Overview of the 1990 APSL Season - From the American Soccer History Archives

    The American Professional Soccer League was formed as a result of a 1989 merger agreement between the Western Soccer Alliance and the American Professional Soccer League. This merger brought together the two strongest professional outdoor leagues, and that union accomplished several important purposes: It was seen as an opportunity to return top flight soccer on a nationwide basis for the first time since the demise of the North American Soccer League, and shift the balance in favor of the outdoor sport, which had taken a back seat to indoor soccer for the latter half of the 1980's. The league also had ambitions to be designated by FIFA as the new Division 1 American league. The APSL had several advantages, among them several established clubs, some of them with years of amateur experience, as well as the bulk of the top players in the US. APSL rosters boasted many of the National Team players and reserves who were not already part of the USSF residency program. The major challenges were the fact that none of the teams was truly operating at a high level of professionalism, and the new nationwide sprawl of teams would wreak havoc with high travel expenses. To ease the transition, The former ASL and WSA played their regular seasons as separate conferences, meeting only at the end for the Championship game.

    The regular season provided some high excitement in the divisional races, as Maryland, Albany and Penn-Jersey fought a tight three way battle right into the last week of the season, with Maryland squeaking out a two point victory at season's end. The WSL featured two divisional races worth watching: In the North, the San Francisco Bay Blackhawks, Salt Lake Sting, Colorado Foxes and Portland Timbers were within five points of each other, with Salt Lake City and San Francisco tied for the crown. Meanwhile in the South, California, Los Angeles and Real Santa Barbara finished neck and neck. In the first official APSL Championship game, Maryland and San Francisco Bay mounted a memorable fight in driving rain at Boston before a national television audience, and Maryland finally pulled out a 2-1 victory on penalty kicks to crown a true national outdoor champion for the first time in more than half a decade.