Memphis Americans

Major Indoor Soccer League (1981-1984)

FWIL FAVORITE

Order at Old School Shirts

Memphis Americans Logo T-Shirt

The guys at Old School Shirts pay tribute to the Major Indoor Soccer  League’s Memphis Americans …whose  best players were Argentines, German and Yugoslavs. 

Also available in women’s V-neck and racerback tank styles and as a crewneck sweatshirt!

 

When you make a purchase through an affiliate link like this one, Fun While It Lasted earns a commission at no additional cost to you. Thanks for your support!

Background

The Memphis Americans soccer team… they arrived from Hell and they left for Sin City, but for a few years in between they were God’s club…

During the late 1970’s, Memphis, Tennessee had a mediocre outdoor soccer club known as the Memphis Rogues.  The Rogues weren’t especially good, nor were they particularly popular.  Their summertime matches at the city’s 50,000-seat Liberty Bowl typically attracted fewer than 10,000 customers.

But in the winter of 1979-80, something funny happened.  The Rogues took part in the North American Soccer League’s first indoor soccer season.  The campaign was something of an experiment – only 10 of the league’s 24 clubs elected to take part.  To everyone’s surprise, indoor soccer proved to be a big hit in Memphis.  The Rogues nearly sold out the 9,500-seat Mid-South Coliseum and six dates.  They were also good, advancing to the NASL indoor championship series.  And then they were gone, packed up and sold off to Calgary, Alberta a few months later.  The Rogues wouldn’t be back for another season of indoor human pinball, but their flash-in-the-pan popularity put Memphis, Tennessee on the map for investors looking to get in on the indoor soccer boomlet of the early 1980’s.

Christians Buy Hellions

After the Rogues left town in September 1980, Mid-South Coliseum went back to its traditional role as a pro wrestling hub.  There were no team sports in the building in the winter of 1980-81.  Then in May 1981 retired Arizona businessman Ray Kuns and Dave Hannah, the founder of the evangelical Christian sports ministry Athletes In Action teamed up to purchase the bankrupt Hartford Hellions of the Major Indoor Soccer League (MISL) and move the team to Memphis.  Within six months, Kuns turned the team over to local owners Charles Kelley and Robert Ryan and returned to Arizona. Kelley and Ryan followed in the avowedly Christian identity of the Americans management team.

Unsurprisingly, the Athletes In Action folks weren’t big on the “Hellions” identity and the team was given a patriotic new identity and color scheme: the Memphis Americans.

Key Players

Patriotism aside, the Americans best players were all foreigners.  Memphis’ finest player was Stan Stamenkovic, a pudgy, chain-smoking Yugoslav who scored 101 goals in 77 games during the Americans’ first two years.  But Stamenkovic left Memphis after two seasons for the rival Baltimore Blast in 1983-84. He promptly led Baltimore to the MISL championship that season, while winning league MVP honors.

Other notables were German All-Star defender Helmut Dudek and Argentinean midfielder Toni Carbognani, a former Rogue who played for just about every iteration of pro soccer in Memphis in the 1980’s (and there were many).

The team’s biggest name was an American, but he didn’t play.  When the team arrived in 1981, the owners hired recently retired 31-year old soccer star Kyle Rote Jr. as Vice President of Marketing & Public Relations.  Rote was the best known American player of the 1970’s, thanks to his famous father (a former NFL All-Pro) and his three victories in ABC Sports’ popular Superstars competition.  Rote was also a prominent Christian athlete, which tied in well with the team’s original ownership.  By the team’s third and final season in 1983-84, Rote assumed the dual role of Head Coach and General Manager.

Move To Las Vegas

Attendance at Memphis Americans’ soccer games never quite matched the high expectations set by that handful of Rogues’ indoor games a few years earlier.  Part of that was due to the MISL’s schedule.  While the Rogues had the benefit of novelty and played only six home matches in the winter of 1979-80, the Americans played 22 to 24 dates a winter at Mid-South Coliseum, which was an awful lot of soccer for a Southern football city to absorb.  Crowds were middling by MISL standards and the club was sold and relocated to Las Vegas in April of 1984.  The team played one final season as the Las Vegas Americans and then went out of business in July 1985.

In 1986 a third indoor soccer team arrived in town.  The Memphis Storm belonged to the lower-budget American Indoor Soccer Association, but they failed to spark much interest.  After two seasons, the club dropped the Storm nickname and revived the old “Rogues” identity in a last-ditch effort to dredge up some nostalgia, but that didn’t help and the Storm/Rogues franchise folded in 1989.

Memphis Americans Shop

Our Favorite Stuff

Order at Old School Shirts

MISL Logo T-Shirt

This classic era Major Indoor Soccer League logo shirt is available from the guys at Cincinnati’s Old School Shirts in a variety of great styles:

• Crewneck or hooded sweatshirts

• Long-sleeve tee

• 3/4 sleeve raglan

• Women’s scoop neck

 

When you make a purchase through an affiliate link like this one, Fun While It Lasted earns a commission at no additional cost to you. Thanks for your support!

Memphis Americans Video

A goofy Americans TV spot, along with some newscast highlights from a January 27, 1984 match against Buffalo Stallions.

Single-camera footage from a 1983-84 home game against the Pittsburgh Spirit at the Mid-South Coliseum.

In Memoriam

Polish defender Helmut Dudek (Americans ’81-’84) died of cancer of May 22, 1994 at age 36.

Americans’ all-time leading scorer Stan Stamenkovic died after slipping and falling on a sidewalk in Yugoslavia on January 28, 1996.  He was 39. Baltimore Sun obituary.

Links

Major Indoor Soccer League Media Guides

Major Indoor Soccer League Programs 1978-1992

###