Western Soccer Alliance

Western Soccer Alliance was a professional soccer league featuring teams from the West Coast of the United States and Western Canada. The league began in 1985 as the Western Alliance Challenge Series. In 1986, it became the Western Soccer Alliance. In 1989, it existed for a single year as the Western Soccer League before merging with the American Soccer League to form the American Professional Soccer League in 1990.

After the demise of the North American Soccer League in 1984 and the United Soccer League in 1985, four independent teams - F.C. Portland, F.C. Seattle, San Jose Earthquakes and Victoria Riptides created the Western Alliance Challenge Series in the summer of 1985.^[1] They did so in order to fill the outdoor soccer void created by the failure of the NASL and USL. The Western Alliance Challenge Series would have had two more teams from Los Angeles and Edmonton, but the Los Angeles team could not obtain change or add dates on a stadium lease, and the Edmonton team was unable to accommodate additional games. Many top outdoor players now languished in local semi-pro or recreational leagues. These players, along with local soccer officials, began parallel, but independent efforts to create local "super clubs". These "super clubs" then challenged other independent teams to games for little more than bragging rights. For example, in 1984 F. C. Seattle hosted the Seattle Challenge Series against the Vancouver Whitecaps, Minnesota Strikers, New York Cosmos and U.S. Olympic Team. Other teams held similar challenge series and it was from these efforts that The Western Alliance Challenge Series was born.^[2]

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