After finishing with the best regular-season record in the North American Soccer League the previous year, the Fort Lauderdale Strikers endured an atrocious start to the 1978 season. They were a sorry 0-3 and outscored by an astounding 13-2 margin. So for their next home game at Lockhart Stadium on 22 April, the team decided to do something about that.
A pre-game funeral procession was held. A hearse was driven to the middle of the field and a coffin was taken out. Head coach Ron Newman popped out of the coffin, ran to a microphone and exclaimed: “We’re not dead yet!” The crowd of 7,718 went wild and the Strikers went on to a 2-0 victory. That result helped right Fort Lauderdale, who went on to reach the play-off semi-finals. Vintage Ron Newman.
Later Newman admitted that he was “nervous the players were going to nail [the coffin] shut.” He quipped: “They wanted a coffin, but I didn’t trust my players.” Not many coaches would pull off a stunt like that.
“I can’t imagine Alex Ferguson or Jose Mourinho doing something like that,” said Newman’s son Guy, who played for and coached with and against his father. “He was willing to do anything to get things going.”
“It was a schmaltzy, cornball sort of time the North American Soccer League was in,” said beIN TV analyst Ray Hudson, who played under Newman. “We used to parade in on different things into the stadium, whether it was on horseback, fire engines, police cars or Harley-Davidson motorbikes. Typical showman. We were all selling the game. We truly had to be that type of pioneer because the country was a soccer desert.”
Newman was part pioneer and part promoter who always had full-time passion for the sport, and a pretty damn good coach. He accrued an American-record 753 victories (against 296 losses and 27 draws) in outdoor and indoor soccer.
In many ways, Newman defined the American soccer experience in a career that spanned four decades.
As a member of the Atlanta Chiefs in 1967, Newman began teaching children of all ages the beautiful game, which he continued with the Dallas Tornado and Strikers. He ended up as a legend after directing the San Diego Sockers to 10 titles over 11 NASL and Major Indoor Soccer League seasons, finishing his career in the Continental Indoor Soccer League and the Kansas City Wizards (now Sporting Kansas City) in Major League Soccer.
No surprise that Newman has earned honors in the US National Soccer Hall of Fame, the US Indoor Soccer Hall of Fame, Atlanta Hall of Fame, San Diego Hall of Champions (his star is in the walkway of the San Diego Sports Arena, between Frank Sinatra and Bette Midler), the USL Hall of Fame and the Dallas Walk of Fame.
“Ron was a great recruiter,” said Kenny Cooper, who kept goal for Dallas and was a coaching adversary in many an MISL championship series. “He had the unique ability to put people together, different backgrounds, cultures, heritages. He could pick out a player maybe somebody else couldn’t. He always figured out a way of bringing out the best out of people. He was an excellent motivator.”
Cooper added Newman was “very consumed with the game, lived the game, loved the game. Very passionate about the game.”
Newman, now 80, was a player’s coach. Hudson discovered that when he landed in south Florida for the first time. Not only did Newman greet him and Tony Whelan, Newman brought his entire family.
“It was all about the personal touch,” Hudson said. “He was such a congenial, friendly, warm, happy coach. I’m like: ‘Wow, this is different.’ The first impression. It was a different world for me landing on a different planet, south Florida. Ron made us so at home.
“He was a seducer. He seduced with a little glint in his eye. He knew how to get the best out of you.”
Newman’s coaching philosophy? “Whatever you do, don’t ever damage the passion of the game,” he said.
Given the cosmopolitan nature of the game, a soccer coach not only has to be an X’s and O’s man, but part psychologist and part diplomat. “Melding a world of cultures together with personalities and qualities was a terrific feat,” Newman said. “At one time I had 11 nationalities on the field at one time. The antics, comedy off the field, traveling and celebrating were great times. More stories than I can tell.”
Here are just a few of them. Nearing the end of a successful career in England that included stints with Portsmouth, Leyton Orient, Crystal Palace and Gillingham, Newman mulled the possibility of playing in South Africa or in the United States. As it turned out, he wound living in the former house of Phil Woosnam, who had preceded him at Leyton Orient. He received Woosnam’s old mail, brought it to him and struck up a friendship. When Woosnam made plans to play and coach in the fledgling National Professional Soccer League, he convinced Newman to join him.
“He said: ‘Come with me to America,” Newman said. “I can’t go to America, I said. They don’t know how to play the game. ‘We have to go over and teach them,’ he says.”
Which he did. Newman helped jump-start youth soccer in Atlanta and Dallas as his pioneering spirit became a family affair. Guy and daughter Tracey officiated youth games. Newman co-founded the North Texas High School League along with soccer aficionado Ron Griffith, the Tornado’s game day announcer.
“Always down to earth,” Griffith said. “What a trooper!”
In Atlanta, Newman represented the Chiefs on a float during a parade. The spectators did not know soccer from Adam.
“He got up and started juggling a soccer ball and everybody started looking, watching it,” Guy said. “He would get some kids out going down the road having them start kicking balls. Nobody even knew what the game was about. He was trying to promote the game.”
In Dallas, Cooper remembered participating in as many as three or four clinics a day.
“That was expected of you,” he said. “He instilled all that into all of us. When I went into coaching, I obviously used some of those influences that Ron would share with us.”
Wife Olive put up goal nets and washed jock straps at home. With the Sockers years in the 1980s, she made protective gear out of girdles – for Martin Donnelly and Guy, who got burns on their thighs playing indoors.
