http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/n ... 1e&k=44561
Montreal film producer negotiated contracts for players and coaches during the club's early-1980s heyday
Before the Manic, soccer was almost non-existent here, says Michel Buruiana, showing off a scrapbook photo of former Manic striker Dragan Vujovic.
"Before the Manic, soccer was almost non-existent here," says Michel Buruiana, showing off a scrapbook photo of former Manic striker Dragan Vujovic.
Photograph by : MARCOS TOWNSEND, THE GAZETTE
ROBERTO ROCHA, The Gazette
Published: Thursday, July 06, 2006
To popularize the world's most popular game in North America, some teams had to resort to somewhat sneaky tactics. Such was the case with the New York Cosmos, which recruited Brazilian great Pele in 1975 until his retirement two years later.
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View an audio slideshow of Michel Buruiana.
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But that didn't stop the club from using his name in the years after, said Montreal film producer and soccer pioneer Michel Buruiana.
"They paid Pele a lot of money, probably to keep his name going in the organization. But I never saw the guy in all those years," Buruiana said, reminiscing on the continent's first forays into pro leagues.
The world's most popular game never had an easy time in the English-language New World. Even in Montreal, where the long-deceased Manic enjoyed record-breaking attendance, its success during the 1980s didn't last more than three years.
But we can be thankful that New York-style trickery was kept to almost nil, Buruiana said. There was a real hunger for the game. There just wasn't the money.
"Before the Manic, soccer was almost non-existent here. There were passionate people who wanted to get it going," Buruiana said.
One such man was Elio Dealuri, who to this day runs a pizzeria on Bellechasse St. With a part of his profits, he sponsored some local teams and even organized some tournaments.
"Our little team was the Quebec amateur champ 11 times," Dealuri said. "We even gave some players to the Manic."
But it was very amateur, Buruiana said in his Cote des Neiges office, a museum of mementos cluttered with celebrity photos, film theory books, laminated tabloid pages and half-opened cartons.
Buruiana can take some credit for getting the ball rolling in Montreal. As an insurance agent at Sun Life, he opened his door one day to find Pierre Mindru, a fellow Romanian who happened to be that country's second-best goalkeeper, looking for a job.
"I trained him to be a great insurance agent, which he did," Buruiana said. "But he had a dream that was never realized. He wanted to create a soccer team."
His chance would come in 1980, when the Philadelphia Fury, a team in the now-defunct North American Soccer League, suffered declining attendance and went up for sale. Molson Breweries, running on the success of the NHL's Canadiens, brought the ailing team to Olympic Stadium and rechristened it the Manic.
Mindru wanted to be the assistant coach, something that Buruiana's negotiating muscle helped achieve. Buruiana went on to negotiate contracts for players and coaches. The team was an instant hit under coach Eddie Firmani. The Manic averaged 23,700 fans a game, even though they hardly won any games their first season - an attendance total few North American teams could boast (the league average was 13,000).
"In one of our first games, against Chicago, you did not see one empty seat," Buruiana recalls.
What would make the team truly competitive was a big star, a fantastic dribbler and unstoppable striker. They found that in Dragan Vujovic.
"He was a magician of the ball, a huge player that was all muscle," Buruiana said. "When he shook my hand, he nearly broke it."
But he was also a minefield of temper. In 1982, during a game against Chicago, he was suspended from the league playoffs for yelling and allegedly spitting at the referee.
"Montreal was a fabulous place for soccer," Buruiana said. "It wasn't as cosmopolitan as it is today, but nonetheless the people were expecting great experimentations."
Despite its success, the Manic was in a financial mess. With high rents at the Big O, no television deal and a zero cut of concessions, the owners were deeply in debt and looking for a way out. A clumsy experiment, when they tried to convert the Manic into a Canadian national team for the 1986 World Cup, was a pathetic flop.
"We needed just one sponsor to keep it alive," Buruiana said. "There were lots of people willing to put up money. But there's money and then there's money."
As a testament to its courage, perhaps, the Manic bid farewell to the league by eliminating the mighty Cosmos from the 1983 playoffs, with the winning penalty kick from Vujovic.
Penalty shootouts in the old league were different than today's mostly chance-based bouts. Similar to hockey, the striker started 35 yards away from the goal and had five seconds to score however he wished.
Some say that Vujovic's kick went two-10ths of a second past the limit and should have been nullified. The Manic won, but it would have no other chances at greatness. The team was disbanded later that year.
It was a tragedy, Buruiana said. "The Italians were crying. The Portuguese, they were devastated."
Buruiana gathered whatever talent that was left in the Manic and took them to New York. The dream of bringing soccer to North America was still viable in the world's financial capital.
It failed, but it wasn't for lack of trying.
"We brought over all these amazing players to play against the Cosmos," Buruiana said. "We had Michel Platini from France. They used to call him the European Pele. From Brazil we brought Oscar, Falcao and Socrates. Today it would be like bringing Figo, Ronaldinho and Zidane," he said.
"We had to wait until 1994," for the World Cup to be played in the United States and for a fledgling new soccer league to grow its wings and clumsily but certainly take off.
Has it worked? The Impact is getting a new stadium and next year, Toronto FC will be Canada's first team in the top-division Major League Soccer.
Future fans will decide.
rrocha@thegazette.canwest.com
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© The Gazette (Montreal) 2006