The Chosen One

Perhaps what's most impressive is Marinaro's consistency. Goal scorers in soccer, like shooters in basketball, tend to wade through hot and cold streaks, subject to the whims of emotion, confidence, and the abilities of opposing defenders. Yet over an eight-year period, from 1992 to 2000, Marinaro didn't once score fewer than 80 goals a season. In three of those years, he scored over 100. During his career with the Crunch, Marino has averaged more than 2 goals per game. Steve Zungul, one of the best forwards ever to play the indoor game, averaged a comparatively paltry 1.5 goals a game during his career.

"He doesn't miss too many chances," says Kai Haaskivi, the former star of the Cleveland Force, who was the Crunch's first coach. "You give him two chances, and he'll make one . . . He's almost like a guy who can hit 70 percent of his three-point shooting."

Yet for all he's accomplished, Marinaro maintains an odd position in the pantheon of Cleveland sports. He is certainly recognized -- beloved even -- among the area's soccer cognoscenti. And he has gained esteem for the simple fact that he is still here, more than a decade after he arrived. Waiters recognize him in restaurants. Malley's named a chocolate bar after him.

Still, in a town where the departure of the aged and middling Bernie Kosar is still lamented, Marinaro is rarely given credit for the full measure of his success. He is more acknowledged than celebrated, a permanent fixture of page four inside the sports section. He is simply That Soccer Guy, background noise to far more pressing stories like "Why the Cavs got blown out by 57 last night."

Such is the currency of being an indoor soccer legend these days.

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To most of the world, soccer isn't just a game. It's a cultural force that drives entire nations rat-in-a-tin-can crazy. Consider: In 1962, when the Congo national team defeated Gabon 3-1 in the African Nations Cup, the Gabonese government was so pissed off, it expelled 3,000 Congolese living in the country.

Then there's the story of Andres Escobar. In 1994, when Colombia played the U.S. in the World Cup, Escobar was a defender for the highly touted Colombians. While trying to clear the ball, he accidentally scored on his own team. The U.S. won 2-1, effectively eliminating Colombia from the tournament. A week after the game, Escobar got in an argument with a rabid fan outside a bar in Bogotá. He was shot 12 times.

In 1998, when the month-long final round of the World Cup was held in France, the cumulative television audience exceeded 40 billion. The richest, most profitable sports franchise in the world is not the New York Yankees. It's Manchester United, a team worth well over $1 billion.

Yet in the United States, soccer has always been a second-class oddity, shelved with the likes of short-track speed skating and tandem luge in the netherworld of Stuff the Rest of the World Does While We're at Wal-Mart.

There are many theories for why this is so. In Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism, author Andrei S. Markovits argues that American disdain for all things British during the 19th century, when the game was developed, led to the rise of uniquely American endeavors: football, baseball, and basketball. By the time soccer's presence was felt here, it was too late.

A similar but less sophisticated theory goes like this: Each nation has only enough passion to care about one really boring sport at a time. Americans already have baseball.

The indoor game was supposed to change all that. An amalgam of soccer, hockey, and, later, basketball, it was everything the outdoor game wasn't: fast, frenetic, high-scoring.

It was, no surprise, a child of television. The contemporary version was born in 1974. That fall, in two exhibition games, a team of North American Soccer League all-stars played the Soviet Red Army. It was six-on-six, just like hockey, played on an Astroturf-covered rink. In the first game, at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens, almost 12,000 people came out to watch. More important, the contest was broadcast on ABC's Wide World of Sports.

Inspired by the success, a pair of soccer-loving entrepreneurs formed an indoor league in 1978. It was to be known as the Major Indoor Soccer League, and charter members came from six cities: Pittsburgh, New York, Philadelphia, Houston, Cincinnati, and Cleveland.

The new venture started slowly at first, but by the early '80s, indoor soccer was booming. "The outdoor game was not functioning in any major-league way," says Alan Merrick, former coach of the Minnesota Strikers, an MISL power during the mid-'80s. "All of the good players were playing indoor. All of the national team players were playing indoor. It had a much higher visibility. There were games on ABC and ESPN."

In Baltimore, the Blast played to near-sellout crowds. In St. Louis, the Steamers averaged almost 14,000 fans a game. Times were just as good in Cleveland. During the 1983-'84 season, the Force averaged more than 13,000 fans at the Richfield Coliseum. During playoff games, 21,000 people would show up. But what was most remarkable for an American soccer team: The Force actually made money.