1986-87 MISL Season

By Dave Litterer of The US Soccer History Archives, with supplemental materials by Steve Holroyd and Paul Reeths

Once again, 12 teams took to the field for the MISL's ninth season. ESPN's TV schedule was expanded to 18 games. As in the previous season, the Western Division race was a blowout, but this time it was the Tacoma Stars that took the prize, beating the vastly improved Kansas City Comets for the title. In the East, Cleveland again took the top spot, beating out the Baltimore Blast by a game. Dallas, Minnesota and Chicago finished a comfortable distance behind. The New York experiment was a widespread failure. After winning only 3 of their 26 games, the team folded in mid-season.

The end of the season saw Cleveland and Tacoma win their respective division titles, and advance to the semifinals despite rough quarterfinal series against Minnesota and Wichita. San Diego and Dallas upset their quarterfinal rivals, beating Kansas City and Baltimore respectively. The upsets continued in the semifinals, as the favored Cleveland Force fell to Dallas in four. Tacoma prevailed in the other series, but took the full seven games to fend off tenacious San Diego. The championship series was one of the most exciting series in league history. Yet another comeback story, Tacoma fell behind early, losing to Dallas 4-10 and 4-7, before taking the next two 5-3 and 6-5. Game 5, held in tacoma broke the MISL attendance record as 20,284 fans flocked to the Tacoma Dome to see the Stars defeat Dallas 5-3. Game six was played before a packed house at Reunion Arena in Dallas, where 16,824 witnessed the longest game in MISL playoff history. It went eighty and a half minutes before the Sidekicks finally defeated Tacoma 5-4. In the final game, back at Tacoma, an indoor soccer record crowd of 21,728 packed the Tacoma Dome only to see Dallas win the league championship with a 4-3 overtime victory over the Stars, on June 20.

For the first time in recent history, Steve Zungul did not take the top scoring title, which instead went to Tatu of the Sidekicks. However, Zungul did become the first MISL player to break the 1,000 point mark. This year, the MISL sponsored a tour by Dynamo Moscow, which played six games against MISL opponents, with the MISL teams winning all six games, one in overtime. The games were popular, with attendance ranging from 8,000 to almost 13,000, and inspiring a similar series two years later.

Two worrisome developments nagged the MISL. First was the continuing slide of the St. Louis Steamers, formerly a flagship franchise which had regularly paced the league in attendance and led the way with innovative promotional events. The second was the continuing poor performance of the Los Angeles Lazers who again finished last in the West, despite being in one of the league's largest markets. At this point, the three top metropolitan areas featured a folded team and two teams at the bottom of their divisions. In addition, the league champion Dallas Sidekicks had briefly folded before the season began, only to be saved by new ownership at the last second. The league faced other challenges as well. The AISA, buoyed by its first successes, expanded into new territories and began to raid the MISL for players, leading to the start of a salary war. Feeling the pinch, the Minnesota Strikers received permission to suspend operations for 1987-88 to reorganize their finances through a "save the Strikers" campaign. The effort proved successful and the team returned for the following season after all.