New York Nationals (USL)
New York Nationals were a professional soccer team which played a single season in 1984 with the United Soccer League. An earlier team also called the New York Nationals played in the American Soccer League during the 1920s.
History
The early 1980s were a lean and difficult time for professional outdoor soccer in the United States. The North American Soccer League was in significant decline following the boom years of the late 1970s, undone by a period of over-expansion and overspending that created an unstable environment in which teams were constantly folding or moving to new cities. By 1984, only nine teams were left in the league. The de facto second division American Soccer League had likewise doomed itself to instability and difficult economic realities when it expanded beyond the northeastern United States, where it had operated very modestly since 1933, and tried to establish footholds in the midwest and west coast in the '70s and southern states in the '80s. These expansions produced a string of short-lived franchises, and the league had contracted to only six teams in 1983.At the ASL's annual league meetings in January 1984, chronic instability and frustration over a power structure that allowed inactive owners to still influence the direction of the league led the owners of the Jacksonville Tea Men and Dallas Americans to break away and start planning a new second division league, which they named the United Soccer League. Their vision was a stable league in which teams could operate within their means and take a more grass roots approach to building a fan base in their communities. Year-round operation, a strict salary cap, a focus on American players and a mostly regional schedule to reduce travel costs were all pillars on which this new league was to be founded. Three ASL clubs would end up coming directly to the USL, while two other clubs were re-organized and renamed for USL membership. Four new teams also joined the league, one of which would be the New York Nationals. The Nationals were founded by a group of mostly Greek-American owners and executives and had connections to the defunct New York Apollo/United. They planned to host home games at Hofstra University on Long Island.