ANOTHER TALK WITH A LEGEND
The life and times of former USMNT striker and Chicago Sting head coach Willy Roy
Willy Roy (right) and Pele. (Photo courtesy of the Roy family)
Former U.S. men's national team forward and Chicago Sting head coach Willy Roy, will be honored with the 2025 Walt Chyzowych Lifetime Achievement Award at the United Soccer Coaches convention in Chicago on Saturday.
This is a transcript of an interview I did with Roy in 2013, talking about his life. That includes his time with the USMNT, playing at Estadio Azteca, and his career.
How did you find your way onto the team?
You had the Open Cup games that were going on and I was on a semi-pro team called Hansa. We ended up in the finals. Going to the final I was kind of lucky. I scored quite a few goals against the Milwaukee Bavarians and against the LA Kickers in Los Angeles and that got us to play the New York Ukrainians in the final. I guess that's when people started to notice I was scoring goals and got me involved. We had tryouts for the national team, the Midwest, the Far West and also the East Coast. We played against each other. Again, I was scoring goals and that pretty much got me invited to it.
They didn't have camps in those days. Teams got together before games.
Initially, we did have a camp in Bermuda for the first half of the '66 world cup qualifying. but after that it was pretty much a lot of the same guys. We would get a phone call a couple of weeks before the game. Are you in shape? Are you ready to go? That was basically it. No camps.
You had to make sure you were in shape.
It was pretty much the honor system where they relied on us, making sure we were ready to play.
How much of an honor to play for the United States?
I'll tell you what. I had to get my citizenship papers on fast track. I was born in Germany and once i was considered to be part of the national team. Then my mom was kind of ticked off. Why did you renounce your German citizenship and stuff like that. I said, mom, I want to play for the U.S. national team. It's such an honor. Especially since the U.S. was my home from that point on, I never considered going abroad, even though I had chances to play in Germany, but I didn't want to leave my family here. So it wasn't a hard decision for me personally. It was a tremendous honor.
You scored your first international against Israel in 1968.
It was at the old Yankee Stadium. I was somewhat of a baseball fan and when you talked about Mickey Mantle, you talked about Babe Ruth. You talked about all the icons that used to change in that same dressing room. It was kind of cool.
Do you remember anything about that goal?
The only thing I remember that it was a head ball against them. That's what I wanted to do to help the team. Basically, in those days, I had a coach when I played for the Chicago Spurs, the first professional league that was here, the NPSL {National Professional Soccer League). I figured the more goals that I scored, the better chances the team is winning.
You set a standard for the USA, scoring in three straight World Cup qualifiers.
You know what, we had some good players. The preparation early on, the first world cup qualifiers, we had a former bus driver from Chicago, George Meyer, he was named the coach. We also had a guy named Geza Henni., he was from New York. He was named the coach. So, I remember when we went to Bermuda, George said, "Ok, let's start jogging at the first practice session we had.' Geza said, "No, no, we're going to walk." They forgot to tell either one of these guys who the head coach was. It was kind of comical, actually.
How did you deal with it?
To me, because up to that point, I really didn't have a professional coach, except when I was with the Chicago Spurs, I didn't look at it taking sides or whatever. As soon as i put the jersey on, I played for the United States. I didn't play for either of the two coaches. I was trying to help the U.S. team win some games.
You made your debut in a 2-0 loss to Mexico in Mexico City in 1966.
First of all, they had a wonderful crowd. It was played at the old Olympic Stadium. Azteca stadium was just being built at that time. I did score two goals and for some stupid reason that I still don't understand, one supposedly I had a breakaway and I scored and suddenly there was a whistle and somebody said I was offside. The whistle should not have blown early so I didn't have to make that 50- 60-yard run for nothing.
You know what? When talk about Mexico, the fans were phenomenal and behind their team. So, it was kind of exciting, kind of scary at first. But you get over the butterflies as soon as the ball is being played, you try your best to help your team.
You eventually scored at Azteca in 1974 qualifying.
I think I was the first guy to score in Mexico against Mexico. It was a head ball again. The only unfortunate thing was again on the honor system, and we did have a couple of guys who reported to the game, and they were injured. It didn't help the cause at all. If we had some preparation, if we played an exhibition game before that, and got the team together, because it seemed that every time there was a new World Cup qualifier there were different guys you never played with, and they never saw you play. I give credit to my teammates, just coming in kind of cold, saying, hello, how are you? Ok, let's put on the uniforms and let's go play.
How difficult was that revolving door situation?
