to consolidate teams.

Colleges are exhibiting the same phenomenon. Ten years ago, there were 28 women's college soccer teams; today, there are more than 250. We now have 700 men's college soccer teams. In fact, there are more college soccer teams than football teams. Some colleges have eliminated football from their sports program because it's too expensive--Santa Clara University for one--but are able to maintain soccer teams because it's easier on the budget, it's safer and more students want to play. In many schools, soccer and basketball are the two main sports.

Soccer is also gaining credibility, and the coaches are earning respectability. That's because those youngsters from the '70s have grown up and are the first U.S. generation to be able to coach from experience as soccer players.

Thirty-year-old Doug Borgel, a former player (until knee injuries retired him from an indoor professional soccer team, the Las Vegas Dust Devils) says he is able to pass on some great information to the youth-16 team he coaches. "That's because I got up in competition to the Olympic team and the pros and got some good coaching." His youth team is the Nevada state champion.

If the youth phenomenon is any indicator, soccer could not only become a major U.S. sport but eventually push one or two other major league sports off their base.

Bridgwater has been deeply involved in soccer since he left England in 1979. He was the general manager of the Vancouver Whitecaps, the general manager and then owner of the San Jose Earthquakes, and the founder of the Western Soccer League. In the late '80s and early '90s he founded ProLink, a sports marketing firm, and began promoting international matches. One of the games was between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. at Stanford and drew a crowd of 61,000. Bridgwater later became co-chairman of the World Cup Soccer's bid committee and landed the 1994 World Cup Soccer competition in the Bay Area (and put Los Gatos on the international soccer map when the Brazilian team stayed in town).

World Cup Soccer is more popular around the world than the Olympics. This single event, along with the fact that the U.S. team was playing in the Cup, woke the U.S. public up to the international soccer scene. Though the U.S. team lost, it fought the battle amazingly well and thrilled Americans.

World Cup bigwigs in Switzerland tied a fat string to that U.S. Cup. As part of the deal, the U.S. had to form a high-profile soccer league that could play among the big boys in the rest of the world. That's how today's Major League Soccer came about. Bridgwater became the president of the San Jose Clash, and MLS played its inaugural game-- Clash vs. Los Angeles Galaxy--at Spartan Stadium in 1996 to a sellout crowd of 31,278, the largest crowd in San Jose sports history. In Florida, the opening game had to turn away 3,000 fans. A grand beginning. However, the average crowd size for league games today is 14,000 for a typical game.

MLS is a unique sports program. When organizers and big investors like the Hunt family and Robert Kraft (owner of the New England Patriots) set it up, they tried to deal with some of the problems they saw in other major league U.S. sports. "We offer a little bit of sanity in what's become an insane business," Doug Logan, MLS commissioner, says.

The league set up a single entity, which means the league owns everything--the teams and the players. MLS writes the paychecks for players and coaches and also decides who goes where. All teams have a total salary cap of $1.6 million. National sponsors such as Nike, Bic, Honda and Mastercard can do a one-stop shop with MLS. Sponsor money and 50 percent of a team's ticket money goes to MLS. Teams keep local sponsor money and broadcast concessions. MLS also Americanized the teams by limiting each team to only five foreign players.

This program is designed to keep weak teams from folding, to keep player mega-salaries from robbing the till, to simplify sponsorship and to keep the sport inexpensive so families can attend games.

Los Gatan Dean Adams likes the part about cheaper tickets. He paid $6,000 for two Sharks season tickets, but he can go to a Clash game for $7 to $19 a ticket. This year the Clash season tickets ranged from $198 to $810 for 16 home games.

MLS wants to keep a tight rein on U.S. soccer so it can remain a family activity. The league doesn't want the unbridled riots of international soccer to ruin the games here.

After the U.S. qualified to compete in the 1990 World Cup for the first time in 50 years, things started moving fast with the '94 cup and the forming of the MLS. And women's soccer has turned to pure gold.

They've won the world championship and an Olympic Gold medal and are favored to win the Women's World Cup that will play here in the Bay Area next year. "U.S. women's soccer is brilliant," Bridgwater says.

"The U.S. women's team is the best team I've ever seen," says Saratogan Fine.

When youth soccer started in the U.S., the program for girls was strong and has grown stronger. Meanwhile, in Europe and other parts of the world, soccer is a macho sport, and women have traditionally been left out. In Iran women aren't even allowed in the soccer stadium.

Laurie Calloway, former Clash coach and current Clash vice president in charge of special projects, says that when he left England in 1974, there were only two women's teams, and they played mostly for charity. Now, England has a national women's team, and youth soccer for girls, but it's still sparse in England. Calloway, a Los Gatos resident, was instrumental in directing the Brazilian World Cup soccer team to Los Gatos and Villa Felice in 1994 when early games of the World Cup were played at Stanford University.

The problem for women's soccer in the U.S. is that there is no league. Calloway says a women's league is being discussed now, and predicts it will come about in two years.

In the meantime, Bridgwater has scored another coup in bringing Women's World Cup Soccer to the Bay Area in 1999.

With youth soccer at an all-time high, those '70s kids all grown up and US. pro soccer now at international standing, it looks like a go for pro soccer. "It's just a matter of five to seven years," Bridgwater says.

But there's another thing that has to happen and it's more emotional than logical. A team needs to become "our team." And players' names need to become household words, much like Barry Bonds, Michael Jordan or Steve Young.

Fine says his Saratoga youth soccer kids don't know the players. He's talked with the Clash about this, and they are working on that problem. They run soccer camps all summer, and Clash players come out to meet the youngsters. Brian Quinn, the Clash coach, runs coaching lessons at Spartan Stadium.

Getting the public to claim the team is not easy. The problem is not with the players. U.S.-born players like the Clash's Eric Wynalda, all-time U.S. scoring champ, have tasted sports stardom in Europe. They are international stars, household names there, but not very recognized in the States. And some of the foreign-born players, like the Clash's Richard Gough, who played for Scotland's Rangers, were loved in the countries they first played for. It may be a media thing.

Soccer is finally getting newspaper attention. Articles and columns about the Clash appear regularly in the San Jose Mercury News. Metro published a long narrative about the '98 World Cup and Wynalda in France. For the first time, television is paying for broadcast rights, a hefty $5 million. In the past, soccer had to pay to have games televised. There was a time when the only media attention the San Jose Earthquakes got was rare.

MLS needs to nurture that down-home-team feeling. Recently, the Clash suffered a big disappointment. For two years they negotiated for Mexican superstar Carlos Hermosillo. In the end, the MLS assigned Hermosillo to the L.A. Galaxy. This kind of distant control can weaken local spirit. According to Bridgwater, Hermosillo wanted to go to L.A. Bridgwater's response to fans was that it's better for Hermosillo to sign with the Galaxy than not with MLS at all.

As Bridgwater watches the Clash play out their third season and Crazy George pounds on his drum for the thousandth time, there's no doubt the whole U.S. soccer scene is finally coming of age. It looks like MLS has a good chance of bringing in the fans. The league is losing money right now at the rate of $1 million a season while it builds a strong base. The plan is to break even after about five years and then start making money.

Whether MLS succeeds in bringing home the fans or not, the time is right for soccer to become a major U.S. sport.

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