Rodney Marsh: Interview With NASL Legend

Thirty three years ago two play­ers who earned their soc­cer wages in Amer­ica went back to Eng­lish clubs on loan. Long before David Beck­ham and Lan­don Dono­van were rented to AC Milan and Ever­ton respec­tively, George Best and Rod­ney Marsh spent the off-season play­ing at Ful­ham Foot­ball club.

In a recent inter­view the Tampa Bay Row­dies leg­end recounts his trans-Atlantic occu­pa­tion. Rod­ney Marsh, who has returned to Florida to work for a pro­duc­tion com­pany, does not sugar-coat his jour­neys or his exploits. George Best, who passed away in 2005, and the 65 year old Marsh embod­ied the sex, drugs and rock-n-roll of England’s swing­ing 60’s and America’s heavy 70’s.

Rodney’s Amer­i­can odyssey begins with one of many sto­ried bust-ups with foot­ball man­age­ment — this time at Man­ches­ter City. Dis­agree­ments with gaffer Tony Book and owner Peter Swales led to his release to play for Cork Hibern­ian. While still col­lect­ing a salary from the Eng­lish club, he earned more play­ing 6 games for the Irish side — but in essence get­ting a pay­check from both teams. As one of the top Eng­lish soc­cer stars in 1975 Marsh was con­tacted by Elton John’s agent and flown out to Cal­i­for­nia by pri­vate jet. Rock leg­end John, then part owner of the Los Ange­les Aztecs, urged Marsh to sign for the NASL club.

While he was given the VIP treat­ment tak­ing in Elton John’s con­cert at Dodger Sta­dium he met the Camp­bell Soup heir George Straw­bridge, Jr., who per­suaded him to sign instead for his NASL Tampa Bay Rowdies.

In Feb­ru­ary 1976 the newly crowned cham­pi­ons of NASL wel­comed Marsh as the “Clown Prince of Soc­cer” and the “White Pele”. Not famil­iar with the polit­i­cal or demo­graph­ics of the Amer­i­can South, Marsh cor­rected the wait­ing media with ” no, he’s the black Rod­ney Marsh”.

Never one to apol­o­gize for his sharp retorts or fiery quips, he explains “that’s who I was”. Both he and George Best grew up in the poverty of post-war Britain. Rod­ney admits it was rea­son for only 9 inter­na­tional appear­ances. He sets the record straight on his ban­ish­ment from the Eng­land National Team by Sir Alf Ram­sey who was a cock­ney like Marsh.

“I was not one of those guys that ran around the pitch, I could make a few runs, get the ball twice and score”.

Marsh reveals that the Eng­lish Foot­ball Asso­ci­a­tion sent Ram­sey for elo­cu­tion lessons after win­ning the 1966 World Cup to “cor­rect” his strong regional accent. On the occa­sion of a team talk Sir Alf chided Rod­ney for his work rate in a rather proper Eng­lish tone. “I’ll be watch­ing you, and if you do not work harder, I will pull you off at half-time”.

As both Ram­sey and Marsh grew up speak­ing cock­ney, this pre­tense led to Marsh reply­ing with “Christ, Alf, at Man­ches­ter City all we get is an orange and a cup o’ tea”. With snick­ers abound, Rod­ney was never to play for Eng­land again.

The Tampa Bay Row­dies of the late 1970’s played a very attrac­tive offense-minded brand of soc­cer. Loads of goals appealed to the Amer­i­can sports pub­lic and Tampa fans in par­tic­u­lar. With no other major sport in the Florida city, the “fan­nies” filled the sta­dium and made “a kick in the grass” their soc­cer motto.

At the close of the 1977 NASL sea­son, Ful­ham approached L.A.‘s George Best, Bobby Moore, then with San Anto­nio Thun­der and Marsh to join them on loan. Marsh had a two-year con­tract with the Row­dies at the time and had fully intended to spend the off-season in Florida. How­ever, he says he earned more money for the 6 month loan at Ful­ham than he did for the full sea­son at Tampa.

To this day, Rod­ney does not know the exact finan­cial details between the clubs, but his con­tract renewal increased con­sid­er­ably on his return to the Row­dies. While Rod­ney describes for­mer Eng­land Cap­tain Moore as “the sen­si­ble one”, his assess­ment of Best’s and Marsh’s days at Ful­ham as “just crazy”. Atten­dance for the Sec­ond Divi­sion side almost dou­bled at Craven Cot­tage where, inci­den­tally, Amer­i­can Clint Dempsey cur­rently plays.

But Marsh also says that he almost did not return to the Row­dies. Rodney’s clash with South African Coach Eddie Fir­mani over tac­tics had to be set­tled by owner George Straw­bridge — with Marsh com­ing back and Fir­mani leav­ing to take over the New York Cosmos.

While still in Eng­land, Rod­ney was often asked about the stan­dard of play in Amer­ica and of course the pay. The money seemed almost too good to be true and the exo­dus of British play­ers to the NASL is well doc­u­mented. How­ever, Marsh can be cred­ited for influ­enc­ing a few of those includ­ing Eng­land World Cup star Alan Ball. When asked about how the sub­ject came up, Rod­ney says it was after a night out with him and George Best. Ball signed for the Philadel­phia Fury soon afterwards.

Rod­ney played his last NASL game for the Row­dies in the 1979 Soc­cer Bowl. He left to coach in the A.S.L. although there were rumors of offers from Philadel­phia, Mon­treal and San Jose Earth­quakes. Although he knew the New York United were a minor league club, he describes it as 4 months of a neg­a­tive expe­ri­ence. But he says, he learned “what not to do” as a coach and fol­low­ing 4 years were “very happy” as he was hired away by the Car­olina Light­nin’. Rodney’s Light­nin’ won the 1981 Cham­pi­onship before a home crowd of over 20,000 defeat­ing, iron­i­cally, the New York club he left the pre­vi­ous season.

By 1983 gen­uine man­age­r­ial offers came. He was approached by his for­mer club Queens Park Rangers, yet he chose to return to Tampa Bay instead.

When asked about his advice to man­agers try­ing their hand in Amer­i­can soc­cer, Rod­ney chuck­les. “I wish they would ask me or con­tact my con­sult­ing firm”. “Ruud Gul­lit should have called me” was his com­ment about the Dutchman’s unsuc­cess­ful stint with the L.A. Galaxy.

Rod­ney draws a seri­ous tone as he shares his insight to soc­cer man­age­ment in the U.S. — “if I could advise one thing … the one word, it would be patience. Patience with the fans, patience with atten­dance and patience with the media”. It is in fact what he told Row­dies new head coach, Paul Dalglish, over din­ner recently. Dalglish’s father was the star player and later suc­cess­ful man­ager of Liverpool.

Cur­rently, Rod­ney Marsh is host­ing the TV show “The Road to South Africa” pro­duced by EMG Sports & Enter­tain­ment lead­ing up to and includ­ing the FIFA World Cup. It can be seen on Tampa’s NBC affil­i­ate station.

Chuck Zsol­nai is the His­tor­i­cal Direc­tor at the Inter­na­tional Soc­cer Archives. He has been cov­er­ing soc­cer since 1989.

Tagged as: NASL, Rodney Marsh, Tampa Bay Rowdies