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.
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—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)