27 juillet 1980
RFK Stadium Washington
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In February 1980, the Diplomats got their superstar. Sonny Werblin laid down a big marker on the Diplomats and the NASL by paying a jaw-dropping (at the time) $1 million transfer fee to the NASL’s Los Angeles Aztecs for superstar Dutch midfielder Johan Cruyff, the league’s reigning MVP. Cruyff and the Aztecs ended Washington’s 1979 season in the first round of the NASL playoffs. Now Cruyff was a Diplomat and the team inked him to a 3-year, $1.5 million contract extension. Werblin also shelled out to acquire Cruyff’s Dutch international teammate Wim Jansen and 24-year old Spanish attacking midfielder Juan Jose Lozano, the latter being a rare example of the NASL importing an up-and-coming foreign star rather than a graybeard taking a victory lap. Lozano cost a reported $750,000 but would make just 10 appearances for the Dips before leaving the NASL and returning to Europe.4 On and off the field, the Dips went all in on the 1980 season. If the team’s big bet on Cruyff, Lozano, Jansen and other could pay off competitively, a tantalizing prospect awaited at season’s end. The NASL selected the Diplomats and RFK Stadium to play host to the Soccer Bowl championship game on September 21st, 1980.
The team made its first appearance in the capital on April 13, 1980 with a 3-1 victory over the Philadelphia Fury. The crowd of 24,203 was the largest opening day Dips crowd in club history, but also showed that the club still had to far to go to challenge the exalted status of the Cosmos. On the same day, the Cosmos drew 51,225 for their own home opener. On June 1st, 1980, the Dips went up against the Cosmos at RFK before a franchise record crowd of 53,351. The nationally televised match was a thriller, with the Dips taking a 1-0 first half lead on a Bob Iarusci penalty, before relinquishing the lead on a Giorgio Chinaglia header in the second half. New York sealed the victory with a Vladislav Bogicevic goal in the NASL’s unconventional tiebreaker shootout. Soccer Bowl 80Ultimately, despite the massive investment in players and publicity, the Dips’ 1980 season was a virtual replay of the pre-Cruyff 1979 campaign. The team finished 17-15, down from 19-11 a year earlier. More importantly, they finished 2nd place to the Cosmos in the division for the third season in a row. And, like in 1979, they suffered a disappointing first round playoff exit at the hands of the Los Angeles Aztecs. At the box office, Diplomats attendance surged 62% to an franchise best 19,205 per game. Though the team would not make it to Soccer Bowl ’80, a massive crowd of 50,768 turned out at RFK regardless to watch the Cosmos claim their third NASL title in four years with a 3-0 rout of the Fort Lauderdale Strikers.
Still, all was not well. By October 1980, Madison Square Garden Corp. was openly grumbling about the state of the league and its investment. On October 27th, the team embarked on a 10-game tour of the Far East, just as things were falling apart back in the nation’s capital. On November 24th, 1980 the NASL announced that the Diplomats had “voluntarily terminated” their membership in the league. Madison Square Garden had lost an estimated $5 million on the club over two years of operations.5 Weirdly, the Diplomats players were still in Tokyo that day, playing the final match of their Asian tour against the Japanese National Team. Three months after the original Diplomats gave up the ghost, the team (or at least its logo) got an unlikely reprieve. English football broadcaster Jimmy Hill owned the NASL’s Detroit Express franchise. The three-year old club was beset by financial problems and internecine warfare among its investors. On February 27, 1981, just 29 days before the 1981 NASL season opener, the league approved the relocation of the Express to Washington D.C., where the club would reclaim the Dips name and logo and play out of RFK.
Dips II ended up being a sad coda to the original club’s tenure. Jimmy Hill and has son Duncan had nothing resembling the resources of Gulf & Western. With little time or money to promote the team, the new Dips were merely mediocre. Even the midseason return of a diminished and hobbled Johan Cruyff – now earning $175,000 rather than the $500,000 he would have pocketed from year two of his original Dips contract – failed to spark the team on the field or at the box office. The new Dips finished 15-17, missed the playoffs, and folded in September 1981, barely six months after arriving in town. The North American Soccer League closed its down in 1985. In 1987, yet another edition of the Dips took up residence at RFK Stadium, playing in the low-budget American Soccer League until 1990.
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