The sports card industry has gone through many sporting fads. With Tiger Woods’ skyrocketing popularity in the early 2000s came a major, albeit brief, nationwide interest in golf cards. The 2014 World Cup brought out an interest in soccer cards, not only in the states but all over the world. Before 2014, cards had never succeeded on a significant basis in Europe, and soccer cards had never succeeded in the United States. Stickers will always be king. The only previous card attempts I can think of in the European market were an Italian Score release in 1992 and a British Pro Set Release around the same time. I actually bought a case of the Score set a while back, and managed to get an astonishing one complete set out of it—the collation was that bad. Even a couple of tennis sets came out over the years, and Topps seems to be doing well with their UFC sets. Boxing. Auto racing. Australian football. They’ve all been tried with varying degrees of success and longevity.

The Major Soccer League (later the MISL) was the world’s first indoor soccer league. Unlike the semi-related sport of futsal, in indoor soccer the walls were legally in play, leading to a fast-paced sport the resonated with fans of hockey and basketball where action was constant. Indoor soccer hit its peak in the mid-to-late 1980s but rapidly flamed out. It still exists at professional levels now, but is a far cry in popularity from where it once was. The crowds of 10,000 that attended the 1987 Championship Series games in Tacoma and Dallas are nowhere to be seen. Game 7 of the series set a pro indoor attendance record, with 21,728 fans seeing the Dallas Sidekicks win on Mark Karpun’s overtime winner. The last club to average over 10,000 in attendance for a season was the St. Louis Storm back in 1991-92. Some teams now struggle to bring in even 1,000 on a night. Teams once played in the top arenas that NHL and NBA teams shared with them: Northeast Ohio’s Richfield Coliseum, Dallas’ Reunion Arena, Minneapolis’ Met Center. Now many are playing in smaller, minor league and college caliber venues like the Dallas Metroplex’s Allen Event Center, Syracuse’s War Memorial Arena, and the US Cellular Center in Cedar Rapids, IA.


Behold, the debut!

Back in the 1980s, card companies were doing anything they could to attract attention and establish a foothold in the industry. Following that heavily-watched 1987 Championship Series and a streak of six seasons with two million in total yearly regular season attendance, a relatively unknown company called Pacific Trading Cards jumped on the popularity of the Major Soccer League, putting out a 110-card set in time for the 1987-88 season. Prior to this, Mike Cramer’s company had only put out a few minor league baseball team sets: this could be the move that would push his company into the mainstream. The popularity of the cards and the sport itself did not last long: from 1988 until the MISL and NPSL merged in 1992, total attendance only hit 1.5 million once and never hit it with the NPSL until 1996-97. Unopened boxes of the products can still be found fairly cheaply, with complete sets selling for pennies per card. But Cramer’s gamble paid off: Pacific expanded into the rapidly growing football market with Seattle Seahawks team sets in 1989 and 1990, followed by full NFL licensed sets in 1991. After one set in the NPSL’s first season as the top league, Pacific quietly eliminated their indoor soccer line. They entered the baseball market in 1993 after some minor league, senior league, and player-specific sets from 1985 onward, and rapidly took control of the hockey market for several years after their entry in 1997. Several of their former brands including Titanium, Crown Royale, Prizm, and Paramount are now owned and used by Panini.

Growing up in 1990s Cleveland, the Indians and Cavs on WUAB, the Browns on WKYC on Sundays, and the Lumberjacks and Crunch on SportsChannel were always on the basement TV as I’d try to shoot Nerf balls off the power outlet with a hockey stick or try to kick them into the hiding hole in our cat tree. So in 2002, when the rebooted MISL held their All-Star Game and Alumni Game at the Gund Arena and the All-Star Skills Competition at the Cleveland MetroPlex where I played hockey, you could guarantee that I would be there. Best of all, the alumni players—many of whom had cards in these sets—were doing an autograph signing along with the All-Stars. For an indoor soccer geek, it was heaven. Names my friends and I had watched as kids (we still were, but that’s beside the point) were all around us. 1960s baseball kids had Willie, Mickey, The Duke, Hoot, Mr. Cub. We had Hector, Kia, Tatu, Doc, and The Wizard right before us. This was our field of dreams.


The MISL's version of Wayne Gretzky. Hector is even Canadian too.

