Before Major League Soccer began in April 1996, the American game resembled an alphabet soup. After the NASL, made famous by Pele and the New York Cosmos, ceased operations in 1984, organizations like the APSL, ASL, USISL, WSL, and others carried the domestic game forward. Players from those leagues toiled in anonymity for years before being brought under the MLS umbrella.
Dominic Kinnear, a former USA international who played for the San Francisco Bay Blackhawks in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was among those men. Kinnear went on to play five MLS seasons before retiring in 2001 and later coached, with his highlight being two MLS Cup titles with the Houston Dynamo.
Reflecting on the pre-MLS days, Kinnear said people often ask if he felt like a pioneer building something special, but that was never his mindset. He just wanted to play soccer and was happy to make a little money doing it. Many of his Blackhawks teammates went on to have important roles in US Soccer. He recalled having ankles taped in the back of the trainer's truck bed and playing on high school fields with dirt infields. Kinnear also discussed the impact of David Beckham's arrival in MLS and how USA 1994 paved the way for the sport's growth in America.
