The Chicago Sting (1974–1988) was an American professional soccer team based in Chicago, Illinois. The Sting played in the North American Soccer League from 1975 to 1984 and in the Major Indoor Soccer League in the 1982–83 season and again from 1984 to 1988. They were North American Champions in 1981 and 1984, the only NASL team (with the exception of the New York Cosmos) to win the championship twice.
The Sting were founded in 1974 by Lee Stern of Chicago and competed in the NASL for the first time in the 1975 season. A few years after founding the Sting, Stern brought Willy Roy on as head coach. Roy coached the Sting for the remainder of their outdoor existence.
The team was named in reference to the popular 1973 film, The Sting, whose action was set in Chicago of the 1930s.
The club played at various venues. The outdoor team spread their home games at Soldier Field, Wrigley Field, and Comiskey Park. The indoor entry called both Chicago Stadium and the Rosemont Horizon (now the Allstate Arena) home.
Read more about Chicago Sting: Stern, Foulkes and Hill, Cosmos Doubled, Willie Morgan, Foulkes Quits, Musgrove Disaster, Karl-Heinz Granitza Signs, Willy Roy Appointed Coach, On The Brink, '81 Championship Season, Soccer Bowl '81, Sting Set US Indoor Attendance Record, Defending Champions Fail To Make Playoffs, Sting Debut in MISL, Financial Problems Mount For NASL, Off-field Antics Overshadow Sting's Worst Ever Indoor Season, Sting Withdraw From MISL, Honors, Notable Players, Head Coaches
Famous quotes containing the words chicago and/or sting:
“Must we really see Chicago in order to be educated?”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Yet there is a mystery here and it is not one that I understand: without the sting of otherness, of—even—the vicious, without the terrible energies of the underside of health, sanity, sense, then nothing works or can work. I tell you that goodness-what we in our ordinary daylight selves call goodness: the ordinary, the decent—these are nothing without the hidden powers that pour forth continually from their shadow sides. Their hidden aspects contained and tempered.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)