Preview Mode Links will not work in preview mode

Good Seats Still Available


Oct 11, 2021

We take another crack at the history and mythology of the late, great North American Soccer League - this time through the eyes of sports filmmaker Rachel Viollet, whose new documentary "Big-Time Soccer: The Remarkable Rise & Fall of the NASL" makes its US debut at New York's Kicking + Screening film festival later this week.

If that surname sounds familiar, it won't surprise you that Rachel is also the daughter of the late Dennis Viollet - one of the legendary Manchester United "Busby Babes" of the late 1940s & early 1950s - who later went on to become one of the pioneering coaches in the 1970s-era NASL.

With managerial roles overseeing Washington, DC's Diplomats and two flavors of Tea Men in both New England and Jacksonville, the elder Viollet unwittingly provided his young daughter with a bird's-eye childhood purview into a vibrant and hugely entertaining pro soccer circuit, whose influence is still felt in today's MLS and beyond.

Featuring dozens of first-person interviews, rare video footage, and a mountain of exhaustive research, "Big-Time Soccer" is a love letter to both the best and the worst of the NASL - and the legacy it left behind.