L.A. Aztecs
When I think of America and football, a few different things come to mind. First and foremost will always be that glorious day back in 1994, when Ray Houghton broke Italian hearts in Giant’s Stadium. Another is an episode of The Simpson’s in which Homer and his family go to watch a “soccer” game. Just before kick off, Pelé turns up to promote some sort of kitchen paper and is handed a large back of cash. The game kicks off and eventually the crowd riots because they are so bored by what they are seeing. The scene perfectly encapsulates Americans relationship with football up until the millennium.
Generally though, my impression of football in America is that it is where bright stars go to burn out, while getting paid handsomely to do so. I still feel this is the case today. This was a trend that started back in the NASL ( North Amercian Soccer League ) in the mid seventies. Yes that’s the league that eventually brought in all those crazy rule changes such as a 35 yard offside line to help attacker’s and hockey style penalties to make the game more palatable to it’s American audience.
The most famous team in the league was the New York Cosmos, who also had the league’s biggest draw in Brazilian superstar Pelé. The world cup winner was 34 years old when he signed for the Cosmos on a three year contract worth $2.8 million. Which made him the highest paid athlete in the world at the time. Only in America.
But it is not Pelé and the Cosmos that i am going to talk about in this piece. Plenty has been written about them already and it is one of the most well documented transfers ever to have happened in the game. Instead I am going to discuss another club from the NASL that went down a similar route to the Cosmos. That team is the L.A Aztecs.
BORN OUT OF A LOVE OF THE GAME
In 1974, Dr Jack Gregory an avid football fan, practising Doctor and real estate developer, who was based in Los Angeles, with the help of some of his friends, organised for a few International team’s including Mexico and Poland to travel to the United States for a series of Exhibition games. These games turned out to be a huge success, drawing massive crowds at the time. Buoyed by the success of these exhibitions, Gregory decided to enquire about buying a franchise in the NASL, which was expanding the league by eight team’s that year. Forgotten Clubs was lucky enough to get in contact with Dr Gregory to discuss his time as owner of the club.
“ I rang the commissioner at the time Phil Woosman, who was in New York, and asked him was their any franchise available. He told me L.A was available and it was mine if I had the money, which I had, and just like that I had bought a football team",Gregory told Forgotten Clubs.
He named his team the L.A Aztecs, chosen because of the large Mexican population in the city at the time that he thought he could tap in to, and the fact that the Aztecs were warriors as he wanted his team to be. The colours chosen were those that were traditional in the Aztec cultural. The club was to play it’s games at the Weingart Stadium for their first season. One of many stadiums they would come to play at.
Gregory had gotten to know a lot of people that were involved in the game such as player’s and coaches while he was setting up International matches that year. This helped him enlist the help of Alex Perolli, an Albanian coach to manage the team. He gave him full control of the team, which is a rare thing for an owner to do, even nowadays.
“Perolli asked me did I want this team to win and I told him that I did. Leave everything to me then he said “ Gregory recalled. “ So I let him do his thing"
Perolli managed to put together a team of 28 players, representing over ten nationalities.
Gregory remembers the team’s first training session together vividly -
“ The manager ( Perolli ) asked me to make an appearance at the first training session as all the players would be present. The session was due to start at 9am sharp. Two player’s, who were probably two of our best and both Brazilian were late to arrive. When they did, Perolli told them that they were to train with the team and after go to his office and pick up two plane tickets back to Brazil, that would be waiting for them. Your fired he told them. I shit my pants! But straight away the team knew to respect him and that he was the boss. It was a show of strength"
The Aztecs played four pre-season friendlies against some of Mexico’s top team’s, including C.F Monterrey and Club América. In their first year they won the Western Division Trophy, which included an eight game winning streak. They pulled in crowds averaging over 5000, which was good for a debut season. They then went on to win the NASL Championship Trophy, in what was the first ever nationally televised professional football final in the United States. They beat the Miami Toros 5-3 on penalties after a thrilling 3-3 draw in normal time. This was to be the Aztecs most successful season. Almost immediately after that final, Gregory sold the club.
“ The whole thing grew way bigger than I could have imagined and way to fast. I was still a licensed Doctor and was running the club on the side. It was a lot of work. I was approached to sell the club after the final and the guy wrote me a cheque their and then. It was a very good offer and I couldn’t turn it down “ recalls Gregory to Forgotten Club’s .
And just like that the club was sold. Gregory still attended games as a fan once he sold the team , and is still an avid football fan today, citing Barcelona as one of the team he enjoys watching the most.
WELCOME TO HOLLYWOOD
As the club entered it’s second season, it did so with new owner John Chaffetz, a lawyer who wanted to take the club in a new direction. Despite winning the title in his first season, Perolli was replaced by Terry Fisher, a 25 years old relatively unknown manager with little experience. A lot of the player’s from the debut season left and followed Perolli to his new club. This meant that the team had nearly completely changed from the previous season and that meant that opposition team’s found them difficult to scout. The club also traded seven players for a rookie called Sergio Velasquez , know as “ the little spoon", in a move that generated national headlines. It was a move that didn’t prove successful as Velasquez struggled to make his mark. To give the team’s presence a boost, Elton John was brought in as a co-owner to help promote the club. The singer was living in L.A at the time and was also chairman of Watford.
