Toronto Blizzard (NASL)
| Toronto Blizzard | |||
| Full name | Toronto Blizzard | ||
| place | Toronto , Canada | ||
| Founded | 1971 | ||
| Dissolved | 1984 | ||
| Club colors | |||
| Stadion | Varsity Stadium | ||
| Top league | North American Soccer League | ||
| successes | Soccer Bowl '76 | ||
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Toronto Blizzard was a Canadian football club based in Toronto . The club was a participant in the North American professional league North American Soccer League .
history
The club was founded in 1971 under the name Toronto Metros , as the number of participating teams in the league was increased to eight. In the first two years, the team missed participation in the play-offs, but was able to move into the semi-finals in 1973. There the Philadelphia Atoms prevailed. After another increase in the teams in the following season, the club again missed the play-offs.
In 1975 the club merged with Toronto Croatia, which had previously played in the Canadian Soccer League , to form a joint venture under the name Toronto Metros-Croatia . With the increased popularity of the North American league with European players in particular, the club was able to sign a well-known player like Eusébio , who only stayed in Toronto for one season. As a table runner-up in the Northern Division of the Atlantic Conference behind Chicago Sting , the club had qualified for the play-offs, in which he moved into the final. With a 3-0 win over the Minnesota Kicks , the club won the Soccer Bowl '76. The German Wolfgang Sühnholz was chosen as the best player of the finals, the "Most Valuable Player" .
Toronto could not build on the success in the following years. After the organizers had expressed reservations several times due to the clear ethnic background of the union, it was lifted in 1979. The Canadian private television broadcaster Global Television Network took over the NASL club, which from then on ran under the name Toronto Blizzard . Apart from the first year, when the team had reached the quarter-finals of the play-off round against New York Cosmos , the club was initially not very successful. Therefore, the club hired Bob Houghton as a coach in 1982 , who had made a name for himself in particular as a European Cup finalist with Malmö FF . Under his leadership, the club qualified again for the play-offs in 1982, but failed again against Seattle Sounders in the quarterfinals. In the following year he moved into the final of the North American championship with the team that had been supplemented with players like Roberto Bettega , Jimmy Nicholl , Trevor McCallum or Jan Möller and Conny Karlsson from his time in Sweden, but lost to the Tulsa Roughnecks . The club reached the final the following year, this time losing to Chicago Sting.
With the setting of the NASL in 1984, the club initially went out. In order to maintain the name, the owners of the club bought the semi-professional club Dynamo Latino from Ontario, which also ran under the name Toronto Blizzard from 1986 .
Web links
proof
- ^ David Wangerin: Soccer in a Football World: The Story of America's Forgotten Game . WSC Books Limited, London 2006, ISBN 0-9540134-7-6 , pp. 142 .