It’s Been Wall-to-Wall Soccer : Peter Wall,Coach of the Lazers, Knows the Game Inside and Out.

‘I always find it difficult to accept that soccer’s played for fun, because I was never brought up that way. . . . Recreational soccer is great--I think it’s tremendous. But then the better players should have a place to go and play, another level, to have competition.’

--PETER WALL ‘I think it’s always difficult for me to understand why some players repeatedly make the same mistakes. I suppose that’s the difference between a quality player and an average player.’

--PETER WALL

Early in this Major Indoor Soccer League season--Dec. 23, to be exact--there occurred at the Forum an event of some significance in the life of Peter Wall.

The Los Angeles Lazers, coached by Wall, had just beaten the three-time defending champion San Diego Sockers in overtime, 6-5, in a game that turned against the Sockers on two controversial calls by the referee.

In the hallway outside the San Diego locker room, Ron Newman, the most successful coach in North American soccer history, was coming unglued in a hurry.

“How can the bleeping referee decide the bleeping game?” Newman screamed at no one in particular. “That was bleeping ridiculous.”

A door opened and Wall stormed out of the Lazers’ locker room.

“You can’t lose a game?” Wall screamed at Newman. “You’re too bleeping big for that? Shut up.”

Astonished reporters and players watched as the two almost came to blows. Good sense prevailed, however, but Newman was still hot the next day.

“We’ll be pals again,” he said. “Still, I wasn’t addressing him (Wall) or his team when he came out. I thought he was totally out of order and he had no right to tell me to shut up. I’m not one of his little boys.

“He said that I can’t take losing a game. I’m not used to losing like he is. It’s not as big a deal for him to lose because he has so much experience at it.”

Yes, Peter Wall does know a lot about losing. His quarter-century in the game as a player and coach has been marked by losing. There have been lost games, too many to count; lost teams, two at last count; lost leagues, one so far, and lost opportunities.

But through it all, through 17 years as a player in his native England and another eight in the United States, first as a player and now as a coach, Wall has survived. In fact, he has flourished.

Granted, he is not now and probably never will be as well known as Tom Lasorda, Tom Flores or Pat Riley. But then, he doesn’t expect to be.

Granted, his new sport, indoor soccer, is not now and probably never will be as popular as baseball, football or basketball. But then, that could hardly be expected in just three seasons here.

Granted, the whole team-league-sport--take your pick--could collapse tomorrow and leave Wall back at Square 1. But then, that has happened before and he has always bounced back.

It has to do with character, with having experienced hardships and setbacks, with having faith in one’s own ability and the patience and resilience to carry on regardless. Above all, it has to do with having a sense of humor and of fair play.

Wall has those qualities. And more. He also knows how to hit back.

Months after the run-in with Newman at the Forum, Wall was asked about the incident and about Newman’s description of him as a loser.

“I think he (Newman) said something in the heat of the moment,” Wall said. “When I read that, I don’t think it upset me. I thought, ‘Well, as a player he never did what I did, either.’ Ron never really played anywhere.

“That doesn’t mean to say he isn’t a good coach. He’s done a great job. I think he’s done a tremendous job, but he’s always had some great players around him.”

Touche. It was the perfect comeback. Newman: You can’t coach. Wall: You couldn’t play.

Wall always could play. It was in his blood. His great-grandfather played for Aston Villa, the famous English club that was one of soccer’s founding teams, in the early 1900s.

His grandfather, however, was not at all keen on the idea of Wall becoming a professional footballer, as soccer players are known in England.

“My grandfather was a farmer,” Wall said. “I remember him telling me, ‘Always be a farmer.’ That’s what they always thought I should be.

“My dad was a farmer. Cattle mostly. We had everything, but cattle was the big thing. I was born in the countryside and raised in the countryside. I didn’t go to the big city till I was 16, really.”

The “big city” was Shrewsbury, a market-garden town near the Welsh border where Wall was born on Sept. 13, 1944, the youngest of four children.

Growing up on a farm in those lean, postwar years is something Wall looks back on with fondness, although fondness was not what he felt at the time.

