Question: How do you throw together a successful soccer team entirely from scratch, with only a few weeks of practice before the season starts?
Answer: You don’t.
You spend decades in the sport, playing professionally at the highest international levels. Then, after you’ve retired as a player, you spend another 20-plus years in the community, developing talent and building relationships, so that when the opportunity does come along to assemble a brand-new team, you’re more or less good to go.
Or, anyway, Wolfgang Suhnholz was.
Head coach of the Austin Aztex U23 Premier Development League team, Suhnholz moved to the city in 1985 after an 18-year playing career that included a stint with the perennial European powerhouse Bayern Munich and another run with the North American Soccer League. In 1977, he was named to the all-NASL team, along with legends Pelé, George Best, and Franz Beckenbauer.
In other words, Suhnholz is kind of a big deal, not that he goes around advertising the fact. Aztex assistant coach Bobby Murphy has a hunch that, over the years, more than a few opportunities to coach in Major League Soccer have come Suhnholz’s way. No doubt a top college coaching job would be his for the asking. But Suhnholz, 61, is pretty modest about that sort of thing. And anyway, he’s not particularly interested in a mere coaching job. Instead, he’s interested in building a robust soccer community.
The ambition may have been born in disappointment. When the NASL was going gangbusters in the late 1970s, Suhnholz was certain that American soccer would become as popular as it was in Europe and South America. “Everybody was always talking about Pelé, but it was really hard to pick one great player in the league because pretty much all of the best players in the world were here,” he says. “We all felt like pioneers – it was a good feeling and a good time.”
Then, just like that, it was over. But, beginning with the Capital Soccer Club in 1985 and now with his Lonestar Soccer Club, Suhnholz has sought to grow the sport here the way European cities have – not through separate teams but rather through one large organization comprising a couple dozen boys’ and girls’ teams, which allows him to nurture local talent over several years.
Although the Aztex (6-1-1) are organizationally separate from all that (actually, the team is affiliated with the Stoke City Potters, now part of the English Premier League), the under-23 development team is still of a piece with everything Suhnholz has done for Austin soccer.
“The secret is, you have to know people,” he says. “If you’ve been working on the youth level, you know a lot of young players. You’ve put down a good foundation. It’s a lot about psychology, trying to build up players. And when the results are good, when you’ve created that team spirit, yes, it’s very satisfying.”
Please direct all love letters and hate mail to playingthrough@austinchronicle.com.
This article appears in June 13 • 2008.