As I sat in Pizza Hut Park on Saturday night, it occurred to me how far soccer has come in a relatively short period of time. Sitting in the press box, overlooking the immaculate playing surface, I couldn't help but think back to a time when high school football stadiums and baseball fields were the venues for "professional soccer."
In 1990, when the Salt Lake Sting used to travel to Denver to play the Colorado Foxes, they knew that what awaited them was just a frightful sight. Jeffco Stadium was a one-of-a-kind, horribly inadequate stadium that was 62 yards wide. It not only had some sort of paper-thin Astroturf covering the approach to the long jump pit, but the field actually contained the pit itself.
Ah, the good old days; the times before state-of-the-art training rooms, with hot and cold tubs. Getting taped in the back of your trainer's pickup truck while being pelted with snow and sleet was just the way it was. No pre-training treatment, and only the occasional bag of ice as you stepped into your car. We knew no better. Locker rooms with maple lockers, carpeting and personal space for each player? Players then would have been happy to have a place to change and shower. Any video sessions back then were done at home alone, if your game was somehow televised, and you had set your VCR (top loaders, remember those?), and if the timer had actually worked.
Pizza Hut Park not only boasts a beautiful playing field, but it also has a lush concourse, with a club and a plethora of flat panel TVs, where I imagine the atmosphere is fantastic for any sporting event, or gathering. Outside the stadium are 17 fields, any of which an APSL (that was the league in 1990) team would have gladly traded their five best players for access to.
Soccer has come a long way in this country. When I see the young players who are now becoming professionals, I get the sense that they have no idea how fortunate they are to be getting into the league now. I'm pretty sure that it is natural to always want more, but to some extent, there has to be an appreciation for all that there is now. It would be my hope that every young player gets what he wants, but understands that he has a lot at his disposal, and that he has a lot to be thankful for.
Some of this thought was fueled by the fact that Tony Meola is getting his 100th cap this week. It's a fitting tribute to someone who has seen the rise and fall and rise again of soccer in the United States. Tony was around for the Cosmos and experienced the devastation of watching the NASL fall apart, taking with it all of our dreams of playing professionally in this country. He has been through the 1990 World Cup, the aforementioned APSL, the 1994 World Cup, and has endured all the challenges faced by those who wanted to see a league exist here in the U.S. again. He was part of the group that was there when MLS began, and has lasted to this point, 11 years later. He has seen it all, and I'm sure he's one of those whom you don't have to remind how far things have come.
With the crop of current stadiums - The Home Depot Center, Crew Stadium and Pizza Hut Park - and the ones that are just around the corner in Chicago, Colorado, Salt Lake City and New York, the league appears to be here to stay. After the incredible performance of the national team at the last World Cup, and with the 2006 edition fast approaching, soccer is on an upswing, and there has never been a better time than now, to be a soccer player.
Robin Fraser, a five-time MLS Best XI selection and two-time MLS Defender of the Year, ended his 10-year MLS career and 16-year professional career last October, and now begins his first season with RSL as the team's color television analyst. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Fraser amassed 27 caps for the U.S. National Team and was drafted fourth overall by the Los Angeles Galaxy in the inaugural MLS draft.
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