The Secret Life of Soccer

A panel discussion

A soccer ball is slightly smaller and lighter than a basketball. It is 27 inches in circumference and weighs between 14 and 16 ounces. A soccer ball's surface is comprised of individually sewn leather panels. The panels create wind resistance, which reduces the ball's speed and makes it easier to control and spin when kicked. Soccer balls used to be made with 18 curved rectangular panels, which made for a pretty speedy game. The balls most commonly used today have 32 pentagonal panels, allowing for more wind resistance and greater control. And the panels, previously all brown, are now black and white. Besides making the ball prettier, the contrasting tones help players better judge the speed and direction of the ball's spin.

How Georgie best changed the game

Until the mid-Sixties, soccer was a kick-and-shoot game. And then came Georgie Best, the helpful instructor pictured on these pages with Playmate Sondra Theodore. Popularly known for his rugged swinger image (more than once he's been called "the Joe Namath of soccer"), Best gave the game something much more substantial than glamor--he revived the theretofore lost art of dribbling.

"There are times," a fellow player once said of Best, "when you want to wring his neck. He hangs on to the ball when other players have found better positions, and you know that these players will not keep running into space if they aren't going to get the ball. Then, out of the blue, he does something which wins the match. It's then you know that you're in the presence of something exceptional."

Soccer, so the old theory goes, is a team game; dribblers like Best, men who keep control of the ball until they get into position for a good shot, have been traditionally considered self-indulgent. Increasingly, however, players and fans have come to believe that results are all that matters. And Georgie Best, who now plays for the Los Angeles Aztecs of the North American Soccer League, is a very prolific goal scorer. No one considers him self-indulgent.

How the British took the manliness out of soccer

In soccer, the term tackling means taking the ball away from an opponent with your feet. It does not mean wrestling an opponent to the ground and tap-dancing on his temples. The soccer player is not trying to stop his opponent; he is trying to gain control of the ball. And that's what the foot of the tackler must touch--the ball. If the foot touches the opponent, a penalty should result.

That is about as precise as soccer rules get regarding tackling. In fact, in the sport's rather liberal laws, there is not even a precise definition for the term. While tackling has traditionally been an integral part of the game, it was always left to the discretion of the referee as to whether or not an individual tackle was permissible; the result of this latitude was an increasingly vicious and dangerous game that, by the late Sixties, came to alarm the sport's governing authorities--especially those in Great Britain.

Consequently, in 1971, a new disciplinary code was devised by England's referees that set new bounds on legal tackles by attempting to abolish the tackle from behind--a move in which the tackling player made contact with the ball by crashing his foot through an opponent's leg. Under the new code, the tackle from behind is permissible only if the tackler manages to hit the ball before he hits the opponent's leg.

A great cry immediately went up from soccer fans that the new code took the "manliness" out of the game; and many players complained that they were being stripped of their best--and favorite--move.

Rock Jocks

Elton John is part owner of the Los Angeles Aztecs of the North American Soccer League and is chairman of England's Watford Football Club. Last year, he took time off from a concert tour to attend to his official soccer duties.

Rod Stewart, an equally avid fan, frequently joins his band members in kicking a ball around during concerts; and a small park near Stewart's Los Angeles home has become a traditional site for rock-star soccer matches.

And in Philadelphia, a number of rock superstars--including Peter Frampton, Paul Simon and Rick Wakeman--recently bought the N.A.S.L.'s Philadelphia franchise, a team named the Fury. "I would have loved to be a pro soccer player," Wakeman said at a press conference announcing the acquisition. "It's every boy's dream...a Walter Mitty fantasy."

Wakeman and his fellow performers/owners were only a step behind rock entrepreneur Ahmet Ertegun, the head of Atlantic Records, who in 1970 became the president of the New York Cosmos.

A history of skullduggery

Chris Schenkel lied to us back in 1969 when he told us that that year marked the 100the anniversary of intercollegiate football in the United States. The game he was talking about, the one played in 1869 between Princeton and Rutgers, had very little to do with what we see today in the Rose Bowl or the Super Bowl. In fact, it wasn't a football game at all, even though that was what it was called; what it was was soccer.

The ball used in that 1869 game was perfectly round. It was kicked with the feet, not carried or thrown. Of the 25 players on both the Princeton and the Rutgers teams, two on each squad were stationed near the opponent's goal, while the 23 others roamed mid-field; 11 of those 23 were designated defenders, or infielders, while the 12 others were attackers, or bulldogs. Does that sound like football, Schenkel?

The Princeton-Rutgers game was played shortly after the rules for soccer (then called football) were first codified in 1862. That was done by an Englishman named J. C. Thring in a book titled The Simplest Game. Among other things, Thring's rules stated that the ball could not be thrown through the goal by hand; hands could, however, be used to stop a ball in flight and knock it to the ground.