“I had a really good childhood,” he said. “We had a close family, and basically that’s what it was--it was a family life. But I wanted to get out of the countryside quick. Now, I think maybe I appreciate it better. I like the quietness. I would love to have a farm myself now.”

Wall’s feet carried him out, literally. He played soccer in school and was good enough to represent his county and be invited to national trials. That brought him to the attention of pro scouts, and at 16 he signed with his local club, Shrewsbury Town, a not-so-glamorous team in the English Third Division.

“I never really had an interest in playing anywhere except for my hometown,” Wall said. “I signed there straight from school and stayed there until I was about 20 or 21.”

Then his fortunes took an odd twist. Things weren’t working out at Shrewsbury, and other clubs were interested in his services and Wall chose to move to the Welsh club, Wrexham, mainly because it also was near his home.

Not long thereafter, Liverpool, the New York Yankees of English soccer, began scouting another Wrexham player, but it was Wall’s ability as a defender that caught the Liverpool scouts’ attention. Within 10 months he had signed with the First Division club and, at 22, his career had taken off.

However, there were dues to pay.

“I went there in October, 1966,” Wall said of Liverpool. “Like everybody else, you serve your apprenticeship with the reserves. You have prove you’re good enough to be a Liverpool player.”

That took Wall more than a year. Finally, by the end of the 1967-68 season, he had made the grade and was playing for the first team. He became a regular starter the next season, then injured his knee in a game at Bilbao, Spain, and was out for six months. Once again, he had to fight to regain his place, but did so by the end of the season.

The next season, Liverpool went through a bad spell and the coach, Bill Shankly, decided to break up the team and virtually rebuild it. Wall was one of the many starters Shankly dropped back into the reserves. Wall was also one of the few to question Shankly’s decision.

“We got into a difference of opinion, and that was something you couldn’t do with Shanks,” Wall said. “He was telling me I was in the plans for the beginning of next season, but I’d tasted playing and I was impatient. I said, ‘Look, if that’s the way, maybe it would be better if I leave now.’ At the end of the season, that’s what happened.”

Wall spent the next eight seasons with Crystal Palace, a London club that spent its time bouncing back and forth between the First and Third Divisions. Never quite good enough to stay in the majors, it was not quite bad enough to be in the minors, either.

For Wall, the years with Crystal Palace were both enjoyable and frustrating, but the contacts he made there eventually led to his coming to the United States. First, however, there were other lessons to learn. Hard ones.

Wall played excellently in his first season at Palace and was off to a good start the next season when he broke his leg in the third game--against Liverpool. Worse yet, the injury occurred just after he had been selected to the squad of 22 players from which the English national team would be chosen.

It was downhill from there. Wall recovered from the injury, but Crystal Palace was doomed. It later slipped into the Second Division, then the Third, then climbed back into the Second. Wall played well, but never got the national team call again. The highest honor in the game--to play for one’s country--had passed him by.

How did he rate himself as a player?

“I think as a defender I had more skill than most,” he said. “Maybe I never ever reached the heights that I should have. I always used to hear people say what a good player he is and this that and the other and he should be playing for the national team, but I never did and most probably I didn’t because I didn’t push hard enough and have enough drive.

“The injuries came at a bad time, but I had the tools. I had the opportunity to become a top-class player and I didn’t. I often look back on that and wonder why I didn’t, and maybe it’s because I wasn’t hungry enough. I was happy with the situation I was in.

“That’s why now, in coaching, I hate to see anybody wasting an opportunity, because I look at myself and say I did.”

There are, then, certain regrets.

“Oh, yeah, I think so,” Wall said. “Again, I can look back at Liverpool. I left because I opened my mouth and the coach said, ‘Hey, goodby,’ and Liverpool went on to I don’t know how many cup finals and league championships. And I honestly believe I could have been there. I wasn’t because I opened my mouth. Then, when I had the opportunity to play for the national team, I got a broken leg.

“But, I don’t regret anything and I don’t look back and feel sorry for myself because I had my chance and I really enjoyed playing. That was the bottom line.”

