The year was 1984, and soccer in this country was dying.
It was also the year a young Mike Jeffries, winner of the prize given to the top college player in the country, the Hermann Trophy, in 1983, was drafted to play in the old North American Soccer League (NASL). Gone were the record crowds, the bright shining future of the world’s game dressed up in American glitz. Beckenbauer and Pele and Cruyff and George Best had all left – the league was on life support and circling the drain.
“Soccer in this country at that point was in a very different place than today,” said the 62-year-old Jeffries, coach of today’s Charlotte Independence, who was called into that era of the NASL to play for the Minnesota Strikers (who a few months before were the Fort Lauderdale Strikers) and who would, in a matter of months, become an indoor team – and then not a team at all. “The environment, for anyone who didn't live through it, was something you wouldn’t recognize.”
The first person young Jeffries – an old-fashioned sweeper, with a keen eye for the game – met in the locker room when he got to Minnesota was Gregg Thompson. “He didn’t waste any time rubbing it in,” Jeffries smiled about that reunion with the man who scored the goal that beat Jeffries’ Duke University and delivered the 1982 national college title to Indiana. “I wouldn’t expect anything less, but he made sure to remind me of it.”
That 1982 NCAA final, played on “one of those unbelievably muggy nights in Florida” is a good example of the differences Jeffries points out – from then to today. With the game tied 1-1 after 90, the refereeing team scratched their heads and came up with a plan, sort of. “Honestly, there was no organization at the time – so we played a couple of tens [minute-periods of over-time] and a couple fives,” said Jeffries. “They were just almost winging it as we went along.”
And along they went until, finally (and mercifully for the players) Thompson curled his free-kick into the top corner to seal the win for Indiana. It was in the 159th minute of the game and the eighth period of improvised over-time. That was 43 years ago, folks.
A road forward for the American game, following the collapse of the NASL in 1984, was not bumpy. It didn’t exist. It was obscured and unkempt and buried under leaves and debris. Jeffries traded the shin guards and cleats he wore in his three caps with the U.S. Men’s National Team and became a “suit-and-tie guy.” But his stockbroker job at Smith Barney didn’t stick. “I wanted to get over to the financial side,” he said about his decision to attend business school. But newly married, he needed a paying job. “So, I started coaching, ended up loving coaching, and I’ve stuck with it since.”
“It became a passion.” added Jeffries, who grew up loving the game in Maryland but scoffs at the suggestion he might have known he wanted to be a coach from early on.
Four decades have passed. And Jeffries moved along as the game in this country dug itself out from its own grave. He moved a lot of dirt himself. And his long road to a one-time second division team, now in the third division known as USL League One, has provided him with more experience and raw material than any coach can credibly hope to have. And along the way, he became a reluctant oracle of sorts – a man who knows the pitfalls and potential facing the game in this country.
Many of his experiences line up with the Open Cup. It's the only tournament in the U.S. that joins the top and the bottom and all points in between. Right now, his Charlotte Independence are through to the Second Round of the 2025 edition – and a home date against Carolina Core of MLS NEXT Pro.
His North Carolinians got here via a topsy-turvy 3-2 win on the road against the all-amateur Long Island Rough Riders that needed extra-time and a huge effort.
It wasn’t the kind of tactical, organized performance a coach dreams of. “It’s the Open Cup, so some of the standard rules don’t necessarily apply,” smiled Jeffries when asked about the general vibe of games in this country’s most beloved and historic soccer tournament. “You get crazy games in the Open Cup. You have to expect anything.”
Anything and everything – Jeffries has seen it. Trust us. Ever heard of the New Orleans Riverboat Gamblers? No? Well, he played for them in the old USISL between 1993 and 1994. And after his knee finally gave out, he coached the club through 1997. “You’re going all the way back now,” he chuckled at the mention of his first coaching position – and his first run out in the Open Cup.”
“We didn’t go too far, if I recall,” he said of his run with the Gamblers in 1997, and a Third Round loss to that year’s eventual champions Dallas Burn (of MLS, the league that brought top-flight soccer back to the USA when it launched in 1996). He did go far, though, with the Chicago Fire. “Those were special moments,” he said of the two Open Cups he won in the Windy City as assistant coach to American legend Bob Bradley. “1998 was probably the most special – it was our first year and we were at home and it was just a really special night.”
It’s not just the pinnacle of the game where Jeffries takes his vantage in the Open Cup. He led the all-amateur summer leaguers, the Des Moines Menace (currently in the Open Cup spotlight with a star-studded team of yesterday’s MLS heroes) to a win over NASL (the then-new second-division league with the same name as the old one) pro side Minnesota United (now in MLS) and a loss away to four-time Open Cup winners Sporting Kansas City (also of MLS). “What that meant to those kids who played there that night, I was so happy for them.”
“I had a few bad nights with the Burn,” he smiled, moving quickly past the losses to PDL amateurs Seattle Sounders Select in 2001 and semi-pro Wilmington Hammerheads in 2023 (with a Semifinal run in between, in 2002) he suffered as head coach of the MLS club now known as FC Dallas.
It's been a long road for Jeffries, but he’s a man who’s happy where he’s at. All the roster turnover in the third tier of American pro soccer won’t rattle him. How could it? This is a man who’s seen things in his career that would make a youngster’s head spin.
His Independence side from last year, who reached our Round of 16 before losing out to MLS powers and 2019 Open Cup Champions Atlanta United, pulled off a huge Cupset over Rhode Island FC via penalty shootout in the Third Round. In the 12 months since then, he’s lost the services of one-time Manchester United winger Gabriel Obertan and the former Olympian (with Honduras at the Tokyo 2020 Games) Juan Carlos Obregon, who moved on to fellow USL League One Side West Chester SC.
That’s just how it goes. The cookie crumbles and you keep on keeping on. Always forward. Now Jeffries is leaning on the efforts and talents of Rafael Jauregui, just 20, who bagged a pair of goals in the First Round after arriving from USL Championship side Sacramento Republic in the off-season. Also in the mix is new arrival Jon Bakero, fresh from his stint with Memphis 901 in the USL Championship. He’s the son of former Barcelona and Spain National Team star Jose Mari Bakero.
Jeffries, the steady hand on the tiller in his 11th year with the club, is nothing if not ready to improvise.
And all this in a year when Charlotte’s other pro soccer team, Charlotte FC of Major League Soccer, will be taking part in the Open Cup. The crosstown top-tier outfit will join the competition in the Round of 32. And there’s no doubt that Jeffries and his charges will be eager to survive long enough to welcome Wilfried Zaha and Co to the Open Cup party.
“You always have to be ready to battle in the Open Cup – to fight all the way every time, no matter who you have in the side,” said Jeffries, who’s seen American soccer fall and rise again – and who knows, better than anyone perhaps, that nothing is over until it’s over. “Just because a team is from a higher league, or has a reputation, doesn’t give them the right to walk away with a win without working for it.”
Fontela is editor-in-chief of ussoccer.com/us-open-cup. Follow him at @jonahfontela on X/Twitter.