USMNT

'A game for Commie pansies'? USA were playing football long before 1994

There's a big lie told when it comes to football (don't call it soccer in the company of aficionados) and its roots in the United States. The popular narrative follows thus: in the late 1960s the organisers of the North American Soccer League (NASL) and a number of well-heeled businessmen sought to cash in on the global success of the game by enticing big-name stars from around the world to play in a domestic league that would catapult football in America into the mainstream. The NASL was a roaring success in those nascent years with its clubs, backed by corporate money, capable of luring South American and European luminaries such as Pele and Carlos Alberto, Franz Beckenbauer and Gerd Muller, George Best and Bobby Moore, Johan Cruyff and Johan Neeskens to jam-packed stadiums around the country.