But, enjoyable as England was, by 1977, Wall was in St. Louis.

John Sewell was the American connection. Sewell, Wall’s teammate at Crystal Palace, was one of the many English players who crossed the Atlantic to play in the North American Soccer League during the English summer.

He had been doing that since 1973, and in 1977 he persuaded Wall to join him with the St. Louis Stars.

Wall said: “I came here saying, ‘Well, I’ll spend three months over here. It’ll be a nice break. I’ll play and I’ll enjoy it. It’ll be a working holiday.’ I really enjoyed playing and the team did well, but when I went back to England, my feeling was that that was it.”

During the winter, however, the Stars were sold and moved to Anaheim Stadium, where they became the California Surf. Sewell, by now the team’s coach, helped persuade Wall once again to pack his bags and come to the United States.

This time, though, the move was permanent. It was a big move for Wall. He had a home in England and a career that was progressing well. Had he decided to stay, he could have slowly wound down his career as a player and moved into the coaching ranks in the English League.

As it turned out, moving to California forced him to make the transition from player to coach far sooner and more abruptly than he would have liked.

In any event, Wall, his wife, Kathy, and their two children, Samantha, now a 14-year-old freshman at Brea High, and Martin, now 12, moved to California in the spring of 1978. That same year, the Walls bought a home in Fullerton, and they haven’t moved since.

“I think the intentions were really that we would be here for two years and then go back,” Wall said. “But I guess time changes everybody, and once you find new friends, then that’s the bottom line, having people that you can be friends with.

“We’re in a situation now where, obviously, our children are, to all intents and purposes, Americans, in the way they think, speak and act. They’re happy, and that’s important to me.”

Would he go back to England?

“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “To go back now I would have to start at the bottom, which I’m not scared to do, but I think there’s so much to do in this country still as far as the game goes, whether it be at the professional level, the youth level, the college level, or the high school level.

“Somebody somewhere along the line has to make the soccer in this country what the country is, and that’s great. Right now, we have no system. So I don’t really see me going back. If I’m not involved in the professional game, then soccer would still be my life, I think. In different ways. It’s been my life for the last 25 years. I guess it’s inside me.

“Right now, I really do enjoy coaching and I want to coach for possibly a few more years yet, but I want to get into the other side of it, as well. Management, possibly. I quite enjoy that.”

The years with the Surf were turbulent ones. The NASL was riding a wave of popularity in 1977 and ‘78, buoyed by the presence of such international stars as Pele, Franz Beckenbauer, George Best, Giorgio Chinaglia and others.

At Anaheim Stadium, though, the budget didn’t allow for stars, just hard work. Wall, who joined the Surf as a player and assistant coach to Sewell, was familiar with hard work.

“If a player doesn’t give 100%, he knows he’ll be replaced by a player who does,” he said shortly after arriving. “It’s OK to win with stars, but it’s better to win with 11 players who give 100% all the time. Then, when the crunch comes, you can count on them.”

For Wall, the crunch occurred eight games into the 1979 season. The Surf had gotten off to a 4-4 start and Sewell was fired. Wall suddenly found himself the youngest head coach in the NASL. He was 33.

Coaching had always been an ambition, but the suddenness of the move, plus the fact that he’d have to be a player-coach, troubled Wall.

“I think I always intended to get into coaching,” he said. “I had hepatitis in 1973 and that laid me up for about six months. That was the first time in my life that I realized that, ‘Hey, you’re 28, 29 years of age, this (playing) isn’t going to go on forever.’ I had a long time to think about things.

“I’d always been involved in coaching kids and I’d always enjoyed it. So I started doing stuff with the (Crystal Palace) junior and reserve teams, taking them (through training) at nights, just to see how confident I was and how much fun it was. I loved doing it.”

So much so, in fact, that Wall earned his F.A. (Football Assn.) coaching license. It would stand him in good stead in California, but taking over the Surf was not easy.

“It was a strange transition because I was a player-coach the first year and part of the second,” he said.

“You’re sitting in the middle of the fence, you’re a player and you’re a coach and you’re neither one nor the other, really, you’re both. And because you’re coaching what were your friends and teammates, you can’t suddenly become a different person overnight.

