Indoor Soccer Shutouts

5 thoughts on “Indoor Soccer Shutouts”

1. My question is this: I don’t understand why the NPSL isn’t counted when it was called the AISA, but is counted in 1991 when it was still clearly a Division II league. The same inconsistency shows up with the MASL when it was called the PASL.

   By that logic, NASL Indoor and the CISL/WISL shouldn’t be counted as Division I either. I agree they weren’t “minor leagues,” but the leagues they were competing against at the time were significantly stronger.

   I’ve followed indoor soccer basically my entire life, and from my perspective, Division I status has looked like this:
   MISL (1978) → NPSL (1992) → MISL (2001) → NISL/MISL (2008) → MASL (2014).

   That’s just my opinion, but I really appreciate that you’ve compiled and preserved all of these indoor records. It’s great to see someone care about the indoor game as much as I do.

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   1. I appreciate you taking the time to comment, Jeff, thank you.

      Here’s the deal on the AISA: When it began, the league made no bones about it – they were a developmental league for the (then) MISL.

      In 1990, the league announced itself as a national league and moved into bigger markets and changed its name. I believe it’s fair to consider them the other Division I league (though not on par with the MISL) at that point. (At least one other historian disagrees with me on this, and while this is probably too much Inside Baseball, I once tried to convene a meeting of the few people in this space who would sort this out, and they first ignored me and then blew me off, so my opinion wins the day, it says here.)

      Others (including the league’s Wikipedia page) say that when the MISL folded and Cleveland and Wichita moved over, then the NPSL became a DI league. I think that’s asking Cleveland and Wichita to do a lot of heavy lifting, and I also don’t believe it takes the absence of a current league to move another league up by default. So that’s the thinking on that one.

      The MASL and PASL are clearly distinct leagues, though the MASL tries to keep its PASL stats in its historical database sometimes (while other times – like in 2023-24 when they celebrated their 10th season – they consider themselves to have started in 2014). The PASL was ramshackle, and the Sockers’ abject dominance of teams full of Whoever Could Get Off Work kind of points that out. The MASL was formed by a merger of the PASL and the remnants of the third MISL, which upgraded its status.

      Look, of course indoor soccer was significantly stronger prior to 1992. It has never reached those heights again, and likely never will. But are we going to say there hasn’t been a Division I league in this country since 1992? We have to adjust our opinions in this era.

      The NASL is clearly Division I because its outdoor league was Division I. (And there was obviously no such designation back in the day, but come on.)

      The CISL, definitely Division I. Big markets, top players, highly competitive, big arenas, TV. That was a Division I league. And the PSA is iffy, though it became the WISL, which, again, small league but big markets and very good players, and it eventually merged with the NPSL/Second MISL. (And those are separated in these various pages because it was a legal entity fold.)

      I could easily take out that first PSA season in 1998 and perhaps I will when I’m inclined to re-do all the math. But I’m not right now.

      But the NASL and CISL were – even if we’re generous by the standards – clearly superior to the NISL, which was, basically, all we had. Those leagues had Chicago and Dallas, and the NISL had Rockford and Omaha. I don’t think it was any great shakes, but that was a fallow period for the game. Some would say it still is.

      From a quasi-by-the-book perspective, there’s this: The US Soccer Federation recognizes three levels of professional indoor soccer leagues, Division A, Division B and Division C (differentiated from Divisions I, II and III in the outdoor game). They don’t spell out criteria, other than all leagues have to have at least eight teams. That would eliminate several league-seasons in the last 27 years, and it’s unweildy to do the math and have leagues bouncing between top flight and lower levels from year to year.

      THAT SAID, I don’t even know when the last indoor league was that was a USSF member league. When USL owned the indoor league back in the day, they probably were, but I don’t think anyone has given enough of a care to bother to join up with USSF (and pay $40k for the privilege). And it doesn’t seem like anyone has suffered from not being a USSF member, so A, B, and C are just shorthand we don’t even use.

