North American Soccer League

Javier Aguirre, a veteran of the Mexican national soccer team and Mexico's first division, has been signed by the Salsa. Aguirre, 33, a midfielder who played for the Los Angeles Aztecs of the defunct North American Soccer League, will join the team in mid-May. He will be the team captain.

Javier Aguirre wasn't interested in talking about soccer. Sure the World Cup is fast approaching. And as coach of the Mexican national team he's made it clear El Tri is primed for a superlative effort this summer in South Africa. But as he slid into an easy chair recently in a plush hotel suite in Pasadena, the subject that brought the widest smile to Aguirre's face is baseball. "All kinds of baseball," he confided in Spanish. "But especially the Oakland A's." It's not hard to understand the affinity.

The United States Soccer Federation wants to bring back a national professional outdoor league. Federation President Alan Rothenberg announced Wednesday that a 16-member committee has been appointed to develop plans for an outdoor league. The last nationwide professional league was the North American Soccer League, which folded in 1985.

It's not Zidane-head-butt-to-the-chest invigorating, but the documentary "Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos" does provide an exuberant look at a heady moment in America's soccer past that is well worth remembering. However, beginning with its hyperbolic title, the film would seem to overstate the lingering importance of the team's bright lights and big-city implosion and suffers from a certain amount of sloppiness in its execution.

Was it 1994 or 1979? Driving through the parking lot at Giants Stadium before Tuesday's Mexico-Bulgaria game was a trip back in time, to the days when the North American Soccer League was flourishing and the Cosmos drew overflow crowds to the Meadowlands. As in the brief but enjoyable heyday of the NASL, fans flocked to Giants Stadium hours before the game for tailgate parties.

Every decade it's the same old thing. "Soccer--it's going to be the American sport of the . . . "Seventies?" Well, the New York Cosmos did play to crowds as large as 75,000. Then Pele retired. "Eighties?" Sorry. You can't dunk a soccer ball. "Nineties?" Don't tell Gary Bettman or Michael Eisner. Eisner had a choice: He could spread the Disney gospel along the boards and in the lobbies of ice rinks across the NHL--or he could pass out handbills at an APSL game. Officially, Eisner needed 1.

For soccer lovers, these are harsh times. The news is increasingly depressing, making it ever harder to be hopeful about the future of the sport. The vaunted Cosmos is thrown out of the North American Soccer League, but there doesn't seem to be any league left, anyway. The NCAA imposes restrictive limits on the development of the sport at the Division I level.

For 10 years, Rick Davis has been American soccer's most visible symbol. Now, at 30, he has one last chance to play in a World Cup. By the time 1994 rolls around, when the United States will play host to international soccer's quadrennial world championship, Davis will be 35, past his prime and far above the average age of World Cup players. With the emergence of a stronger, faster and better players in the U.S., Davis knows this is it. He was on the U.S. team that failed to qualify for the 1982 World Cup in Spain and the one that missed going to Mexico in 1986.

When Marcelo Balboa was growing up in Cerritos, he and older brother Claudio would pretend to be famous soccer stars playing in important games all over the world. "We used to take penalty kicks against each other," he recalled recently. "One guy would be the goalie and the other guy would kick the ball. Then we would switch off." Balboa doesn't have to pretend to be an international soccer player anymore. The 21-year-old Latino is a defender on the U.S. national soccer squad that is trying to qualify for the 1990 World Cup finals in 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.

It's a collector's item now, that Sports Illustrated issue of 21 years ago. Why? Because, it was the first time, to the best of anyone's recollection, that the magazine had featured soccer on its cover. The player, not surprisingly, was Pele, who had just signed a $5-million contract to play for the New York Cosmos of the struggling North American Soccer League. And there he was, on the cover. The wording said simply: "Pele's Triumphant Debut" and "U.S. Soccer Finds a Savior."

The New York Cosmos did everything in a big way. The franchise's collapse was no different. From 1975 to the early 1980s, the Cosmos were the flagship franchise of the North American Soccer League, America's first and last major outdoor professional soccer league. When the Cosmos failed, the league failed with them, and with the league went all of soccer's credibility as marketable entertainment in the United States, the world's largest entertainment market.

Lee Stern can laugh about it now. He can find humor in a little enterprise he once undertook that had its ups and downs. "Obviously, I never was interested in money," Stern said. "Being in soccer prevented me from being one of the major owners of the Chicago Bulls." Stern, a successful Chicago commodities broker, once was a major force in American soccer. He owned the Chicago Sting of the now-defunct North American Soccer League.

Was it 1994 or 1979? Driving through the parking lot at Giants Stadium before Tuesday's Mexico-Bulgaria game was a trip back in time, to the days when the North American Soccer League was flourishing and the Cosmos drew overflow crowds to the Meadowlands. As in the brief but enjoyable heyday of the NASL, fans flocked to Giants Stadium hours before the game for tailgate parties.

Javier Aguirre, a veteran of the Mexican national soccer team and Mexico's first division, has been signed by the Salsa. Aguirre, 33, a midfielder who played for the Los Angeles Aztecs of the defunct North American Soccer League, will join the team in mid-May. He will be the team captain.

Every decade it's the same old thing. "Soccer--it's going to be the American sport of the . . . "Seventies?" Well, the New York Cosmos did play to crowds as large as 75,000. Then Pele retired. "Eighties?" Sorry. You can't dunk a soccer ball. "Nineties?" Don't tell Gary Bettman or Michael Eisner. Eisner had a choice: He could spread the Disney gospel along the boards and in the lobbies of ice rinks across the NHL--or he could pass out handbills at an APSL game. Officially, Eisner needed 1.

The New York Cosmos did everything in a big way. The franchise's collapse was no different. From 1975 to the early 1980s, the Cosmos were the flagship franchise of the North American Soccer League, America's first and last major outdoor professional soccer league. When the Cosmos failed, the league failed with them, and with the league went all of soccer's credibility as marketable entertainment in the United States, the world's largest entertainment market.

Sunday, July 29, 1984. An astonishing crowd of 78,265--the largest ever to attend a soccer game in the United States--sees the U.S. Olympic team defeat Costa Rica, 3-0, at Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto. "It's a great day for the United States," exclaims Coach Alkis Panagoulias. "I think this is the beginning of a new era." An era remarkable for its brevity. Sunday, May 31, 1985. A less-than-sellout crowd of 11,800 at El Camino College Stadium in Torrance sees Costa Rica defeat the U.S. national team, 1-0, ending the Americans' hopes of participating in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico.

The financially strapped Los Angeles Heat failed to post a $20,000 performance bond with the American Professional Soccer League West Friday and are expected to fold later this week, the team's principal owners have confirmed. "It's over. We're finished," said club President John Ajemian. "We're closing our doors."