A Window Into American Pro Soccer Circa 1990

Genesis

The history of the USL can be traced all the way back to 1986, when the Southwest Indoor Soccer League began its inaugural season featuring five teams; three from Texas and one each from Oklahoma and New Mexico. The league was all amateur, with rosters being made up mostly of former college players looking to continue playing soccer and current college players looking for some extra game time. The Garland Genesis defeated the Lubbock Lazers 7-2 in the first league final, thus earning themselves the distinction of being the first ever USL Champions.

League founder Francisco Marcos originally created the SISL with the hopes of affiliating with the Major Indoor Soccer League (MISL), acting as a feeder league to the larger organization. Marcos had worked as an agent for MISL players and was familiar with the league’s setup. That affiliation would never come, however. It turned out it wasn’t needed. The MISL faded away in the early 1990s, while the SISL continued to grow.

In 1989 they added an outdoor league, cleverly called the Southwest Outdoor Soccer League. The league quickly did away with the outdoor and indoor names, simply referring to both leagues as the Southwest Independent Soccer League. They would rebrand again a year later as the Sunbelt Independent Soccer League, and once more for the 1992 season when the league became the United States Interregional Soccer League (USISL), a name that may be familiar to some fans who have knowledge of this era.

Look at all those points!

A fun fact of this period: the scoring system. Today, it’s settled around the globe that a win is worth three points and a draw is worth one. In the earlier years of United States soccer, every league implemented its own crazy points system, and the SISL/USISL was no different.

Take a look at the strange ways in which regular season points were earned during this time! Keep in mind there were no draws whatsoever.

Outdoor scoring system:
-6 points for a win, 4 points for a shootout win, 2 points for a shootout loss,
-0 points for a regulation loss, 1 point for each goal scored up to 3 per game.

Indoor scoring system:
-4 points for a win, 3 points for a shootout win, 1 point for a shootout loss,
-0 points for a regulation loss.

Live and In Color!

There is only so much footage of these games out there, but thankfully this entire 1994 match featuring Brian McBride and the Milwaukee Rampage has been preserved! Take a peek at what professional soccer looked like in 1994.

There’s a lot of interesting things in this video; the horrible condition of the field, the presence of McBride, who of course went on to much greater stardom, but most interesting is the fact the footage even exists. There was limited local television coverage like this for some teams, but very rarely can film, let alone an entire match like this, be found on the internet.

The Champions of this era were as follows:

Indoor League

(Regular season record shown in parenthesis)

Pictured: Atlanta celebrating their three-peat in 1995.

Outdoor League

(Regular season record shown in parenthesis)

*Richardson and Colorado advanced to the playoff final but it was never played, thus Colorado were declared champions due to superior record.

**Richardson also made the 1991 US Open Cup Final, but they lost to the Brooklyn Italians

Pictured: A sample of 1990s soccer logos (Left), poster promoting the 1993 playoffs (Right)

Hear it from a man who lived it

I was able to get in touch with Uwe Balzis, who played several seasons for the Albuquerque Gunners in the SISL. He was consistently one of the most dangerous strikers in the league and was the top scorer during the 1987/88 season. Here is a great dive into what the SISL was like from a man who was at the center of it all:

Tim: What was fan support like at SISL games?

Uwe: Fan support varied. In Albuquerque we had almost always a full house but we had only seats for 300 spectators. However, teams in Lubbock or Amarillo, for example, played in bigger buildings and there were always between 1000 – 2000 spectators on hand.

T: Does the league have any sort of lasting legacy in the area? Do soccer fans know the name Albuquerque Gunners?

U: After the Gunners stopped playing there was no major regional competition. I guess owners were hesitant to put money in a team. However, there is a new team forming this year and expected to play in a new regional indoor league. There are a few of the older generations who remember the Gunners, but the younger crowd is more into outdoor soccer these days.

T: What was team life like? Did you travel to away games as a group?

U: Playing with the Gunners was awesome. We felt like a big family because most of the players grew up in Albuquerque and the few newcomers, myself included, were well taken care of. We did a lot of activities together and our wives, girlfriends, and children were always included. Most of the time we travelled in rental vans even if we had trips as far away as Houston or Oklahoma City due to the limited budget. Away games were usually played on Saturday night and Sunday late morning. Because of the long drive we never had time to do a little shoot around before a game.

T: You were the league’s top scorer in the 1987/88 season. Does that rank right up there with your proudest soccer achievements?

U: I was very proud of my achievement and the level of play my team was on. Indoor soccer of an advanced level was new to me. I’m a native German and in Germany we never played competitive indoor soccer with walls around us.  I felt I was able to adjust quickly and enjoyed this type of soccer a lot.

T: To what extent did people cover the SISL? Where you ever asked to do interviews for local papers? Did local TV ever talk about the games?

U: Media coverage was pretty good. The newspaper had regular game reports and features on us and occasionally a TV crew came out and had a short clip about the game on their sports news.

T: Was the goal for most players to use the league as a springboard into something greater or was the SISL considered as good as it was going to get?

U: Most of our players were former college players and wanted to compete a few more years on a higher level without giving up their full time jobs. We also had a few college kids who played for us after their college seasons to stay sharp and go back prepared to their college teams.

T: Who was the most interesting player you played against/alongside?

U: One of the most interesting characters was Cecko, a former semi-pro player from Slovakia. He was a fitness freak. One weekend, after our Saturday night game we drove to our Sunday game in San Antonio. All of a sudden he stopped the van and made us jog next to the van on the highway for about a mile. He told us we were running late and had to get loose for the match.

T: Do you have a favorite SISL memory?

U: I always have fond memories of our competition against the Lubbock Lazers. They made a big show out of it with fog lights and great player introductions. One year we had a big game in Lubbock right before Christmas. Our whole team decided to wear Christmas hats during player introductions. We went shopping at the Lubbock mall and bought several. The crowd thought that was very funny. On top of it we won the game 4-3.

Did You Know?

That several teams from this era are represented in US Soccer in the present day? Orlando City of MLS took their Lions nickname from the USISL Orlando Lions. The Charleston Battery (1993) and Richmond Kickers (1993) are still around, competing in the USL Championship and USL League One respectively. The Long Island Rough Riders (1994) are also still active, and are affiliated with NYCFC as a minor league side in USL League Two. Several other teams, such as Greensboro Dynamo (now North Carolina Dynamo) still play in the USL League Two as unaffiliated, standalone teams.

Local Coverage

Uwe was also kind enough to share some old newspaper clippings featuring coverage of the Gunners. Take a look!

If you enjoyed what you read here, please let me know! If you are interested in a cleaner PDF format of this piece, contact me at tim.sokol4@gmail.com or on Twitter at @tim_sokol.