It is not fully known why Kap pursued his unorthodox method of recruitment, or if he seriously tried other avenues in his attempts to procure players. He could have contacted the hundreds of professional teams in Europe, whose stock-in-trade is players, many of whom are released each year. This route offered access to a regular supply of at least partially developed talent, who could/may have improved the club’s player pool. But it was not taken.
It was reported that Kap had approached Arsenal F.C. for players, but that the numbers quoted deterred him from further discussions. Though the prices at one of the top clubs in the world are far higher than those on the lesser rungs of the game, and the thought persists that Kap may have used the Gunners’ example as an excuse to rationalize his method of recruitment. The team’s budget (it was reported that the club hoped to pay for the tour from gate revenues) may also have been a factor, for the Tornado players on the tour, with all expenses paid, earned *$150.00 per month, and it has been inferred that ownership held Kap rigidly to that amount.
Book, who believed that “he couldn’t have controlled older players,” a feeling shared by Renshaw, threw light on Kap’s recruiting philosophy, stating simply: “He didn’t want professional players, who he felt would take too long to retrain to his methods. He wanted young players, who would represent the club and the sport well, who would buy into his way of thinking; single players who were interested in becoming Americans and who would toe the line.” Still a believer in his concept, Kap told Phil Stephens, USSF Soccer Monthly 1975 summer edition: “Our team was exhausted from the trip and just not mature enough to handle the older players. But our plan was good. If the Tornado management had allowed me to retain those players, I feel we would have had a championship team within the five years I promised.”
*The club’s head coach made it known from the beginning that every player on the squad was equal. That all of the players received the same salary, and that “there is no extra pay for ‘star players’ because we don’t want such players.”
Ever the self-publicist, Kap was not known to have coached again at a professional level or any level after the ’68 season, though he did remain in the sporting arena long enough to help change the face of football, the gridiron version. Acting as an agent, he represented a number of soccer-style kickers who gained employment in the NFL, among them Tony Fritch, the ex-Austrian soccer international who played for the Dallas Cowboys in the early 70’s.
Richard Durrett revealed in his March 25, 2005 DMN column that Kap, then 81 and living in Washington D.C., was also a painter, one of his paintings hanging in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, in Canton, Ohio, was writing a book on politics, and still talking about his soccer days. “It was 1968, and we were in Spain, Morocco and Iran, all over. But the league just didn’t make it and I resigned,” his alleged resignation a fabrication that he and a friend in the journalistic/publishing community had propagated for decades. For the record: The NASL played through October 3, 1984, when the last ball was kicked in the second leg of the league’s final championship series, won by Lee Stern’s Chicago Sting. And Kap, as evidenced, was not allowed the solace of resigning.
Book described the tour as life changing, likening it to a dream, “where you travel, doing the things you like and get paid for it.” Contracted after an arranged tryout in a park in Gothenburg, Sweden, he lived through every minute of the Tornado training camp, World Tour and Mini-Tour, and made three appearances for the team in the 1968 NASL season. He remembers the 40 games in 125 days schedule, the players on many occasions arriving at game sites feeling tired and ill-prepared due to the stress of travel, as well as time, weather, diet and cultural changes. A number playing with injuries, some minor, some persistent, but not wanting to bring them to Kap’s attention for fear it would affect their playing time.
Book also remembers the ex-Copenhagen bellhop, Randorf, a name he has reason to believe was assumed – he believed Dr. Frank’s real name was Pedersen, so who was conning whom? – and calculated that Kap used up to 30 players from training camp to the tour’s end, Crosbie, the more accurate, 24. And he “vividly” recalls the game when a rock landed on his head, December 3, causing blood to gush and a marble sized swelling; the San Francisco Chronicle aptly summing up the incident and the times with the wonderful page one headline: DALLAS TORNADO STONED IN SINGAPORE.
One of those stranded in the Bengali jungle, Book’s recollections of the ‘separation’ were somewhat hazier, caused, it turned out, by the pills he and a few other players were given every four hours, which “left them groggy,” to discover later that they were sleeping pills. The team separated at the Indian-East Pakistani border, those holding British and Canadian passports, which included Kap, were allowed swift entry into the sub-continent, where they spent their two nights apart snug, safe and sound in one of Calcutta’s best hotels.
Those with American, Dutch and Scandinavian passports were not, due, apparently, to a visa snafu, and condemned to less salubrious surroundings: A hut (said to be a back-up for government officials) in the jungle. For two days and almost two nights, the ‘denied’ anxiously awaited their correct entry visas, hoped that the wait wouldn’t be too long, and prayed that they hadn’t been abandoned. Eight players, plus Wilson and Randorf, but fewer beds and couches, the latter of which served as beds, led to a number of the party sleeping on the hut’s mud floor, though Chris Bachofner remembers sleeping in the team bus.