“I agreed to it because the club thought it was a good idea to do it, financially and otherwise. But looking back on it, I should never have done it the second year. The first year was tough enough, but the second was even tougher because my priorities became being concerned about other people, which is a coach’s job, and I didn’t have the time to train or practice. Consequently, my own game went down. So I was very happy to call it a day when I did.

“I think once you call it a day, then you do think differently because your priorities are all with the club. The players become--I don’t know how to put this. They’re not you’re friends, they’re your, uh, your workers if you want to call it that.

“Although you talk to them on a daily basis, you have to break away from them. And that was a hard thing to do. It was not until I was just a coach and not a player-coach that I could really break away from them on a friendly basis and make the relationship a working relationship.”

Wall had some success with the Surf, leading the club to consecutive second-place finishes in its division and into the NASL playoffs two years in a row. He also won one divisional championship indoors.

There were rough moments, however, in the development of Peter Wall the coach.

One concerned the release in mid-1980 of midfielder Wolfgang Suhnholz, the Surf’s highest-paid player. Wall bit the bullet and did what had to be done.

“He just hasn’t contributed this year and I have to look at my staff and the amount of budget I have,” Wall said in announcing the decision to put Suhnholz on waivers. “Cutting him wasn’t pleasant, but I have a job to do.”

Replied Suhnholz, a West German: “I think it’s because I don’t have the right passport. All he plays is Englishmen.”

Wall addressed that charge the following spring. “To me, it doesn’t make any difference where players come from providing they can speak a little English,” he said. “We just want good, professional players and I emphasize the word professional.

“There are a lot of players in this league who have the skills and the ability and who possibly were good players once, but they’ve come over here and they’ve forgotten the word professional.

“The country-club atmosphere is finished. Anybody who doesn’t want to be a true professional needn’t think about playing for the Surf.”

“If somebody were to give me $2 million right now, I could go out and buy a lot of players but I couldn’t guarantee that I was building a team. We could go out and win the Soccer Bowl, but the next year the same players might be the biggest flops.

“It doesn’t always take a lot of money to find the right players. What it takes is an awful lot of work in scouting and knowing the particular type of player you want to fill a particular position.”

Even today, almost five years later, Wall still thinks about the Suhnholz decision.

“I think it was a difficult one mainly because he was a fellow player and a friend and an assistant coach with me,” Wall said. “I had to make it because I felt it was best for the team at that time. But that was the most difficult decision because he was a friend. I was putting one of my friends out of work. I often thought about that afterward.

“I made the right decision because I guess it becomes either you or him and you’re put in a position where you have to make decisions and you have to make them with a very clear mind and not let the personal side of anything come into it.”

Episodes such as that gradually changed Wall. Whereas he once was criticized for perhaps being too close to his players, he now keeps his distance.

“I think the player-coach relationship should be a relationship that is open to be able to talk and communicate. I think that’s very important,” he said. “But it’s just a working relationship, it’s nothing else.

“OK, occasionally you can reward (players) by going and buying them a drink, for example, but not to really stay with them. I will go in a hotel bar or whatever and spend 15 minutes with them and then walk out. I don’t go out with them, I don’t like to be seen with them in that sort of situation because I don’t think it’s right. I think the players need their freedom to be themselves.”

Mike Mahoney, the Lazers’ all-star goalkeeper, exemplifies another of Wall’s beliefs. Mahoney played for Wall with the Surf, dropped out of the game when the team folded in 1981, then was rescued from oblivion by Wall when the Lazers came into being in 1983.

“I believe in loyalty,” Wall said. “I believed in loyalty as a player, to go out and do the best for the club, and I feel the same way now as a coach. To players that I think give me loyalty as a coach then, in return, I do the same to them. I think you get to know players as people and who you can really depend on.

“I knew with the Mahoney situation when I brought him back that he was a good goalkeeper. He’d had some problems injury-wise and family problems, but I really did believe that he could come back, given the opportunity. He’s proved me right.”

