Peter Wall (soccer player)

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Peter Wall
Personnel
Surname Thomas Peter Wall
birthday September 13, 1944
place of birth Shrewsbury ,  England
position Full-back (left)
Juniors
Years station
Shrewsbury Town
Men's
Years station Games (goals) 1
1962-1965 Shrewsbury Town 18 (0)
1965-1966 Wrexham AFC 22 (1)
1966-1970 Liverpool FC 31 (0)
1970-1977 Crystal Palace 177 (4)
1972-1973 →  Leyton Orient  (loan) 10 (0)
1977 St. Louis Stars 18 (0)
1978-1980 California Surf 74 (3)
Indoor
Years station Games (goals) 1
1979-1981 California Surf
Stations as a trainer
Years station
1979-1981 California Surf
1982 Phoenix Inferno
1982-1987 Los Angeles Lazers
1 Only league games are given.

Thomas Peter Wall (born September 13, 1944 in Shrewsbury ) is a former English football player and coach . As a left full-back , after his first few years at Shrewsbury Town and AFC Wrexham, he was finally active at Liverpool FC , where he was unable to assert himself permanently, but was later a long-time regular at Crystal Palace . In 1977 he moved across the " big pond " to North America and also worked there as a trainer.

Athletic career

Career in English professional football

Wall was born in Shrewsbury, the youngest of four children, and grew up in an agricultural family. Both the father and the grandfather ran cattle, but football also played a role. The great-grandfather had played for Aston Villa in the 1900s , albeit not as a professional. At the age of 16, Wall moved to the “big city” to the third division club Shrewsbury Town, after he had already shown his footballing skills in national teams in school sport and had been invited to national auditions.

When the sporting breakthrough with the "Shrews" failed to materialize, Wall, whose nickname was "Max" after a well-known comedian at the time , moved to Wales in November 1965 to AFC Wrexham , which played in the fourth English division and was not far away. But things did not go well in Wrexham either and the team was at the bottom of the table. When talent scouts from the reigning English champions FC Liverpool came to Wales, they wanted to see teammate Stuart Mason first . However, they were also so impressed by Wall's playful skills as a defender that they signed the two "as a package" in October 1966. While Mason should not come to any professional league use with the Reds, Wall was able to secure a starting place in the team more often after a period of settling in towards the end of the 1967/68 season . He benefited from injury problems of the previously regular left-back Gerry Byrne , who had to end his career in 1969. Wall then injured his knee in a game against Athletic Bilbao , so that he later had to sit out for six months and was replaced by the experienced Geoff Strong . In the 1969/70 season Liverpool went through a difficult sporting phase and one of the players who moved coach Bill Shankly from the starting eleven to the reserve team was Wall. This was preceded by a surprising 1-0 defeat in the cup against the second division club Watford . Although Shankly assured that he wanted to bet on Wall again at the beginning of the following season 1970/71, Wall was dissatisfied and impatient and left the club in June 1970 in the direction of London's first division rivals Crystal Palace .

Wall spent eight years at “Palace” and at the beginning he showed himself in such excellent form that he was in the meantime the focus of the English national team . On August 19, 1972 he broke his leg against his ex-club Liverpool after a duel with Tommy Smith , which also had a bitter note because he had recently been nominated for a 24-man squad of the "Three Lions" . From then on, things went downhill in terms of sport. Wall was able to recover from his injury, but Crystal Palace was relegated to the second division in 1973 . Only a year later, the direct fall into the third class followed . Although he continued to show solid performances, the big stage was now denied him. Instead, a new perspective opened up in 1977 with the North American NASL . His teammate at Palace John Sewell , like many other English footballers, had played there in the summer since 1973 and convinced Wall to join the St. Louis Stars as well.

Move to North America

The original three months that Wall had planned for a guest appearance became more. He liked the new environment and when the franchise moved from St. Louis to Anaheim , California in the winter of 1977 , Wall followed and played with the team under the new name California Surf after Sewell promoted him to coach in 1978 from a return England had convinced. A permanent residency developed from this and also enabled him to transition to the coaching field. After Sewell's dismissal, Wall followed him in 1979 as player- coach of California Surf, making him the youngest coach at the NASL at the time. During his tenure, the team reached second place in their division twice in a row, which they qualified for the qualifying games, but there were eliminated in the first round. However, the double burden (plus indoor soccer ) gnawed hard at him, so that he gave up his post in 1981, which had also been due to growing disagreements with the club's management. Shortly afterwards, the club itself withdrew from gaming.

From January 1982 he coached Phoenix Inferno in the indoor soccer league MISL . He stayed there for only one year and the club, renamed Phoenix Pride in 1983, also disbanded. When he was coach of the Los Angeles Lazers in the 1982/83 season , he had little time and money to build a new indoor soccer team, which led to the Lazers ending the 1982/83 season with an 8:40 record. With a little more preparation, Wall led the Lazers to a balanced 24:24 statistic in 1984 and thus reached the playoffs as well as the following year. He remained coach of the Lazers until 1987. Little is known about his further career, but he probably moved back to his English homeland and he settled in Oswestry (near Shrewsbury).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Peter Wall (holmesdale.net)
  2. ^ It's Been Wall-to-Wall Soccer: Peter Wall, Coach of the Lazers, Knows the Game Inside and Out. (LA Times)
  3. ↑ Players - Peter Wall (LFCHistory.net)
personal data
SURNAME Wall, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wall, Thomas Peter (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English soccer player and coach
DATE OF BIRTH September 13, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Shrewsbury