The year was 1984, and soccer in the USA was dying.
It was also the year a young Mike Jeffries, winner of the prize given to the top college player in the country, the Hermann Trophy, in 1983, was drafted to play in the old North American Soccer League (NASL). Gone were the record crowds, the bright shining future of the world’s game dressed up in American glitz. Beckenbauer and Pele and Cruyff and George Best had all left –and the league was on life support and circling the drain.
“Soccer in this country at that point was in a very different place than today,” said the 61-year-old Jeffries, coach of today’s Charlotte Independence, who was called into that era of the NASL to play for the Minnesota Strikers (who a few months before were the Fort Lauderdale Strikers) and who would, in a matter of months, become an indoor team – and then not a team at all. “The environment, for anyone who didn't live through it, was something you wouldn’t recognize.”
The first person young Jeffries – an old-fashioned sweeper, with a keen eye for the game – met in the locker room when he got to Minnesota was Gregg Thompson. “He didn’t waste any time rubbing it in,” Jeffries smiled about that reunion with the man who scored the goal that beat Jeffries’ Duke University and delivered the 1982 national college title to Indiana. “I wouldn’t expect anything less, but he made sure to remind me of it.”
That 1982 NCAA final, played on “one of those unbelievably muggy nights in Florida” is a good example of the differences Jeffries points out – from then to today. With the game tied 1-1 after 90, the refereeing team scratched their heads and came up with a plan, sort of. “Honestly, there was no organization at the time – so we played a couple of tens [minute-periods of over-time] and a couple fives,” said Jeffries. “They were just almost winging it as we went along.”
And along they went until, finally (and mercifully for the players), Thompson curled his free-kick into the top corner to seal the win for Indiana. It was in the 159th minute of the game and the eighth period of improvised over-time. That was 42 years ago, folks.
A road forward for the American game, following the collapse of the NASL in 1984, was not bumpy. It didn’t exist. It was obscured and unkempt and buried under leaves and debris. Jeffries traded the shin guards and cleats he wore in his three caps with the U.S. Men’s National Team and became a “suit and tie guy.” But his stockbroker job at Smith Barney didn’t stick. “I wanted to get over to the financial side,” he said about his decision to attend business school. But newly married, he needed a paying job. “So I started coaching, ended up loving coaching, and I’ve stuck with it since.”
“It became a passion.” added Jeffries, who grew up loving the game in Maryland but scoffs at the suggestion he might have known he wanted to be a coach from early on.
Four decades have passed. And Jeffries moved along as the game in this country dug itself out from its own grave. He moved a lot of dirt himself. And his long road to a one-time second division team, now in the third division known as USL League One, has provided him with more experience and raw material than any coach can credibly hope to have. And along the way, he became a reluctant oracle of sorts – a man who knows the pitfalls and potential facing the game in this country.
Many of his experiences line up with the Open Cup. It's the only tournament in the U.S. that joins the top and the bottom and all points in between. Right now, his Charlotte Independence are through to the Round of 32 of the 2024 edition – and a dream date against Atlanta United of Major League Soccer.
His North Carolinians got here via a topsy-turvy Third Round win over second-division pros Rhode Island FC that finished 4-4 after overtime and a penalty-kick shootout that ended 5-4 for the underdogs.
It wasn’t the kind of tactical, organized performance a coach dreams of. “It’s the Open Cup, so some of the standard rules don’t necessarily apply,” smiled Jeffries. “You get crazy games in the Open Cup. You have to expect anything.”
Anything and everything – Jeffries has seen it. Trust us. Ever heard of the New Orleans Riverboat Gamblers? No? Well, he played for them in the old USISL between 1993 and 1994. And after his knee finally gave out, he coached the club through 1997. “You’re going all the way back now,” he chuckled at the mention of his first coaching position – and his first run out in the Open Cup.”
“We didn’t go too far, if I recall,” he said of his run with the Gamblers in 1997, and a Third Round loss to that year’s eventual champions Dallas Burn (of MLS, the league that brought top-flight soccer back to the MLS when it launched in 1996). He did go far, though, with the Chicago Fire. “Those were special moments,” he said of the two Open Cups he won in the Windy City as assistant coach to American legend Bob Bradley. “1998 was probably the most special – it was our first year and we were at home and it was just a really special night.”
It’s not just the pinnacle of the game where Jeffries takes his vantage in the Open Cup. He led the all-amateur summer leaguers, the Des Moines Menace, to a win over NASL (the then-new second-division league with the same name as the old one) pro side Minnesota United (now in MLS) and a loss away to four-time Open Cup winners Sporting Kansas City (also of MLS). “What that meant to those kids who played there that night, I was so happy for them.”
“I had a few bad nights with the Burn,” he smiled, moving quickly past the losses to PDL amateurs Seattle Sounders Select in 2001 and semi-pro Wilmington Hammerheads in 2023 (with a Semifinal run in between, in 2002) he suffered as head coach of the MLS club now known as FC Dallas.
“Before the games, he’s got a lot of energy and he wants to get us pumped up,” said Juan Carlos Obregon, the first-year Independence forward who scored twice against Rhode Island FC, talking about his coach. “But during the game, he [Jeffries] wants us to express ourselves. To play freely and that allows us to give our best performances because we’re not feeling all this stress out on the field.”
“The guys will be motivated. They want to prove themselves and show what they can do,” said Jeffries, whose Independence, with a smattering of young up-and-comers woven around experienced players like former USMNT creator Miguel Ibarra and one-time Newcastle and Manchetser United man Gabriel Obertan are in a singular position to cause a problem for Atlanta United. “It’s one of those games that makes the Open Cup so exciting and interesting.
“It won’t be easy to advance,” Jeffries said of the upcoming contest with the Georgia side, MLS champs in 2018, now sitting ninth in MLS’ eastern conference. “But we’re looking forward to giving everything we have to try.”
The game won’t take place at the Mercedes-Benz, the massive and modern dome-home of Atlanta United, where they won the Open Cup in 2019 just a year after the stadium hosted the NFL’s Super Bowl. It will be played, instead, at the Fifth Third Bank Stadium at Kennesaw.
Playing on a humble college field won’t shock Jeffries. And we can promise, there won’t be eight periods of OT. We might have two, but two only. There will be a winner – and that winner will likely be Atlanta United, sure, but the not-knowing makes it all worth considering.
“We know we have to be at our best,” said Jeffries, who’s seen American soccer fall and rise again – and who knows, better than anyone perhaps, that nothing is over until it’s over. “Just because a team is from a higher league, doesn’t give them the right to walk away with a win without working for it.”
Fontela is editor-in-chief of usopencup.com. Follow him at @jonahfontela on X/Twitter.