It was a practice that ended abruptly when one of the players awoke screaming, his sleep disturbed by a “furry” animal running over his body. Thereafter the beds and couches were used on a rotational basis. Asked what they did to fill their time, Book replied that they “played a lot of cards, when not trying to sleep.” Book also remembered the team sending Randorf to a nearby village for supplies, Dr. Frank returning with bread, eggs, marmalade and orange juice, purchased, it was said, with the only acceptable currency the group possessed: the remaining soccer balls and a few pairs of shin-guards.
Late on the evening of November 4, an East Pakistani Football Federation representative escorted the Tornado party back to the check point in the battered by sticks, possibly pre-World War II, non-airconditioned bus. Their entry visas for India-which ran out at midnight-were happily presented and thoroughly scrutinized, but not honored. Tempers rising, it transpired that only the director of the guards, who was sleeping, could give final approval for their crossing, and no one was prepared to wake him.
The deadlock was broken by a clear-thinking guard, perhaps realizing the ramifications of non-compliance, who led the bewildered and increasingly agitated group to an area near the check point and ushered them across-having first opened the way with a pair of wire cutters. The group crossed the border at a few minutes before midnight – another report gives the time as 4:00 a.m. on the 5th – where approximately 400 yards inside Indian territory, they were met by Indian and East Pakistani football Federation officials. And a highly relieved, said to be ‘shaking’ Kap, who at one point feared that his players might be dead. The group arrived in Calcutta a few hours ahead of their scheduled game against the Indian National Team, which Renshaw reported was played in 115 degrees, where they gained an honorable 0-0 draw.
During their stay in the jungle Kap had contacted the AP in Calcutta, reporting that he didn’t know where the majority of his team was. The team partially owned by one of the richest men in the world. Again, the Tornado received world-wide press, which is easy really when you’ve got the right story… pure Graham Greene, tinged with shades of Ernie Kovacs, Benny Hill, or Mr. Bean and even Zach Galifianakis.
Although Kap failed to mould his young squad into a competitive team his players, whose esprit de corps grew as the tour progressed, clearly played for him, as well as for each other. Players who must be applauded for completing such an arduous schedule, where adjustments e.g. positional, due to injury, illness and fatigue, when only 11 or 12 of the 16, or less, were match fit, demanded that they pull together and ‘grit it out’ game after game. Mostly every three days post training camp, often less, with only a few four, five or six-day respites between.
Players who may never have been introduced to the professional game but for the tour, most (with one notable exception) who continued their professional playing careers post Tornado, a number of whom entered the coaching field. Players who believed in the World Tour-Player Development Concept they had been pitched; but felt that a few experienced professionals, two, three, four (?) were needed to make the project viable. Who could only have benefitted from a less demanding game schedule, and more time to practice, rest, recover and prepare; luxuries that they believe would have improved their win-loss record.
Book is convinced this would have been the case, citing that his diary showed the Tornado were ahead at the half in a large percentage of the games they lost, before fatigue set in. Having seen the half-time scores, it is difficult to disagree with his assessment.
Sixteen became 15 when Odd Lindberg was diagnosed with hepatitis in Vietnam. After two weeks of shots in a British hospital in Hong Kong, he returned to Oslo for the remainder of the tour. The Tornado were down to only one goalkeeper, Hans Petter Enger, though Lindberg would return to the Tornado fold.
Most of the players liked Kap, who clearly cared for and looked after “his boys”, those who followed his rules, as evidenced by his attempts to educate them with visits to historical sites and museums. Or when spending the evening before a reception at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid – where Ambassador Walker and his staff hosted the Tornado party – on a ‘what to wear, how to behave’ session.
In many respects Kap acted more like a schoolteacher than a professional soccer coach, teaching maybe a profession he should have pursued. His method of selecting players roundly criticized, even ridiculed, it is clear, especially in the early recruiting days (apart from Randorf) that he took care in trying to choose ‘his’ type of player. Those he felt would buy into his way of playing the game, and conduct themselves in the manner he deemed fit.
A certain amount of credit must be given to him for his determination in following the path he espoused, though he failed spectacularly in his attempt to achieve his and the club’s stated aims. Having finagled his way into the Tornado head coaching position, it soon became apparent that he was not the coaching guru he claimed to be, and Hunt and McNutt should never have hired him. But, in what has become a cliché: ‘Without him, the amazing Dallas Tornado World Tour would not have happened’… Nor the lives of 16 young players changed forever.
Part Five: The Combined Training Camp, World Tour and Mini-Tour Game Results