History
The team had relocated to Minnesota after having been based in Denver, Colorado as the Denver Dynamos. A group of ten investors from Minnesota, led by Jack Crocker, bought the Denver team on November 25, 1975 and relocated to Minnesota. The name "Kicks" was selected by a name-the-team contest and announced on January 28, 1976. Freddie Goodwin was named the first coach on February 19, 1976.
Stars for the Kicks included US Soccer Hall of Famers Patrick (Ace) Ntsoelengoe and Alan Willey, the league's fifth and third league all-time leading scorers respectively. Ron Futcher, who along with Willey played all six Kicks seasons, went on to become the league's fourth all-time leading scorer.
The team began the 1976 season slowly, however by the end of its first season the team had won its division and had played host to the largest NASL crowd to date. The 1976 finished with a loss to the Toronto Metros-Croatia in the Soccer Bowl. The Kicks became the first team in the NASL to win 4 straight division titles (1976–79). The team reached the playoffs each of its six seasons, but usually lost in the early rounds. Goodwin served also as team president starting in August 1976. After the 1978 season, he step down as coach. Roy McCrohan was named coach December 1978. He coach the team for the 1979 season. After nine games into 1980 season, he was removed and Goodwin again became coach. The original ownership group sold the team on November 12, 1980 to a group led by Ralph Sweet of England. Sweet replaced Goodwin as coach early in 1981 season. Goodwin remain president of the team until June 1981.
The team's last regular season game was a home win at Met Stadium 2–1 over the Dallas Tornado on August 19, 1981. The team's last game at the Met was a 1–0 shootout playoff victory against the Tulsa Roughnecks on August 26, 1981. The team's last game was a 3–0 home playoff loss to the Fort Lauderdale Strikers on September 6, 1981. The game was moved to the University of Minnesota's Memorial Stadium due to a schedule conflict with the Minnesota Twins. The Kicks folded in November 1981. The team had planned to move to the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome for 1982 season.
The Minnesota Kicks are remembered for the tailgating in the Metropolitan Stadium parking lot. It became a cultural phenomenon in the late 1970s, with thousands of fans arriving early to socialize and consume beverages.
Read more about this topic: Minnesota Kicks
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)