A Cagliari Soccer History Lesson

By: Jeremy | May 28th, 2009

For those of you like myself, especially my fellow americans, who can be dated by the days of European soccer stars of the 70s, who past their prime, came to the USA and played in the now defunct NASL, which created a soccer frenzy for kids like myself, growing up in Southern California, who would have thought that the team I ended up supporting in Italy has ties to the league I grew up watching and still miss to this day.

This league got me playing soccer at a young age and while not europe, there was nothing better then going to a game to see George Best and the Aztecs and later a young Hugo Sanchez and the Sockers on a regular basis. We even had the late Manu Sanon, World Cup 1974 star from Haiti, and Kaz Deyna, World Cup star from Poland, play for the Sockers. These were world stars right in our backyard. Watching the Champions League Final yesterday reminded me how lucky I was to have such good seats at Soccer Bowl 82 in San Diego. We take what we can get so for those of you hitting the european stadiums for matches regularly, or who grew up watching some big european club in your hometown, indulge this american just a bit….

Yes I am old and what does this have to do with Cagliari you might ask?

For those of you who may remember, the NASL(North American Soccer League) was formed in 1968 after a merger between the National Professional Soccer League(NPSL) and the United Soccer Association(USA). The United Soccer Association started in 1967 as basically a summer league for foreign teams. One of the teams was Cagliari who played as the Chicago Mustangs that summer. The Mustangs would participate in the first year of the NASL in 1968 and while it that was the final year in the NASL for the team, it did become basically a minor league team for the Chicago Sting, one of the NASLs best franchises that existed until the leagues demise following the 1984 season.

Players on the Mustang team in 1967 included Roberto Boninsenga, Raffaello Ciocca, Claudio DeCarvalho, Jerry Hitchens, Giuseppi Longoni, Pietro Pianta, Adriano Reginato, Francesco Rizzo, Raffaello Vescovi, and Bruno Visentin.

How many of you fans know any of those Cagliari players? You should know atleast one.

Probably the most famous player from the group was Italian international Boninsenga. He was born the same year as my father(1943). He played with Cagliari from 1966-69 and just missed out on being a part of Cagliaris only Scudetto in 1970. He did transfer to Inter where he won the Scudetto in 70-71 and lead the Italian league in scoring in 1971 and 1972. He also scored Italys only goal in the 1970 World Cup Final. I still watch that game on occasion just for kicks. To think, we had such a great player close to his prime in the States for just a summer so early in our countries soccer history. Not surprisingly, he was the leagues leading scorer that summer of 1967.

My father was a college level player in the sixties and played in the typical adult leagues in the early seventies and needless to say, he was a big fan of the local NASL teams and put a ball at my feet whenever he could. We had the Los Angeles Wolves and San Diego Toros around the time I was born, but my dad did not know who Boninsenga was or that the European teams played in that memorable summer of 1967. He did know his mother in law was Sardinian though!!

So what is my point with this rambling?

As we wind down yet another season, more history has been created and somewhere there are kids who are getting turned on to the sport or a team for often a strange reason. While my story of becoming a Cagliari fan is a kind of a come lately story, unlike my exposure at a young age to the NASL, I feel lucky and proud to support Cagliari even more because in the summer of 1967, just two years before I was born, the team I knew nothing about until I was 20 years old, played for a brief time in a league that would influence my development not only as a young player, but as a fan of the game.

It does not get any better then that.