This latter provision inflamed the purists who thought that a player's hands had no place at all in the game they called football. A heated split thereupon developed between the Thring-inspired "handlers" and the purist "footballers." Eventually, the handlers broke away from the main group and played by rules that allowed them to hold the ball and run with it; and what they started was not just a dissident soccer faction but a whole new sport that they called rugby. And rugby ultimately evolved into American football, and that's what Schenkil should have told us back in 1969.

Seam Stress

When a soccer ball is kicked hard, it can be compressed up to 40 percent of its circumference and propelled at speeds of up to 75 miles an hour.

The cuban soccer crisis

In his White House memoir, The Ends of Power, former Nixon Administration aide H. R. Haldeman relates a hitherto unreported 1970 incident that led to a showdown between the Soviet Union and the United States over Soviet military intentions in Cuba. As related by Haldeman, the incident began in the following manner:

Henry Kissinger charged into my office with a thick file under his arm. He slammed the file down on my desk. "Bob, look at this."

He opened the file and spread 8" x 10" pictures on my desk. I saw at once they were air-reconnaissance photos. "Well?" he asked. "Well!"

"Well, what?"...

"The place is Cien-fuegos, Cuba.... It's a Cuban seaport, Haldeman, and these pictures show the Cubans are building soccer fields...."

Henry stuffed the pictures back in the file and said to me, as patiently as he could, "Those soccer fields could mean war, Bob."

"Why?"

"Cubans play baseball. Russians play soccer."

And then I understood. The Soviets were back in Cuba. Soccer fields next to Cienfuegos meant one thing: The Soviets were constructing their own naval base in Cuba.

Why women will never be as good as men

Although a player can use any part of his body except his arms to control the ball, the chest trap is the most common way of stopping a high ball. This move is executed by bracing back the arms, breathing in and thrusting out the chest; at the moment the ball meets the chest, the player exhales, dropping his chest, and the ball falls at his feet, ready for passing or shooting.

The Greatest save ever

It happened in a 1970 World Cup match played in Mexico between England and Brazil. Gordon Banks was in the goal for England when a clean centering pass gave a Brazilian player a wide-open shot at a header into the net. The Brazilian later said that he had never felt more certain of scoring. But Banks stayed with the shot. He dove backward and thrust an arm into the air; he met the ball with the inside of his right wrist, scooping the ball up and over the goal.

"That," the Brazilian player later said, "was the greatest save I have ever seen by the greatest goalkeeper I have ever seen." The Brazilian player was Pelé.

How to advance the ball without causing brain damage

Using your head in soccer is just as important as using your feet. The proper way to head the ball is to thrust your head at the oncoming projectile, meeting it with the broad area of the forehead. The idea is for you to hit the ball and not to let it hit you dead on; that's the way you can get hurt.

Good heading involves more than a sturdy head. Strong leg muscles help give a powerful thrust to your head and a sturdy neck improves the control and strength of your header.

A soccer quotation from Chairman Mao

The enemy advances, weretreat;

The enemy camps, we harass;

The enemy tires, we attack;

The enemy retreats, wepursue.

(Quote hung in the locker room of England's 1966 World Cup team)

Balling for Jack

In 1974, there were 553,000 soccer balls sold in the United States. In 1976, there were 2,062,700 balls sold. The projected sales figure for 1977 was 3,547,000. That is a lot of balls.

A soccer quote from Shakespeare

Am I so round with you as you with me,

That like a football you do spurn me thus?

You spurn me hence, and he will spurn me hither.

If I last in this service, you must case me in leather.

--The Comedy of Errors, Act II, Scene I

The most fatal riots in soccer History

When all is said and done, soccer is a bloody good sport. Sometimes a little too bloody. There have been at least two documented deaths on the field of play in modern soccer history: In the Thirties, J. Thompson, Glasgow goalkeeper, and English League goalie J. Thorpe both died of fractured skulls during soccer games.

But while soccer is a rough sport for players--rougher by far than nonplayers realize--the most lethal violence in recent times has taken place in the stands. In Lima, Peru, for example, a May 1964 Olympic-games qualifying match between Peru and Argentina turned into a wild riot when a goal seemingly scored by the home team was disallowed by a referee; the home folks didn't like the call and in the ensuing melee, 318 fans were killed and another 500 were injured.

In Glasgow in 1971, a stadium stampede sparked by another questionable call left 66 spectators crushed to death. In Kayseri, Turkey, in 1967, a match between two rival towns ended with 42 fans dead and 600 injured; the cause of rioting, again, was a disallowed goal.

In Buenos Aires in 1948, both players and spectators became so incensed over a referee's call that they beat the official to death. And at a Guatemala City match, hometown fans were sufficiently distraught over a loss that they moved on the victorious visiting team with machetes and slaughtered five players.