It was easier playing with your club team because you played with them, you practiced with them, which we didn't do [with the national team]. The reason was probably the United States Soccer Federation at that time really didn't have any money. It was pretty much try to get these games in and hope for the best.
In a World Cup qualifier at Azteca in 2009, Charlie Davies scored and your name came up. He was the first American to score there since you.
Actually, my son is the one who told me that and I couldn't believe it myself when I heard it. Nobody actually wrote anything about it at that time. You didn't know what was going on. Who knows how much better how our team would have done if we played together and had some exhibition games before because when I played for the Chicago all-stars it was a team that played quite a few international teams, like from Germany, Hanover, Werder Bremen. Even though we would lose both games, I did score all six goals in those games and my first opportunity actually that people wanted me to come to Germany. My mother had a fit: "We came to the United States. Now you want to go back to Germany." So, I left that alone, hoping that pro soccer would take off much better in the United States and a make and a career for myself.
You had an impressive strike rate for the national team, scoring nine in 20 games. How proud of you scored that many times?
It never really dawned on me. I didn't really keep track of that at all. My first professional coach in '67, he kind of told me: If you're going to score goals, you're going to start. If you didn't score, you're going to sit on the bench. I didn't have much of a choice. I worked pretty hard and tried to help the team by scoring goals and staying on the field instead of sitting on the bench.
Only three of your nine goals were on U.S. soil.
Of course, when you play at home, your team has to be the one that puts out the initiative and tries to attack and the opponents will usually play more defensively. I don't know whether it has anything to do with it or that we had different players playing in the midfield one year. Maybe the service wasn't quite what you were used to. To me it didn't matter whether we played at home or played on the road.
From your first to last internationals. you had a new coach and new generation of players.
It was kind of hard to figure out the thinking of the federation. I don't know who was making the calls. I was really disappointed for the 1974 World Cup, which was being played in Germany. It was my dream. I really thought that we should make it. In those days, only two teams qualified from the Concacaf region. Now they have three and one play-in situations. Its unfortunate. We had a good coach at that time, Phil Woosnam, who became the commissioner of the NASL, who played in England in a top division and who knew his stuff. We did go on a preseason tour. We went to Haiti and played three exhibition games in Haiti. We pretty much beat Haiti easily. As it turned out we had to play Haiti in the elimination rounds. And guess what? We lost both games to Haiti. To me it was disappointing because we had a change in coaches. The federation again, probably because the lack of money. They didn't get us together a week before or two weeks before to prepare us because we really had a good chance to make it to Germany.
What was it like early in your life?
Well, in those days, because my dad was in the German army and he was one of the lucky ones stationed in Italy, so when the war was over, he was actually released. That was the good part. The small town we moved to, Duren, had occupying troops. They would give us candy and chewing gum. As kids you were happy to get that stuff because you couldn't afford to buy it.
We came (to the USA) in October 1956. Because my dad was in the Germany, they probably did a total background check probably five times or 10 times to make sure he was not involved in the Hitler movement
How difficult was it for you? I can't imagine anyone going through that assimilating in a new country.
Actually, I was 13 when we came over. If you look back when the war was over in '45 and I was born in '43, I would have been the youngest Nazi in Germany warfare at the age of two. So, it was kind of ridiculous. There were some ringleaders in the school who thought it was kind of fun until I straightened out the ringleader and from that point on. I was kind of like their best buddy.
How did you get into wrestling before soccer?
Actually, when I started high school, the school I went to didn't have soccer. Their big sport was actually wrestling. I tried out, made the sophomore team in my freshman year, and had a chance to wrestle against the varsity guy for the upcoming state tournament. I had to beat the varsity guy to make the varsity for the state district that would eventually lead to the state sectional. It was a bittersweet thing because my varsity coach probably felt very highly of my wrestling ability, even though I had to wrestle the varsity guy three times. I beat him three times in the trials. I happened to lose to a guy who took second in state and as walked off the mat he took my uniform and threw it in my face. Pretty much, I said, that's the end of my wrestling career.
I won the state championship in high school at 145 and got a scholarship to go to Illinois. Illinois was still wrestling on canvas mats. Our high school still had foam matches, which were much easier on your knees and your whole body and stuff like that. In our freshman year in the university, you couldn't wrestle on the varsity. Freshmen weren't allowed to wrestle. It was basically a practice year. My sophomore year, I did pretty well. I made All-Big Ten in my sophomore year. I also screwed up my knee. I had water on both of my knees that came back consistently. In those days, when they drained your knee, the doctors probably used needles that they used for horses and elephants. It really bothered me. I started looking more to club soccer from that point on. and eventually made the decision to start playing soccer.