The Surf showed Wall a lot less loyalty, however. At the beginning of the 1981 season, management brought in a man named Tom Lilledal as director of operations, effectively undercutting Wall’s authority. A few weeks later, Wall resigned.

“I can’t work in a position where I don’t determine who the players are,” he said. “If I’m coach, then I should be making those decisions.

“I’m not to be used like a puppet on a string. I was in a situation where I couldn’t win. So, now I can walk out with my head held high.”

Wall’s outdoor record as coach of the Surf was 31-34.

“I think my record of coaching is good, considering that I was never given much to work with as far as a money commitment goes,” he said.

Three weeks later, Wall expanded on his reasons for leaving. “I stood up for what I believed in, “ he said. “With my beliefs, I eventually would have been fired if I didn’t resign.

“When (Lilledal) first came, we sat and talked. It was clear to me at that time that whatever I believed or said didn’t mean too much. I could have stayed a bit longer if I became a yes man.

“But I didn’t want to say, ‘Yes, Tom. No, Tom. Anything you say, Tom.’ I don’t believe in BS. I can’t be a puppet on a string. I can’t be in a position where I have no power over players. He was given total power.”

so Wall left. And, at the end of that season, the Surf folded.

The indoor game, an abomination to soccer purists but perhaps the salvation of the sport in North America, has also been Wall’s salvation.

After lying low for a few months, Wall surfaced in January, 1982, as coach of the MISL’s Phoenix Inferno.

He took over a team that was 0-5 and helped it finish the season 12-24. Obviously, there wasn’t much there. Wall was not asked to return in 1983, but had already made up his mind not to go if asked.

Again, it was the correct decision. The Inferno became the Phoenix Pride in 1983 and then the Pride, too, was swallowed. Like the Surf, it folded. Wall, again, had been one jump ahead of the game.

He was named coach of the Lazers in 1983 and was given just a few weeks and a few dollars to put a team together. The result was an 8-40 season.

In 1984, with more time and money, Wall guided the Lazers to a 24-24 mark and a playoff berth. This season, he repeated that record, and again reached the playoffs.

Along the way, he has picked up his 100th victory as a coach--he registered 100 losses much quicker--and learned a thing or two about human nature, and about himself.

He talks, for example, about what he considers the toughest aspect of coaching.

“I think it’s always difficult for me to understand why some players repeatedly make the same mistake,” he said. “I suppose that’s the difference between a quality player and an average player.

“Since I’ve been coaching, I’ve always been in a situation where I’ve had to work very hard with the talent that’s come my way, and maybe that’s what you get in that situation.

“Tonight, driving home, I was listening to the Lakers and I was thinking it must be nice to be in a situation like Pat (Riley) said yesterday, having players like Kareem and Magic in his team and knowing he’s going to win two out of three games automatically.

“The situations I’ve been in, it’s always been a tight budget and I’ve had to go and find and produce players rather than go and acquire the best players. It does make it a tougher job, but it also makes it a more satisfying job. It’s a challenge.”

Never a particularly vocal coach, at least in public, Wall has always taught by example rather than by threat. He generally keeps his emotions in check, which is why the outburst with Newman this season was so surprising.

He believes, however, that he has changed over the years.

“I think I’m more emotional now than I was,” he said. “I guess that comes with coaching, the so-called pressure, whatever that may be. Frustration is what it really is. Other than that, I don’t think I’ve changed much.”

Does he ever rant and rave at players, say at practice or behind closed locker-room doors?

“Occasionally. But I always think, ‘What are you trying to do, scare the players?’ There’s a reason for certain things happening and if you can keep your composure and calm, you may be able to recognize what’s happening and have a chance to put it right. I’ve had my screams, I’m sure, like everybody else, but that’s not me. That’s not the way I’m made.”

If Wall is not quick to anger, neither is he quick to accept praise.

“I’m not a very egotistical person,” he said. “Maybe that’s against me. If I feel happy I’m doing the job OK, then I know it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks. If they’re giving me praise, that’s OK because I know that in four weeks’ time, or in six months’ time, the same people are going to criticize. So it’s taken with a pinch of salt. I think it’s nice to be patted on the back, nobody can ever say it isn’t, but you can’t live by that.”