The season was an average one for the Aztecs. They moved to a much smaller stadium called the El Camino Junior College, which only held around 12,000 fans. They managed to finish third in their conference, but were subsequently knocked out in their first knockout game by the St. Louis Stars, who beat them on penalties.
Having seen Pelé line out for the Cosmos that season, the Aztec ownership decided to go down a similar route for the 1976 season. Enter George Best. The Manchester United legend was only 30 at the time he moved to L.A and still had plenty of football left in him. Only two year’s earlier he was named both English and European player of the year. Best had a dark side though off the pitch as everyone knew. Aztecs owner Chaffetz also knew exactly what he was letting himself in for taking on Best at a huge cost. He was hoping his bad boy image would entice non football fan’s to come watch him play. This partnership was only going to end one way, and everyone knew it at the time. Along with Best, striker Steve David was brought into the club. He was the league’s MVP and top scorer the previous season. Yet again the club moved stadium which was something they ended up doing nearly every season in the end. This time to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which could hold over 40,000 fans. Unfortunately the club never managed to attract much more than 10,000 fans during any season. Unlike Pelé, Best wasn’t known worldwide and wasn’t a big draw in the end. He had originally got off the plane with his own cheerleader to drum up a bit of hype.
Best managed to score 15 goals and the Aztecs once again finished third in their conference. And yet again they managed to fall at the first knockout hurdle, beaten by the Dallas Tornado. ( aren’t these names just brilliant )
The club was sold yet again in 1977, to a lawyer called Alan Rothenberg. The team did better in the third season, as they managed to get all the way to the semi-finals, only to be beaten twice over two legs by the Seattle Sounders. Best was tied for assists that season with 16, while David finished top scorer in the league with 26 goals.
And then as everyone had probably expected, Best went off the rails. He had bought himself a Bar the previous year. He was spending so much time in other’s he thought why not have his own. He creatively called it Besties Bar and Restaurant. The Hollywood nightlife scene was just too tempting for a man who liked to drink and party as much as he did. He was suspended for missing training at the start of his third season and eventually the club had had enough. They traded him to Fort Lauderdale Strikers in June of 1978.
TOTAL FOOTBALL COMES TO L.A
Yet another stadium move was on the cards for the 1978 season as the team moved to the Rose Bowl and actually managed to stay there for more than one season! Only in America would you have a team with a constantly diminishing fanbase eventually move themselves into a stadium that holds nearly 100,000 people.
The 1978 season was a complete right off as the Aztecs finished bottom of their division. This led them to recruiting the father of “Total Football” Rinus Michels and another Dutch legend in the shape of Johan Cruyff for the 79 season. Cruyff was meant to sign for the Cosmos and had even played a couple of exhibition games for them , before eventually decided on the Aztecs, thanks to a lucrative contract of around $700,000 per year. Cruyff was to only play one season for the Aztecs though, but what a season it was for him. He was their top goalscorer and had the most assists, and was named the league’s MVP. The team got as far as the semi finals that season, beaten by Vancouver Whitecaps. The club went on a post season promotional tour of the Netherlands and England shortly after, their only such tour. They played Birmingham City and Chelsea while in England. These were the last games Cruyff would play for the team.
The reason he only played one season? The club was sold yet again! This time to a Mexican television consortium who wanted to tap in to the Hispanic market and had no intention of keeping the Dutchman on the books for such a staggering amount of money. He was traded to the Washington Diplomats for around a million dollars.
A LAST ROLL OF THE DICE
Rinus Michels stayed on for more season as manager of the Aztecs for the 1980 season, but at that stage the team along with the league itself had started to hit troubled waters. A dependence on imported stars on huge wages meant that most clubs business models were unsustainable. The clubs final season was in 1981. The club hired Brazilian Brazilian Claudio Coutinho who had managed his country at the 1978 World Cup. He had a similar philosophy to the Aztecs previous manager Michels, who he had watched knock Brazil out of the 1974 world cup. Coutinho was also known as a leader in the world of physical fitness thanks to his military background, which he implemented on the football field. His Aztecs side finished second in their conference and were knocked out in the first round of the playoffs by Montreal Manic. ( seriously these names ) Coutinho would only stay with the Aztecs for one season and was due to take a job in Saudi Arabia the following season, but he tragically drowned while on holidays just after the season ended. His season was to be the final chapter in the Aztecs history as their Mexican owners folded the club shortly after that. Attendances had dropped by almost half that season and they decided to cut their losses, along with six other NASL teams that also folded.
And what of an Irish connection I hear you ask? Well I could only find one Irish international to have played for them. And like the NASL clubs at the time he also had a brilliant name. That player was Terry Mancini. Most famously known perhaps for hearing the Irish national anthem on his debut for Ireland, only to have to ask someone what the song was playing, as he had never heard it before.
For a club that only survived just shy of nine year’s, the Aztecs managed to leave quite a legacy behind them. A quick google search these days will likely lead you straight to one of their lovely retro kits that you can still buy today. But they are much more than that. They are a classic boom and bust story. A club that was set up with good intentions, they eventually caved in on itself while trying to line it’s pockets. For it to be associated with such names as Best, Cruyff and Elton John though makes it a special club, and one that never really got a lot of attention, partly down to Pelé and the Cosmos.