This came out a couple of weeks ago, and I missed it until now.\n
You know I’m an NASLophile, and though I’ve been told it’s a bit disappointing, I’m looking forward to reading Clive Toye’s book, A Kick in the Grass<\/a> <\/em>1<\/a><\/sup>The rat stole the title I was going to use for a book I’ll never write about the Tampa Bay Rowdies<\/a><\/span>. The longtime league exec gave an interesting interview to ussoccerplayers.com <\/a>in which he discusses the state of MLS and American soccer in general. (Toye was also prominent in last year’s excellent Once in a Lifetime.)<\/em>\n One quote that jumped out at me right away was this:\n Yep. Just because the NASL folded and you wanted to distance yourself from their mistakes at launch in 1996 didn’t mean you had to ignore their successes as well (and many of the “soccer people” who were still around and willing and able to help at the time). Now MLS probably feels like because they’ve been around a dozen years and are likely to be around much longer than the NASL’s 17 seasons, they don’t need to acknowledge those who came before in any sort of meaningful way.\n In a somewhat related story (and one more recent), ESPN’s Kristian Dyer has this look at the legacy of the Cosmos. While it plays a bit too much into this whole Cosmos-as-Utopia nostalgia binge that is all too prevalent, it’s interesting. Some points, though:\n I loved the NASL; it was my introduction to the game. I miss the old Rowdies. But I miss my dog, Sam, too, and she’s not coming back, either. The notion that we can turn back the clock for more than an afternoon is a quaint one, but silly.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why has Major League Soccer ignored the legacy of the old North American Soccer League? Longtime exec Clive Toye wonders, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":680,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[30,8,7,28,11,31,5],"class_list":["post-611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soccer","tag-cosmos","tag-major-league-soccer","tag-mls","tag-nasl","tag-people-are-dumb","tag-revisionist-history","tag-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kenn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kenn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kenn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kenn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kenn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/kenn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":618,"href":"http:\/\/kenn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions\/618"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kenn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kenn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kenn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kenn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n“USSoccerPlayers: Do you think that MLS had adequately acknowledged the contribution that the NASL made to the growth of American soccer?<\/em><\/strong>
\nToye: MLS has signally and deliberately ignored the fact that the NASL ever existed. Without the NASL, soccer in the USA would have remained as we found it in 1967.” <\/em><\/strong><\/blockquote>\n
\n\n \t