“She bought [beige] girdles and removed all the lace,” Tracey said. “She was in the store buying extra large. The ladies were confused. So yes, they wore women’s girdles.”
During a best-of-three semi-final play-off series against the Rochester Lancers in 1971, Dallas dropped the opener 2-1 in the 176th minute, ending everyone’s agony in the longest game in USA soccer history.
“When the goal went in, that was the only time a team scored and both teams celebrated,” Newman said.
Dallas prevailed in the next two matches, including a 148-minute marathon that propelled the team into a victorious championship series against Atlanta.
Despite rarely getting paid, Newman directed the LA Skyhawks to the 1976 American Soccer League championship.”They didn’t have enough money, but he kept going and going,” Guy said. “A lot of people would have said: ‘I’m going back to England. I had enough of this.’ It made him more determined than ever.”
Demonstrating what he accomplished on a shoestring budget, Newman was hired by the Strikers in 1977.
Fort Lauderdale pulled off road wins at Team Hawaii and the LA Aztecs with only one day of rest between games.
“That was a hell of a feat,” Hudson said. “The manner and the feeling of that we had via Ron, we can enjoy ourselves, but, man, we’re going to die on that field for each other. He burned that into you, that attitude. You work hard, you train hard, you play hard but during the times you can enjoy each other, enjoy life.”
When the Cosmos trampled the Strikers in the quarter-finals, 8-3, before a then American soccer record crowd of 77,691 at Giants Stadium, Newman found a silver lining.
“We got killed,” Hudson said. “For Ron, it was history, it was an occasion. It was one of those games where the Cosmos had to make the statement to the world that soccer’s being born here. We were decimated but Ron was always more positive.”
Newman’s humor diffused many a controversial scenario. Fifa had denied George Best from participating in the Strikers’ 1979 season opener because Fulham of the English League claimed he did fulfill a contractual agreement. After the ban was lifted, Best started against New England but was substituted in the second half.
As he walked off the field, Best removed his shirt and threw it into Newman’s face.
“How can I get fit if I’m taken out 29 minutes before the game is over,” Best told Soccer Digest. To which Newman replied with a grin: “I always wanted one of his shirts. He’s an Irishman with a hot bloody temper and we forgive all Irishmen.”
Another coach might have exploded and turned it into a circus.
“In this day and age, it wouldn’t be a big deal,” Guy said. “In those days, players didn’t like being substituted and Best said: ‘You’re taking me off and nobody has ever taken me off.’ If he gets all upset, they have to suspend George Best again. That’s not good for George, that’s not good for anybody. He had to make light of the whole situation … so it quieted down. Everybody laughed. George played the next game and all of a sudden everything was fine.”
If you thought that Newman was only warm and fuzzy, there was at least one incident when he put his foot down – after English defender Bobby Bell kicked the crap out of Rochester forward Mike Stojanovic during a 3-1 loss in 1977.
“Ron told Bobby: ‘I’ve had enough. We’ll give you a ticket back home. We’ll pay your wages up. We don’t want you on the team. I can do without that sort of thing,’” Hudson said.
“That really regenerated the team’s spirit because he was a bad apple. It wasn’t pleasant to see or hear that because we had not seen that side of Ron before. He was a hard-line man when he needed to be.”
In 1979, Newman, then 44 and who last played in 1970, was forced to perform at forward for the final half hour of a 4-0 loss to the Washington Diplomats. “Phil Woosnam [then NASL commissioner] told me to get a team on the field at all costs,” he said. “We had 15,000 spectators at the game. I think they were upset seeing people like me and people off the street.”
Newman’s picture in a Strikers’ uniform adorned the cover of the 19 April 1979 edition of Soccer America. He had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play with Guy.
“It should have been a charity exhibition game,” he said.
Newman became the Sockers’ coach in 1980, starting an incredible 14-year association and that title run.
“Every year we were amazed at the success,” he said. “As the championships were won it was hard to imagine doing it the next year and the next year. It was never assumed and always amazing to win. Perhaps it didn’t help the league that we kept winning but it was a great ride. It was a very long time for a coach to stay in one place. The love affair with the city and the intimacy that the indoor game brings to the fans was special. I love the outdoor game, but the indoor game will be forever in my heart.”
Besides accumulating all that hardware, Newman helped revolutionize the indoor game. He discovered his team could gain several precious yards of advantage as one player entered the bench through one door while a teammate exited through another further up the field. He also introduced the sixth attacker, pulling his goalkeeper.
“I enjoyed the challenge that came with the strategy of indoor,” he said.
“The sixth attacker and the position of the benches of the doors was paramount to our success.”
Newman became the first coach to sign with an MLS team – Kansas City in 1995. He directed the Wizards to the Western Conference title in 1997 before he was fired two years later. Regardless, Newman proved that nice guys can finish first – again and again.
“His legacy is already cast in gold,” Cooper said. “I can’t think of anybody better if you would mold yourself as a person, as a coach than Ron. Just an incredible level of consistency, which led to excellence.”
“He was a fantastic coach and very successful to keep doing it and doing it,” Guy said. “He left a legacy with all the kids and all the people playing soccer.”
Added Hudson: “His legacy will be he was a successful coach with a manner about him, a sweet manner that not only won player’s hearts, but won championships and helped set this game in this country on its way.”
