The Chicago Cats were a second division pro soccer club that tried to make a go of it in the Windy City for two summers in the mid-1970’s. The club started up in 1975, the same year that the top division Chicago Sting began play. The Cats made their home at Hanson Stadium, an Astroturfed high school football field run by the Chicago Public School system.
The Columbus Magic were a short-lived 2nd Division pro soccer club that played for two seasons in 1979 and 1980. During their 1979 expansion season, the Magic advanced to and hosted the ASL Championship Game, losing 1-0 to the visiting Sacramento Gold before 9,378 fans at Franklin County Stadium on September 16th, 1979.
The Indy Daredevils were a short-lived 2nd Division soccer club that played at the Butler Bowl in Indianapolis during the summers of 1978 and 1979. Like most of the 2nd division in this era, the Daredevils were a mess behind the scenes. After leading the American Soccer League in attendance in 1978, the ‘Devils barely staggered through the 1979 season, at one point churning through five different head coaches in the span of a month. The club declared bankruptcy and folded in early 1980.
A lower division American pro soccer club that operated for four seasons during the early 1970’s. Little information survives about this club into the digital age. Newspaper accounts of the era suggest that the Brewers played out of Newark, but the 1974 Brewers program we were able to dig up suggests the club played at least some of their matches in Toms River on the Jersey Shore.
The Connecticut Wildcats were the first of several pro soccer clubs to set up shop at Hartford’s Dillon Stadium during the mid-1970’s. The club formed in November 1972 as an expansion franchise in the 2nd Division American Soccer League. The Wildcats best-known player, in retrospect, was the young goalkeeper Tony DiCicco. DiCicco went on to become one of the greatest coaches in the women’s game, leading the U.S. Women’s National Team to Olympic gold in 1996 and the World Cup in 1999.
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