The more intense part of the tour (post training camp) kicked off October 10 in Istanbul, Turkey, where the Tornado earned a credible 2-2 tie against Fenerbahce. It was one of a limited number of successes on a journey where defeats were more normal than wins or draws. From that point coaching sessions were fewer, for games, now approximately every three days (the 40 in 125) travel, acclimatization, recovery, social functions e.g. appearances, ceremonies, banquets, receptions at American embassies, and sightseeing were to claim the majority of their time.
The team’s schedule pitted them against opposition of varying levels: from the National teams of India, Indonesia and the Philippines; to club teams, including Apoel, Cyprus, and Canterbury, New Zealand, and a series of select teams. The top team by assent was the Aung San Selected, who defeated the Tornado 4-0 and 3-1 in front of crowds numbering 45,000 and 47,000; the visitors winning the hearts of the Burmese (Burma now known as Myanmar) by running their host’s national flag around the stadium pre-game. The least competitive were the Philippines FICFRA and the Southern Division Hurricanes of Fiji, who the Tornado respectively defeated 7-0 and 10-2.
The feel good experience in Burma was echoed in the majority of the countries the team visited, the goodwill received far overshadowing the negatives the team experienced along the way. Where, on arrival, representatives of the cities and the opposition they were to face, and often the local or national soccer associations were on hand to greet them. Representatives who were genuinely pleased to receive them, host them at receptions or banquets whenever possible, and to wish them bon voyage when they left. Particularly welcoming according to Book were the West Pakistanis (Pakistan now the Islamist Republic of Pakistan) Indians, Taiwanese, Australians and New Zealanders; the kindest, the Fijians, “who cheered for the Tornado as well as their own side.”
The tour also had a positive effect on the U.S’s relationships with a number of countries, one of them Burma, where a high ranking official made it known that the Tornado’s visit had strengthened ties between the countries. (The team had, however, albeit inadvertently, earlier, let themselves down at a Bullring in Madrid, where they were the honored guests. A hat thrown at the team from within the arena, an honor, was thrown back, an insult, and the visitors, no longer honored, were escorted out of the arena. It was a rare slip).
As the tour continued the team’s respect for and ‘fear’ of Kap began to diminish, the players referring to him as ‘Benny,’ a British cartoon character, that they assured their head coach was a compliment when he queried them. Moore stood up to Kap at a team meal in Burma, asking him if he could have his share of the money the Burmese Football association had allegedly supplied for the players. Rumored to be $100.00 per in local currency, it was a not inconsiderable amount to players earning barely more than that per month. Kap left the room, returning shortly thereafter with envelopes containing each player’s money, which he circled the table to hand out individually, a transaction conducted in silence.
To his credit Kap allowed Moore to remain on the team, though removing the lone American would have been difficult to explain, even for him. Another example that offered the opportunity of ‘loose dealings’ was observed in Newcastle, Australia, when the scheduled game was cancelled due to torrential rain, but the planned post-game ceremony went ahead. A local representative asked the Tornado players where he could find Mr. Kap, as he had the “game guarantee” for him. Cash in a bulging envelope according to Renshaw.
Others noted that Kap regularly shipped paintings, presumably back to North America, while wondering whose money funded the purchases and the transportation, as well as whose names were on the address labels. Rugs were also reported to have been shipped out (especially Arabian and Persian) as well as antiques and other art objects, with large shipments said to have been sent from Morocco and Burma. Wilson reported that at the tour’s end ‘Bob brought back a suitcase full of receipts and dumped it on our accountants. The receipts were in all these different currencies, and they didn’t make sense at all…It was Lamar’s greatest headache.’ No mention was made of foreign currencies being included.
The team received a great deal of publicity on their travels, though publicity was not difficult to attract or generate (an American Football Team!) especially when their allegedly scheduled flight was reportedly blown up; or when over half the team was lost in the Bengali jungle; or when Kap, while playing with his toy gun, displayed the team in cowboy clothes, which for promotional purposes they wore everywhere they went. (Book has a photograph of the team outfit. The shirts, plaid, were blue, with blue jeans and black shoes, not cowboy boots, and a navy blue dress blazer, worn beneath a Stetson).
But unfortunately for the club, Kap, for all of his promotional expertise, failed to deliver a competitive team, a situation Renshaw addressed in his memoir, writing that on the tour: ‘For the most part we remained competitive [only] against mediocre opposition,’ a summation that on closer examination appears overly critical.
An intelligent, resourceful and persuasive man, though one report referred to him as sly, and another called him a Svengali – who had first to convince the parents of the many underage players to allow their sons to join the tour – Kap must be commended for his ability to ferry the team halfway around the world, train them, organize their off field activities, try to educate and then deliver them safely to Dallas. Not an easy task. Though the role of Paul Waters must not be forgotten, for working ahead of the team, he organized not only the five training camp locations and the games, but also the air travel, hotels, receptions and the numerous details small and large that such ventures demand; the future Tornado Executive Director the glue that kept the tour operational.