The soccer war

And you thought the fans who ripped up Yankee Stadium after the world series were unruly? In June 1969, El Salvador was matched against bordering Honduras in World Cup play and rioting accompanied two of the three series matches. After the second game, a hotly disputed contest won by El Salvador, the winner's fans decided to rub it in: First they taunted the Honduras fans; this led to street brawling and then to formal protests and counterprotests by both tiny countries. The hostility created by these events led, finally, to an all-out war that lasted five days and left 3000 dead.

Next week, Charlie's Angels play in the world cup finals

On December 26,1977, television history was made. Or soccer history, depending. On the episode of the CBS series Switch aired that evening, series regular Robert Wagner (Nat Wood's hubby) went undercover to catch a bunch of thuggish gamblers who were heavily into professional soccer; and Wagner went undercover as a soccer goalie. Did pretty well, too. Stopped a lot of kicks. Caught the baddies. Got the girl. Ah, romance; ah, adventure; ah, soccer.

The best high school team in the country

The school is Steinert High and it has won the New Jersey state championship in six of the past ten years. Six members of the 1977-1978 suburban Trenton school team recently helped represent the U. S. in a victorious tournament over a Bermuda National team. The team is so powerful that opposing teams consider it a moral victory just to score on Steinert.

Stop this one, and i'll give you a b-plus on your final

When soccer coaches want to improve their goalies' level of play, they send them to a goal-tending school. The best such school in the world is conducted in Nottingham, England, by Peter Shilton, a British international goalie who is not only a good player, he is an exceptional teacher. Applications are now being taken for next semester.

The next pele

Can anyone replace Pelé as soccer's superstar and dominate the American game? While there is no one with Pelé's over-all talents waiting in the wings, there are other stars capable of taking this country by storm. Tops among them are Italy's Giorgio Chinaglia and West Germany's Franz Beckenbauer, both now with the New York Cosmos.

Of the two, Beckenbauer is the one to watch. Before coming to New York, he led the West German team to three straight European championships and captured the World Cup in 1974. Beckenbauer is considered the world's best defensive soccer player, and his style of mid-field attack is sure to have a major effect on the laid-back American style of play. Not that he has gone unnoticed: In his first year of American soccer, "Kaiser Franz" was named the North American Soccer League's most valuable player.

The worst team in the world

Last season, Britain's Sporie United soccer club lost all of its 16 games and was out-scored by its opponents 289 points to one. According to team manager Stephen Mills, if it hadn't been for Jeffrey Nurse, Sporie United's 14-year-old goal tender, the team would have done a lot worse. "He saved quite a few," Mills said.

Soccer goes to the movies

M*A*S*H, the definitive antiwar movie of the Sixties (about Korea), concludes with a metaphoric football game; The Boys in Company C, the definitive (so far) antiwar movie of the Seventies (about Vietnam), concludes with a metaphoric soccer game. Time, war and sport march on.

Out of the family

The man on the left is Stem Musial, the baseball great who, as far as we know, has never played soccer. His distant cousin Adam Musial is also a superathlete. Did Adam ever think of following in cousin Stan's footsteps? No, Adam stayed in Poland and became a star on the Polish World Cup soccer team.

The naked truth about pele

His name: Pelé's real name is Edson Arantes do Nasci-mento. His nickname has no meaning in either Spanish or English.

His attire: Early in his career, after adoring fans had mobbed him and ripped off his uniform for souvenirs, Pelé began wearing two pairs of shorts at all games.

His peacemaking: Pelé once singlehandedly stopped a civil war. In 1969, at the height of the bloody Biafran civil war in Nigeria, a two-day truce was declared when Pelé flew to the embattled country to play an exhibition game for government troops; the next day, he crossed the Niger River to play a game for the rebels.

His heroics: Pelé's life story sounds more like folk fable than like biography. As a kid who grew up kicking a rag-stuffed sock around a Brazilian hillside, he was a poor wonder boy from the mountains who had to borrow money to go to the big city for a soccer tryout. In 1955, at the age of 15, Pelé scored four goals in his very first professional game. By 1958, his legend was international, as he led Brazil to the World Cup (something he did again in 1962). During his career of 1363 games, Pelé averaged almost one goal per game.

As a shooter, Pelé was great with his head, fantastic with his feet and best at making up shots that no one had ever tried before: such as his famous backflipping "bicycle kick," a thin-air, controlled tumble that other soccer players could only marvel at.

And if Pelé meant a great deal to soccer around the world, he meant even more to the American professional game. Before Pelé came out of retirement to sign with the New York Cosmos in 1975, the North American Soccer League was just another floundering minor sports organization; Pelé's presence, all $4,700,000 worth of it, became the biggest single weapon in the American soccer revolution. He drew unprecedented crowds, helped attract other international soccer stars and became a model and idol to every kid with a ball and a back yard.