The Chosen One

"The Force was, on and off the field, the most successful, the most professional, the class of the MISL," says Haaskivi, the star of those teams. "I think we were the flagship of the MISL."

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Marinaro's timing couldn't have been worse. Born too late for indoor's glory days, he also came too early for the renaissance of the outdoor game in this country.

He grew up playing soccer and hockey in the suburbs of Toronto. As a teenager, he was short and slight, and it was clear his future wasn't in hockey. Soccer was a different matter. His dad had a long professional career in North and South America, and Hector was blessed with his father's genes.

When Hector was 18, his club team, Toronto Italia, won the Canadian National Championship. Not long after, Cleveland Force coach Timo Liekoski was scouting a tournament in Toronto. Liekoski liked what he saw in Marinaro, who at the time was playing sweeper -- the defender who is the last line of defense before the goalie. He invited Marinaro to try out for the Force.

He made the team, if not a huge impression. He would end up playing in only five games during the 1985-'86 season. "He came in very early after high school," says Haaskivi. "Hector was strictly a defender. He really wasn't used anyplace else. In those days, we were pretty loaded with guys."

The Force had offered him a contract to play a second year, but the offer was less than he'd made the first. Insulted, Marinaro turned it down and went back to Toronto, hoping to hook up with another team. "I stood by what I thought was right," he says.

But others weren't particularly interested in a young player with a season and a contract dispute under his belt. College wasn't an option, either. Since he had signed a professional contract, he wasn't eligible for a scholarship. "Personally, thinking back now, I think he was absolutely screwed by the Force," says Hector's brother Rob, who coaches Kent State's women's team.

It would be more than a year before he got another shot at playing professionally. In the meantime, he got a job in a furniture store, which served to remind him how little he liked having a regular job.

"When he came back, it was not a good year for him. He was pretty miserable about it," says Rob. "He knew he wanted to make his livelihood playing soccer . . . You spend a year as a professional athlete at 18 years of age, and you think, 'This is how it's going to be the rest of my life.' And all of a sudden, it's taken away from you."

The dispute with the Force was hardly the worst of it. That summer, Marinaro was a member of the Canadian national team for the Merlion Cup in Singapore. After the tournament, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police alleged that Marinaro and three others on the team had accepted money to throw a game. Though the criminal charges against Marinaro were eventually thrown out, the Canadian Soccer Association banned him from the national team for life. After fighting the ban, Marinaro and the CSA agreed in 1992 on a five-year suspension.

More than 15 years later, the incident remains the one dark spot in Marinaro's past. Over the years, his comments have ranged from conciliatory to defiant. ("We all make mistakes when we're young," he told The Toronto Star in 1993. "I feel I've paid quite handsomely for mine.")

Today, he maintains he did nothing wrong. "I know the person that I am," he says. "My family and friends know that. That's what counts."

His second chance came in Minnesota. In the fall of 1986, the Minnesota Strikers invited Marinaro to a tryout. He made the team as a defender, but it soon became clear that his real gifts lay elsewhere. "He was OK," says Miller, who was an assistant coach in Minnesota when Marinaro arrived. "He wasn't great. He had some great speed, some unbelievable quickness. But you could tell, even in practice, that he had the ability to score."

This was no small thing. Scorers hold a special place in the food chain -- the glamour boys of the professional game. They get the most attention. They command the highest salaries.

It's a unique phenomenon. In soccer, the best players don't necessarily score the most goals. Often as not, scorers are defined more by personality and instinct than technical ability. "They're determined to have an influence on the game," explains Miller. "They're 'give me the ball' kind of guys, extremely, extremely competitive."

In many ways, Marinaro was an unlikely candidate. Conventional soccer wisdom says strikers are a notoriously vain, arrogant lot. The thinking is that they need to be: They score because of some psychological need to be the center of attention. (An old soccer joke: What's the difference between a striker and a puppy? A puppy will eventually stop whining for the ball.)