      For what it’s worth (and, again, had the other supposed historians been up for sitting down and hashing this out, it might be worth more, but there we are), my calculus is this:

      • MISL 1 – Clearly Division I, the sui generis, even though there was no such designation back then.
      • NASL – Clearly Division I when it was in a league circumstance (not the tournaments played prior to 1977 or the ad hoc competitions sporadically played in winters, which includes the Grand Prix of Indoor Soccer). I mean George Best played NASL indoor, FFS.
      • AISA – Clearly Division II until it asserted itself as a national league and changed its name to NPSL. We can differ about whether that’s 1990 or 1992. I go with 1990.
      • USISL’s indoor play – ramshackle, teams didn’t even play consistent schedules or the same numbers of games. Division III.
      • CISL – Clearly Division I, given its markets, television, players who played in that league and the NPSL.
      • EISL – Clearly Division II. Had more structure than USISL’s indoor league, but still had teams moving mid-season and only lasted two years. But they also explicitly stated they were a developmental league, and they were in small markets in the southeast.
      • PSA/WISL – Gets the benefit of the doubt because of its teams (most of whom had been in the CISL), markets and players, though the inaugural proto-season in 1998 could easily not be included at all. (I’m not one to tell Gordon Jago’s estate that he just lost eight wins, but it might come to that.)
      • XSL – Perhaps the strongest recent case to be re-classified, but was formed out of the great schism that resulted in two weak leagues instead of one slightly stronger league. I might do this, too, one day, but it’s going to be a headache, and I don’t know who GAF.
      • MISL II – Fair to call it Division I, though, again, in a strange period of the game.
      • PASL-Pro – Please. Spare me with this. I know Sockers fanboys don’t want to admit this, since they ran roughshod over this collection of rec center teams, but even in a rough patch for the game, no.
      • NISL/MISL III – Meh, but I guess. You’d have to take some seasons out, I suppose, or you could just say to heck with it and grant them the status for the whole run. Don’t care so much, really.
      • MASL – It is what it is. When it first started, I called it (on this blog) the Worst.League.Ever, and when it started, it probably was. A handful of the 24 (or 25, depending) teams that started the league are still around, and they’re largely ones that existed prior to it anyway. But, okay, in the interests of Having A Division I League of Some Sort, there we are. We can all agree it could be better, right?
      • MASL2 and MASL3 – it’s literally in the names.
      • MLIS – Spare me this, too. Good on Bernie Lilavois for trying to upgrade things, but they’re not major.
      • The other NISL was a complete joke from start to finish and barely a Division III league.
      • Women’s indoor league play is too nascent to categorize just yet, but there are plenty of outdoor options for women now (and that’s a good thing), so I don’t know what level of player they’re getting and their markets and ambitions appear to be small at this time.

      So there we are. That’s my rationale. The people who chirp are (largely) just fanboying. (Not you, you have obviously given this thought.) I always tell the dissenters they’re free to make their own lists and publish them, but I don’t see them doing that.

      Had the few people in the indoor soccer historian space seen fit to sit down and hammer all this out, things might be different or more clear. People still might not agree with the criteria, but it’s not like outdoor. If you applied similar standards to indoor that USSF applies to outdoor, there would have been a bunch of seasons in this century with no Division I indoor league at all. Maybe that’s okay. But it feels draconian to me.

      So that’s my thought process. As always, YMMV.

      Appreciate the thoughtful comment.

      Reply

2. Kenn, didn’t you miss the Nasl when they played indoor from 1979-1984? The more important question is, would you know who holds the records for most shutouts indoor history? I’m finding William Vanzella is #1 with 11 and Victor Nogueira #2 with 9.

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   1. Hi, Paul. Thanks for taking the time to comment.

      There are literally four NASL indoor games on the list on this very page:

      1. 12/14/1979 by Memphis’ John Houska against Tulsa
      2. 01/08/1981 by Atlanta’s Louie Cioffi against Fort Lauderdale
      3. 02/18/1981 by California’s Alan Mayer against Vancouver
      4. 12/10/1981 by Portland’s Keith MacRae against San Jose

      Those were the only shutouts in NASL indoor history.

      The “most shutouts by a goalie” is, as you probably saw, noted at the top of this page. Vanzela is number one, and Nogueira is number two. It’s probably a bit of a miss that there’s no listing of the top five on this page, and I will rectify that presently.

      That will surely create yet another debate about what “counts,” because Jamie Swanner has nine, but six of them were in the AISA. And I’ve laid out my rationale for that in another comment.

      Thanks again for commenting!

      Reply

3. One small and unavoidable nitpick with the NPSL shutouts (and I’m on record as being in the “doesn’t count until 1992-93 camp): the multipoint scoring makes the shutouts look worse then they were….but even though I go back and convert scores to “goal counts” when I compare or quote NPSL matches, I’m not about to ask you to do that.

   I appreciate the generosity of calling the CISL Division 1. I disliked the NPSL due to the existence of MPS, but they were obviously D-1 after the M(I)SL folded in 1992. I was the one who advocated and was successful in getting the so-called international games in 1998 reclassified as “exhibitions”.

   Your dedication to documenting everything and defending your answers are much appreciated and respected by this historian who no longer has a team to document.

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