The tour also demonstrated the financial, business and political clout of the Hunt family, whose interests spanned, and span, the globe. The receptions at U.S. embassies and the attendance of ambassadors at a number of games, e.g. the presence of Mr. Ellsworth Bunker in South Vietnam, were clear expressions of their influence. The DMN reported that the tour was backed by the U.S. State Department and the Dallas Chamber of Commerce: The State Department opening the right doors for Waters. The Dallas Chamber of Commerce providing thousands of booklets and pamphlets promoting Dallas, for the Tornado players to hand out at every stop, which Book said “Never happened.”
Post tour, on the evening of February 15, 1968, the team carrying a combined Training Camp and World Tour 10 win – 9 tie – 26 loss record, having scored 77 goals and conceded 109, landed at Dallas Love Field Airport. They were welcomed by Mayor Frank Hoke and a reported 1,000 spectators, including 175 junior soccer players in uniform, team cheer leaders, musicians, booster club members, team officials, local TV stations and members of the press. The players then spent up to three weeks looking for apartments, acclimatizing to Big D and preparing for the fast approaching season.
But their pre-season travelling wasn’t quite over. The powers that be, their lack of soccer knowledge on how to prepare a professional team for the approaching season exposed and on display, had arranged a 10-day, 4-games-in-9, mini-tour to Central America, March 5-14. The start of the inaugural NASL season set to kick-off only 16 days after the March 14 game, and after the grueling World Tour, the timing of the mini-tour can at best be described as unneeded (rest, recovery and preparation were) poorly planned and badly timed. It was an undertaking that Kap should have strongly opposed.
Steve Perkins reported in his March 17 DTH column, that ‘Central American experts were aghast at the schedule,’ which an association president from San Jose, Costa Rica, called “Pure folly.” The 10-day venture into Central America daunting from the competitive side (4-games-in-9, a game every 2¼ days, worse than the roughly game every three days World Tour schedule) the mini-tour achieved little other than to further drain an already drained team. While the narrow winding mountain roads, the bus drivers seemingly happy to dice with death at every turn, added to the pressure.
Though, in what could be seen as an uptick, the worst that was thrown at the team were moist orange rinds, which seemed, in a sense, to illustrate the wastefulness and “Pure folly” of the club’s initiative. Thrown after the last mini-tour game at Tegucigalpa, Honduras, March 14th, a combative 2-0 win for CD Olimpia, the moisture stained the players’ boots, uniforms and skins; a sight that Perkins reported in his March 19 column turned U.S. Embassy Representative Forrest Fisher’s face ‘white.’
Seated next to Hunt in the stand – the Hunts and the McNutts travelled with the team – Fisher said, but weakly, “Well, I guess a little orange rind never hurt anybody.” Unlike sticks, stones, hand grenades and bombs. The team’s pre-season travels coming to a final but messy end, Kap had just over two weeks left to prepare his players for their U.S. debuts.
The Tornado, in front of a hugely disappointed and disappointing crowd of 1,168 at Turnpike Stadium, Arlington, a 35 to 45 minute drive from downtown Dallas, lost their March 30 opening NASL game 6-0. It was a crushing, demoralizing defeat that left fans, players and owners in shock. In their next twelve games the Tornado managed but two 1-1 draws-one team allegedly fined for failing to beat the floundering team-losing the others by scores of 2-1, 5-0, 4-2, 6-1, 8-2, 6-1, 3-0, 6-0, 1-0 and 3-2, the latter the end of the Kap era in Dallas.
Kap coached the 3-2 loss, in Chicago June 7, with his replacement, Keith Spurgeon, watching from the stand. He was dismissed the next day. The Tornado finished the 1968, 32 game NASL season with a record of two wins, four draws, 26 losses, scored 28 goals and conceded 109, an 81-goal difference.
The franchise had pursued an ideal, and in doing so had paid for goods that could not be delivered. They had tied their star to a smooth talking fantasist, one who believed that his squad of young, raw, mostly inexperienced players could transmute into a team that would mirror the great *Slavic (or Hungarian?) teams of the late 40’s and early 50’s, to compete against NASL teams stocked with superior talent. It was a situation that condemned the Tornado to a boys-versus-men challenge every time they entered the field of play.
Kap also committed the classic mistake of trying to fit the players to his idealized style of play (ball on the ground, short passing) instead of the reverse, more accepted and proven method of fitting the style of play to the players’ abilities and strengths. Thankfully for the club, as well as the continuance and development of the sport on these shores, Hunt and McNutt maintained their belief in and their support of the round ball game, when they could so easily and justifiably have walked away from it. Had they done so the fate of soccer in North America, though it stumbled many times before gaining its present-day male and female International level, National Leagues, College, Club and Recreational momentum, may well have travelled less successful paths.
Asked if the team performed anywhere near the level of the great Slavic (or Hungarian?) teams, Book replied, “Not even close.”
Part Four: Kap’s Recruitment Methodology – Life Changing
Part Five: The Combined Training Camp, World Tour and Mini-Tour Game Results