Soccer Bowl '81
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| Event | Soccer Bowl | ||||||
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| Chicago won 2–1 in a Shoot-out | |||||||
| Date | September 26, 1981 | ||||||
| Venue | Exhibition Stadium, Toronto, Ontario | ||||||
| Man of the Match | Frantz Mathieu | ||||||
| Referee | Dante Maglio (Canada) | ||||||
| Attendance | 36,971 | ||||||
Soccer Bowl '81 was the championship final of the 1981 NASL season, between the Chicago Sting and the New York Cosmos. The match was played on September 26, 1981 at Exhibition Stadium, in Toronto, Ontario. Following regulation and a 15-minute golden goal overtime, the match was tied, 0–0. With that, the game moved to a shoot-out. The Sting won the shoot-out, 2–1, and were crowned the 1981 NASL champions. This was the Chicago's first NASL title.
The Chicago Sting qualified for the playoffs by winning the Central Division with 195 points. Their regular season was highlighted by a sweep of both matches against the New York Cosmos and a perfect 6–0 record in games requiring overtime or a shootout. Although they tied the Cosmos for the best record in the NASL, New York had earned 5 more points and thus the number one seed. In the first round of the playoffs Chicago outlasted the Seattle Sounders, two games to one. 24,080 fans showed up for the decisive third game of the series at Comiskey Park on August 30. Three days later game one of the quarterfinals match up with the Montreal Manic, saw a capacity crowd of 58,542 pack Montreal's Olympic Stadium and cheer the home side to a stirring, 3–2, comeback victory over the Sting. Not to be outdone, the Sting posted consecutive, 4–2, home victories to win the series. In the semifinals the Sting again dropped the first game on the road, this time to San Diego. The Sting battled back to level the series at one game apiece, and force yet another winner-take-all game three. On September 21, the largest home crowd in Sting history (39,623), sat through a nearly constant rain and 50 degree temperatures, in the hopes of witnessing local soccer history. In a foreshadowing of what lay ahead for the Sting, the two teams battled through 90 minutes of regulation and 15 minutes of sudden death overtime with neither one able to score. The game moved on to a tiebreaker shootout. The Sockers had ousted the Sting from the previous year's playoffs via a shootout, but Chicago prevailed this time, 3–2, when Frantz Mathieu converted his try in the sixth round, sending the Sting to their first ever Soccer Bowl.
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