I got a total of 23 cards signed that day—including the aforementioned Hector Marinaro, Kia Zolgharnain, Antonio “Tatu” Pecorari, Doc Lawson, and Daryl “The Wizard” Doran—along with a pennant signed by everyone from the All-Star and Alumni teams. Now let’s fast-forward ten years to 2012. I was deep in the throes of a severe addiction to collecting autographs via mail. Still am. As the well began to dry up a bit on the main sports I collected, I looked around and asked myself why former indoor soccer players wouldn’t sign just as much as players in the other sports. After all, how high could the demand be for them? But also, how hard might they be to find? I mailed out a few and had success for the most part: Doran and Marinaro again, Otto Orf, Zoran Karic, and Tatu all got letters from me, and only Tatu’s never came back. I may have had the wrong address.

Soon after, I moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area and attended a few Sidekicks games. One of them had an Alumni game at halftime and several of the players signed cards for me as I waited with another collector on the concourse. That day, my next autograph project was born: to get every MISL card signed. It wouldn’t be easy—I’d need to find all the sets, then find all of the players and how to contact them, and finally to write and mail. Surely some would be deceased, some may live in other countries, and some may just not want to be contacted.


If you like names that start with Z, indoor soccer is the sport for you:
Zoran Karic, Nenad Zigante, Zoltan Toth and Steve Zungul

Finally, the project began in earnest in September. Over a two-month span I mailed out 88 requests in total to 74 different players. By the end of the year, 56 had come back successfully, with 17 incorrect addresses (most of which I was able to correct). With the ones I had from before, plus a few purchased from a collector in Baltimore, I have gotten to over 40% of my goal: 337 of the 798 signatures needed. I even had a player in Dallas point out to me that the photo on his first card isn’t of him—David Doyle still signed the card, and I’m planning on mailing it off to Duncan MacEwan to finish the dual soon. There are a few cards like that in the sets. Goalie A.J. Lackowecki’s 1988-89 card shows Kris Peat, and Mike Sweeney’s card from the same year shows Dave MacKenzie. 1987-88 had a few spelling errors and color variations. And the final two sets have several multi-player All-Star cards.

I was correct in finding several players who have died. Slobo Ilijevski, who I met in 2002, died from a brain hemorrhage during a senior tournament game. Pedro DeBrito was killed in an auto accident. Mike Reynolds had a stroke during his playing career and was memorialized in the 1991-92 set. Stan Stamenkovic died after hitting his head in a fall in his home country of Serbia. Billy Ronson died of natural causes this past year following a number of illnesses. Keith Weller died after a lengthy cancer battle. Barry Wallace: cancer as well. Domenic Mobilio: heart attack. But so far I have fewer than ten players in the sets for whom I can’t find any information on their current whereabouts.


He went out doing what he loved. Few of us will be able to say that.

The best part of the whole project has been the response from the players. Eighteen players wrote anything ranging from short notes to full letters back, thanking me for remembering them and bringing back plenty of memories about their playing careers. Three players sent extra items—coupons for Dick’s Sporting Goods from Kia Zolgharnain, signed photos from Diego Mandagaran, and Simon Keith even sent a signed copy of his book. He is the first pro athlete to play after a heart transplant.

Of the top five goal scorers of all-time in indoor soccer history, I’ve gotten four of them—Marinaro, Tato, Karic, and Michael King. I have a request still outstanding to the fifth one, “The Lord Of All Indoors” Steve Zungul. Five-time Defender of the Year Kevin Crow has signed cards for me. Two-time Goalie of the Year Zoltan Toth wrote a full letter back along with signing his cards. Olympians, Indoor Soccer Hall of Famers, Canadian and American Soccer Hall of Famers, many greats of the game have proven to be willing signers and grateful to be remembered.


King currently coaches youth soccer in Milwaukee after retiring as a player

It’s definitely a niche project, but it has been the most fun I’ve had with any collecting project I’ve undertaken. Gambles have paid off, the players have had great attitudes, and I enjoy doing the research behind it. Hopefully 2016 will see it get to a completion percentage in the 80s or higher.

About the author: Drew Pelto is an avid autograph collector, sports card historian, and works as a photo editor for Panini. He semi-regularly updates a blog on his signed soccer sets at http://pacificsoccersigs.blogspot.com. Drew lives in Arlington, TX with his wife, and two cats who are better soccer players than him.