One thing Wall does feel bad about, though, is the sad state into which the outdoor game has fallen in the United States. After watching two teams fold behind him--the outdoor Surf and the indoor Inferno-Pride--Wall this spring watched as the entire North American Soccer League ground to a halt.

“I feel sad about it,” he said. “I feel sad that it is in the situation that it is in now, because when I came, soccer was on a real upswing. It was riding a big wave and everybody was excited about the American people accepting the game and coming out in big numbers.

“Then, of course, a lot of people who invested money got hurt and it lost some credibility and suddenly the name soccer sort of stinks.

“I always find it difficult to accept that soccer’s played for fun, because I was never brought up that way. Even in school, it was played to win, and competition was there. Recreational soccer is great, I think it’s tremendous. But then the better players should have a place to go and play, another level, to have competition.

“And that’s what’s lacking. That’s why there isn’t a good national team here now. That’s why the colleges are struggling, or the high schools are struggling, or whatever. There’s no system. And until such time as somebody finds a system, the game is going to struggle.”

Would Wall go back to coaching outdoors?

“Yeah, I can’t say as I wouldn’t because as I said before, soccer is my life, and what form it takes I don’t think matters. Right now, I believe in indoors very deeply, that it can be successful business-wise. And I really do enjoy it because it is different. Now, I’ve got to the point where it’s part and parcel of my life. If the opportunity came outdoors in the future, yeah, I most probably would go to it, but I don’t think I would get out of the indoor for the outdoor at this time.

“It’s different. It’s a new sport and I guess we’re all trying to become experts at it. And again it’s a business. I think the outdoor originally set out to be a business and became, unfortunately, some bad toys. Whether there’s an NASL really doesn’t matter, I don’t think, because the name NASL doesn’t have any credibility right now and I think it’s better that it’s put to rest.

“I think something will come in its place in a different form. What I hear from everybody is that they want to see more American players and I agree with that. I think that the foreign player that came over in the beginning--I was one of those people, not as early as some--I think came for a reason. A lot of the people that came over did what they were brought here for, which was to try to improve the standard of play and to be a pioneer basically.

“But along the line here comes that must-win situation. The Cosmos started it by buying the best players in the world and everybody wanted to compete against them, and suddenly the ideas of bringing along the home-grown players went through the window.

“I remember them sitting down and talking about how each year they would add one more American (starter to each team). That was going to start in 1979. If they had done that, by today they would have had 9 or 10 Americans playing on each team. But they didn’t. I think there’s enough talent out there somewhere, but then again, without the system, who knows where they are?”

Could the MISL fall into the same trap?

“Of course. I think we have to be very careful, otherwise some of the mistakes that were made in the NASL could very easily be made in the MISL.”

Wall’s own impact on the sport in North America, if any, is difficult to gauge. The players he has helped develop and the ones he is helping now are probably his main legacy.

“I’d like to think I’ve made some contribution to the game here,” he said. “I like to work with players. I really do. A lot of coaches expect players to be able to play, that they shouldn’t be told anything other than get out there and play. I don’t think any player’s too old to learn something.

“My situation since I’ve been coaching is that I need to be a teacher as much as anything else. I always feel if I can feed enough information to a player, maybe some of it stays there and he’ll become a better player.”

At 40, Wall can look back at a quarter of a century of involvement in a game that he loves. Better yet, he can look ahead to another quarter-century of the same, if he’s so inclined.

“When I was younger, I always wanted things,” he said. “I always wanted a bigger and better car, a bigger and better house, that sort of thing. But I guess you get to a point in your life where you appreciate feeling good each day and going out to help other people, rather than being greedy for yourself.

“I’ve been fortunate that I was blessed with two lovely children and I want to see them grow up to be happy. I guess the next eight years are the years where I see that happening. So I don’t want too much for myself, I just want my family to be happy and if they’re happy, then I know that I’ll be happy.”

Whatever Wall’s record on the field, those do not sound like the words of a loser.