Read more
Shutout win for CFC in Southeast title match
Once upon a time, Bill Nuttall stopped a penalty kick struck by the great Pele during a North American Soccer League game in April of 1976 in Miami.
Imagine blocking a LeBron James dunk attempt and you have an idea of how amazing Nuttall's achievement.
But for Chattanooga's purposes, Nuttall's role in bringing the U.S. women's soccer team here for an Aug. 19 "friendly" against Costa Rica may be just as impressive. Especially now that the women will arrive here as World Cup champs.
"I just made a few phone calls," said Nuttall, who was the general manager of the United States men's national team during the 1994 World Cup. "I just told folks that if I was going to ask U.S. Soccer for a site inspection, I wanted us to have everything in place."
Nuttall knew that Finley Stadium was installing new artificial turf. He also knew the city's airport needed to be able to welcome "big jets." Beyond those two items, he produced a checklist. Chattanooga obviously passed with flying colors, then sold out all 20,000 seats in less than 24 hours.
"We're a big-event country," he said as he watched the Chattanooga Football Club polish off the Atlanta Silverbacks Reserves 3-0 on Saturday night at Finley Stadium to claim the National Premier Soccer League Southeast Conference championship.
"We've just completed the most successful World Cup in history (in terms of television ratings)," said Nuttall, who moved here with his wife Elizabeth to be closer to his daughter, Courtney Bullard, an in-house legal counsel at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. "Soccer participation here is very good. It's a great town. When it comes to the women's World Cup team, we've hit a perfect storm."
The perfect storms have gathered before only to abate after a year or two. Even the great Pele, arguably the world's best athlete when the New York Cosmos signed him to legitimize the old NASL, couldn't lift the sport past curiosity status.
"Too many false dawns," said Tim Kelly, who grew up in Chattanooga playing soccer for Baylor, then later helped found the CFC. "But when we started the CFC the 2009, we went to Frank Burke, who was running the stadium. He handed us the keys and said, 'Don't burn the place down.'"
If CFC didn't exactly burn up attendance records in the beginning, it did triple Kelly's hunch that the team might draw no more than 500 a game that first season.
Thanks in part to the Chattahooligans cheering section, the selling of beer and a growing number of soccer fans in the area, the crowds are far north of that these days. Kelly estimates CFC has averaged around 3,200 during this championship season, "and those are folks in the seats," he said.
This weekend's twin wins support those numbers. More than 3,400 were on hand for Friday's win. A hot, humid Saturday night saw 3,358 return for the win over the Silverbacks Reserves. And with another playoff game scheduled for Saturday, it wouldn't be implausible for Finley to welcome 4,000 or more.
"I just love the atmosphere," said Chattanooga resident Spencer Lowe, who grew up playing in the Redoubt Soccer Association and the North River YMCA league. "And the team's so fun to watch. They play aggressive. They play really well together. It just keeps getting better and better."
How much better it ultimately gets is open for debate. Those false dawns that Kelly mentioned often have occurred in World Cup or Olympic years then just as quickly disappeared, not so different than Olympic sports such as gymnastics or track and field.
But Finley was also filled with hundreds of youngsters such as 11-year-old Joseph and 9-year-old Polk, who were brought to the game by their mom, Laney Carter.
Asked what he most liked about the game, Joseph answered, "The environment."
In the future, these youngsters will determine the environment. They'll buy the tickets. They'll drive the sport. It may not pass football over the next 15 or 20 years. But 50 years from now, soccer may yet come to dominate the United States as it has the rest of the world.
"If soccer can make it in the buckle of the SEC and the Bible Belt," said Kelly, referring to Finley's upcoming sellout of the World Cup champs. "It can make it anywhere."
Especially if it can find a few more Americans such as Nuttall capable of holding their own against soccer legends such as Pele.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com
Photo Gallery
United States beats Japan 5-2 for record third Women's World Cup title
The United States beats Japan 5-2 for record third Women's World Cup title.