When did you start playing soccer?
First team, the junior team when I was 15 in Chicago. On the weekends we waited for Sunday morning to come. That was a must with my parents and after church, we would jump on a bus, my older brother and I would go play with our team.
Were you a striker from the first day?
I played striker pretty much my whole life.
As a striker you have to have a pretty unique mentality, ruthless.
I don't know if I had a mentality. I just enjoyed scoring goals. As I got older, especially after high school and college, wrestling helped me with my aggressiveness that I really was not afraid in a duel situation or try to outjump two, three defenders when it came to score goals via a head ball. I had games where I scored 11 goals, playing local clubs and several where I had nine goals and a bunch where I had six goals. But I didn't think anything of it. When I had a six-goal game, I said the next week I had to get seven.
Willy Roy with the Soccer Bowl trophy. He won two of them. (Photo courtesy of the Roy family)
You won the NPSL rookie of the year in 1967. Outside of winning a team title, you can't ask for much better than that.
It wasn't about me. It was really about the team. I never looked at myself. I have to do my job in order to help the team. That was my thing. It became the thing later on in coaching as well, when I coached the Chicago Sting. People want to give you credit as a coach and I said, "You know what? Players win games and coaches lose games." That was my philosophy. I felt that if you win enough games, you will get the credit anyway.
What was the league back in those days like?
Before '75 they had somewhat of a skeleton league. I played for the St. Louis Stars. When I joined them, I also brought a goalkeeper, Mike Winter, and Orest Banach to St. Louis. We joined the team when they were 1-10 or 1-11 and we ended up finishing .500. The next year we made it all the way to the NASL finals and wound up losing in overtime to the New York Cosmos in New York. The team was like Leicester coming from nowhere suddenly being in the finals.
They played in football stadiums for the most part in the NASL. The Sting moved from stadium to stadium in Chicago.
What's really kind of funny, we started off playing at Soldier Field. That place wasn't really modern like it is now. We had that big track going around the field. The fans were sitting really [far away) and the few fans that you actually had, it couldn't have been an enjoyable situation for them. Going to back to St. Louis, we played at the old Busch Stadium. That was 50-some thousand. That was a lot smaller and a much better atmosphere. When we left Soldier Field, we went to the old Comiskey Park and Wrigley Field when I actually started coaching the team. Those parks held 40,000 so everybody was closer to the field. It was a much, much better atmosphere.
You've got to give these owners now in the MLS, that they made a mandatory for them to have soccer-specific fields.
You won two titles (1981 and 1984). You had an exceptional team in '81 and another very good team a few years later. How proud of you, winning two titles?
The Cosmos obviously had 10 times the size of our budget. They could just go and look for top national team players, whether it was (Wim) Rijsbergen or (Johan) Neeskens or whoever, (Giorgio) Chingalia, Carlos Alberto. It's easy when you deal with players who are already made. I had to get third division players from Europe. A couple of them that turned out to be really good. We would have had a chance to win in '82 because after our outdoor season, the NASL started an indoor league and we were in the finals. Nobody remembers the second-place team. We ended up losing to Edmonton in the indoor finals in Chicago in the old stadium. They beat us in Edmonton. They came back in the first game, and we beat them. We had a half-hour rest, and you played a mini-game, which was a joke. We had 18,000,19,000 at the stadium. Instead of coming back a week later and playing them, we ended up losing that game. I also lost a couple of players. Arno Steffenhagen, he had an anterior cruciate ligament that he tore. Karl-Heinz Granitza was out at the beginning of the '82 season. New York always held the Trans-Atlantic Cup. All the teams that were in it. Nacional, from Uruguay, who won the world club championship. I think it was Napoli from Italy. The cosmos and wound up in the finals in New York and we beat them in the final, 4-3. From that point on, we were coming back again very strong.
You had teams that attacked and went for the goal.
My philosophy was very simple. If we're going to make mistakes, let's make mistakes in front of our opponents' goal. Let's not make them in front of our goal. Maybe because I had played striker. First of all, its a lot more exciting to see when you have 20 shots on goal instead of having three shots on goal. That was just a philosophy that i had. I was able to get the players who could actually do that. Defensively, too, we were pretty much a solid team, as New York found out. We beat the Cosmos in New York at one point, 5-0. Seninho, who played for the Cosmos. They let him go. He was making $175,000. I got him to play for us at $38,000. He ended up scoring two goals against New York and I remember one of the Ertegun owners coming up to me and said, 'Why did we let him go?" I kind of chuckled and said, "I don't know."