GONE, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN Soccer Week experiences leave writer with fond memories decade after closing up shop
Some of the Soccer Week staff at a May, 2003 reunion: Sitting (left to right); Scott Gleba, Gian Trotta and Tim Leonard. Standing: Michael Lewis and Nicholas Koliarakis Nicholas Koliarakis photo
BY Nicholas Koliarakis
Special to BigAppleSoccer.com
“Everything dies baby, that’s a fact. But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.” -- Bruce Springsteen, “Atlantic City”
It was in the early part of 1990 that I first passed through the doors of 49 Front Street in Rockville Centre, N.Y. for my first day of work at that hallowed institution of local soccer once known as Soccer Week.
It was a barren time for soccer in the U.S. then. Even though the National Team had just qualified for the 1990 World Cup, the mainstream English-language media was almost totally devoid of any soccer coverage. Having been a longtime soccer fan, I regularly brought the subject up on a local sports call-in show on the radio. I was greeted with derision, the vocal equivalent of a blank stare, and the hosts mechanically rattling off stock opinions like, “Uhhhh, yeah, soccer has a long way to go before it makes it in America.”
But the demise of American soccer in the mid-1980s led me to seek out the game on a broader basis than I ever had done before. I felt that if soccer was going to make a comeback in the U.S., then it would need people who loved the game as much as I did to help. Having grown up with the game, I wanted to see it succeed -- especially when it was in the dire straits it was back then. All we soccer fans had was college soccer, the old MISL, the local leagues, Italian games on UHF and a limited number of weekly games on Spanish language television. The Internet was still a decade away from becoming a household word. My job of convincing people that soccer did have a chance to take a foothold in America was going to be tough, indeed.
It was when I befriended my future Soccer Week colleague Gian Trotta in 1988 that my dormant interest in practicing sports writing was renewed. It was his enthusiasm that prompted me to call the paper’s publisher, who just happened to be a certain Michael Lewis.
My first assignment was to interview a local coach named Gino Grella. Not long after that, I helped cover the U.S. National Team’s match against Malta at Rutgers University and did a feature on Tab Ramos being offered a contract by Leeds United. Despite working full-time as a computer programmer in Manhattan, I devoted much time to Soccer Week. It was worth its while for a number of reasons: I was doing something that I loved for a cause that I fiercely believed in. What was more, I was gaining valuable journalistic experience as a writer and a photographer. But even more rewarding was the people I was meeting -- particularly those I worked with.
There was Michael Lewis, whose assiduousness and professionalism in the face of very limited resources amazed me. Editor Bob Liepa was quite friendly and was always a pleasure to converse with. Trotta was always on hand to lend encouragement. Other reporters like Tim Leonard and J.P. Pelzman were the glue that helped keep the paper going strong, not to mention allies in my soccer cause.
This is not to mention my very good friend Scott Gleba. Since I met Scott through Soccer Week in 1991, we have spoken almost every weekday about soccer and have logged somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,500 phone conversations and approximately 200 lunch hours.
Later years saw some other fine people pass through our doors. Among them were Doug Olcott, who worked for a time as an assistant editor, as well as his very cheerful girlfriend (and future wife), the former Jennifer Hopkins. The Finnegan sisters, Sharon and Veronica, were most helpful as were Englishwoman Josephine Pryde and Bryan Viggiani.
Sunday nights at Soccer Week were interesting, if only because of the effort we sometimes had to expend dragging information out of people who called in results of local games over the phone. My favorite conversations were the ones that sounded something like this:
Caller: “Uh, yeah, I’d like to report the score of (name of caller’s team) game against (name of opposing team). We won 4-2.”
Me: “Can you tell me who scored for your team?”
Caller: “Uh, no. I don’t know who scored. They just told me to call in the score.”
Me: “Can you give me any details?”
Caller: “No. I wasn’t at the game."
There were even times when someone would only give me a first name and tell me “Just put down ‘Johnny’ ” or whatever the scorer’s first name was. Needless to say, that was not going to make good copy.
The paper kept all of us busy as we covered various and sundry things week in and week out – including senior and youth State Cup tournament finals, local indoor tournaments, Northeastern Super Soccer League games, college games, and the occasional U.S. National Team game.
Yet in spite of the more than considerable effort it took to put together (with much of the responsibility falling on the shoulders of Lewis and Liepa, if not most of it), the paper had its high moments.
One of those highlights was “A Weekend in the Life of Eastern New York Soccer” which saw us each travel considerable distances to write about the many things that took place in local soccer on an October weekend in 1990.
We were there for mega-events such as the Cosmos reunion doubleheader at Giants Stadium in 1991 and the World Cup qualifying draw at Madison Square Garden’s theater later that year. The paper made visits to England to watch players like Kasey Keller and John Harkes blaze the trail for other Americans that would later follow them to Europe. We interviewed soccer legends like former England National Team players like Gordon Banks and Geoff Hurst as well as former Cosmos and Brazil great Carlos Alberto. The paper also reached a milestone when it published its 500th edition in March, 1990.
But one of the paper’s more glorious moments came several months before I came aboard. A copy of “Soccer Week” was used by the U.S. National Team coaching staff to motivate players before the team’s crucial World Cup qualifier in Trinidad & Tobago on Nov. 19, 1989. The headline on the front page said something "It Do Or Die." The headline was posted on a bulletin board with handwriting saying (though I don’t recall if it’s verbatim): “We need at least three good performances. Will you give us one today?”
I’m not sure if Paul Caligiuri was thinking of Soccer Week when he unleashed “The Shot Heard ‘Round The World”, or if anyone who was on the field for the U.S. that day had that rallying call on their minds. But they did make history. And the headline on the cover of the ensuing edition Soccer Week said it all: “AMERICA’S DREAM COMES TRUE!”
Soccer Week sadly halted production around World Cup time in 1994. It was a shame that it never lived to see the great things that would later happen.
Among them were the advent of the MetroStars and MLS, two Women’s World Cups hosted by the U.S., the creation of the WUSA, the Long Island Rough Riders and the success they enjoyed, the emergence of Freddy Adu, Landon Donovan, DaMarcus Beasley and the “new generation” of U.S. stars, and let us not forget Bruce Arena (an Eastern New York product, no less) leading the U.S. National Team to the quarterfinals of Korea/Japan 2002.
Even though there is no more Soccer Week, local soccer information can be found on various local soccer websites, including this one. But there can still be room for a weekly or bi-weekly local soccer paper. There is a plethora of soccer in our area -- from the Cosmopolitan League to MLS, from youth soccer to the women’s game. For me, that’s enough to warrant a newsstand publication to cover this. Can the paper that once served the soccer community so well for so long a time be resurrected?
As John Lennon once said, “You may say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one.”
Quite frankly, I don’t think I am a dreamer.
Nor do I believe I’m the only one.
Nicholas Koliarakis contributes stories to BigAppleSoccer.com.
