Roy Lassiter never expected to hit the net 27 times during Major League Soccer's inaugural season. But after doing so to help the Tampa Bay Mutiny to 20 victories and a first-place finish during the regular season, he wasn't about to stop.
The fleet-footed forward, who tallied 88 strikes in a seven-year MLS career with the Mutiny, D.C. United, Miami Fusion and Kansas City Wizards, arrived with decent credentials from the NCAA level and Costa Rica's top flight. But nobody predicted he'd score so many that first year. Least of all Lassiter.
“I always wanted to score goals. That was my basic job, and I'm going to score goals,” said Lassiter, who played in 30 of the Mutiny's 32 games in 1996. “My thing is I'm going to work very hard to get into good spots, so I can help my team win, and I'm going to be that guy that scores that goal.
“But 27? That would have surprised me [if you'd told me beforehand], yes. I think that would have surprised any player. To be honest with you, the next year I thought I was going to beat that record: 'I'm gonna go score more goals than that!'”
He didn't, of course, and neither has anyone else in the 18 seasons that have followed. San Jose Earthquakes striker Chris Wondolowski (in 2012) and New York Red Bulls forward Bradley Wright-Phillips (in 2014) equaled Lassiter's cherished mark, but neither could find No. 28.
Says Lassiter: “I think God wants everyone to recognize that scoring 27 goals in one season is not easy, that's first and foremost.”
Lassiter sure made it look easy back in '96, when he tallied in a league-opening victory over New England, scored another in a loss two weeks later to Dallas, then went two games without a tally, his longest dry patch of the season.
Then, boom: Goals in four successive games – two in a win over San Jose – three more strikes in a two-game stretch, another pair in back-to-back games, then a four-game span in which he netted seven, including a hat trick in a 3-1 romp over Colorado.
He saved his best for the end, scoring in the last six regular-season games as the Mutiny clinched the first Supporters' Shield – they didn't realize it at the time; the Shield was awarded retroactively three years later – and adding six more goals in the first four postseason games.
That made for 33 in all, an MLS record for a full campaign, regular season and playoffs.
“The journey is hard. Things have to go right,” said Lassiter, now 46 and a top youth coach in Southern California. “I was kind of injury-free, and Thomas [Rongen, the Mutiny's head coach] even reserved me, took me out of games just so I wouldn't burn out. ... You've got to hit hat tricks, for sure. You've got to hit two-goal games, for sure, and you can't get too many games without scoring a goal. You can't go more than two games without scoring a goal. I mean, that has to happen.
“And let's be honest, back in 1996 there were some tough defenders [in MLS]. I'm not thinking the game has evolved so much much that the league has harder defenders [today]. We had some real smart and hard-nosed defenders back in those days, and teams were geared around defense. Now the game is evolving and it's geared around attacking and organizing, and it's faster.
“I think if I was to play today, I'd probably score more goals [than 27].”
The Mutiny had MLS's most-feared attack that first season, leading the league with 66 goals behind Lassiter, superstar Colombian playmaker Carlos Valderrama and a superb supporting cast that included Italian forward Giuseppe Galderisi and US national team defender Cle Kooiman, future MLS head coaches Frank Yallop and Martin Vasquez and, as rookies, Steve Ralston and Frankie Hejduk.
“It was a group of players that felt like a family, really,” Lassiter said. “We actually lived in the same apartment complex. All of us. Even Valderrama. We were a very, very close team. We did things with our families, our kids. We just really bonded, understood each other.”
Valderrama picked up nine of his MLS-best 17 assists on Lassiter goals, and Galderisi, Ivan McKinley and, during the playoffs, Ralston were chief providers. One of the lingering images of that first season is Lassiter running onto and finishing a Valderrama through ball.
“I learned where to run better and became a little more of a student of the game with Carlos,” Lassiter said. “Carlos would usually give me the ball where I had to take only one touch, if even that, and put the ball in the back of the net. [It looks easy] but the thing is doing the business before that all happens, because you can't just start out and take a run.
“It's a lot of studying of movement, because if I'm not moving, I'm not getting the ball much. It took a tremendous amount of movement to be able to be in position to get on the end of a ball from Carlos Valderrama.”
The Mutiny's nemesis that season was D.C. United, who won three the first three regular-season meetings – Tampa Bay scored just once, on a Lassiter penalty kick – before Lassiter's 24th goal of the year secured a victory in mid-September.
The teams would meet in the Eastern Conference final, too. Lassiter lifted the Mutiny into a tie just before halftime in the first leg, but D.C. swept the playoff series with 4-1 and 2-1 wins.
“We just ran out of steam, so to speak,” said Lassiter, whose son, Ariel, is a top prospect with LA Galaxy II, the Galaxy's USL-based reserve team. “We were so spot-on throughout the year, so dominant most of the year, and it comes down to where the rubber meets the road, can we turn the corner and be a championship team and win a championship? And we just weren't able to do that.”
Lassiter didn't come close to the record in year two – he scored 10 goals – but made runs toward it in 1998 and 1999 with D.C., scoring 18 goals both seasons. He's one of 11 MLS players with at least 100 goals, regular season and playoffs (he has 101 in all). Of the 14 others with at least 80 regular-season goals, only Raul Diaz Arce, Taylor Twellman and Chris Wondolowski have better goals-per-90-minute averages.
As he watched Wondolowski and then Wright-Phillips come close to eclipsing the record, a thought went through his head.
“There were several times Thomas Rongen would say, 'We've already beaten this team, I'm taking you out of this game, I need you to rest up up for the next game,' ” Lassiter said. “I'm thinking back on it, going, 'Darn, I should have stayed in those games and just kept on scoring. Maybe 27 wasn't enough.”
It won't be enough forever.
“I feel that 27, it will be broken. I feel it will be,” he said. “It's just a matter of when, a matter of who. ... I'm looking forward to one day [when] my son will break that record.”
