At the top of Phil Anschutz’s wish list for his brand new soccer team in 1996 was “the guy who did a funny overhead kick” in the 1994 World Cup. What he got was the face of Colorado soccer for a generation.
Three decades later, Marcelo Balboa’s No. 17 jersey will be immortalized at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park — a tribute to the defender who helped launch the Rapids and give a new league one of its first stars.
“As a kid, I didn’t play this game because I was looking to have my number retired. I wasn’t playing this game because I wanted to be in the (National Soccer) Hall of Fame,” Balboa told The Denver Post two weeks before Saturday night’s jersey retirement ceremony in Commerce City.
“My goal was to play soccer because I loved it, I breathed it and I lived it every day. So to sit here and think that they’re going to retire that number and no one will ever wear it, it’s just kind of weird, you know?”
The defender’s bicycle kick in a 2-1 World Cup upset of Colombia didn’t even go in — a fact Balboa jokes about often.
But it was a flash of brilliant potential unseen from an American up to that point on the global stage. The soccer world took notice. And so did Anschutz — enough so that the MLS co-founder and American soccer visionary decided to lure Balboa to Colorado with his ambitions for the club and the league as a whole.
Balboa was mulling a move from Liga MX’s Club León to Mexican giants Cruz Azul at the time. But his history playing for the Colorado Foxes in the American Professional Soccer League years prior, along with Anschutz’s pitch, made the Rapids move a “no-brainer.”
Growth for Balboa and the team he instantly became the face of wasn’t easy in the early days. The team trained at a local rec center, outside of which two trailers functioned as the team’s facilities. One held equipment, and the other was a locker room and shower space with water that was lukewarm at best.
To promote the team, Balboa and teammates stood outside on street corners on Federal Boulevard waving Rapids flags. They appeared on every TV and radio station that would have them.
“I think the things (Balboa) did to help grow this league can’t be underestimated and they certainly can’t be forgotten,” Rapids president Pádraig Smith told The Post. “The league wouldn’t be where it is if it weren’t for players like Marcelo Balboa. … A lot of it rests on the shoulders of (Balboa) and what he did to help this league survive and then thrive.”
Balboa described his role in less grandiose terms.
“I hate to say it, but you had to pimp yourself out,” Balboa said. “You had to do things you didn’t have to do in Mexico. Mexico already had 75 years of soccer compared to one year of soccer in the U.S., so we did anything and everything.”
That hustle bled onto the field, and Balboa proved early on he was more than just a name — or the guy who missed that bicycle kick.
Balboa scored the club’s first goal in its second game against the Dallas Burn — a tap-in which he insists should belong to Jean Harbor for the assist he provided. Balboa also scored the last of three goals in that game.
Balboa, a center back, scored seven goals that season, but the Rapids finished dead last in the league’s inaugural 1996 season. They made moves for big players in the offseason and ended up in the 1997 MLS Cup final against D.C. United, but lost, 2-1, in front of a then-MLS-record 57,000 fans.
Balboa remembers scoring three of four bicycle kick attempts in his career, two when he was a much younger player. But he missed the one he “needed to make” in 1994. In eerie fashion during a 2000 match against the Columbus Crew, Balboa came true on what drew Anschutz to him in the first place. From essentially the exact same spot on the field as the 1994 attempt, he nailed a bicycle for what is still one of the most iconic goals in MLS history.
The silhouette of the attempt lives on as an easter egg on the jock-tag of the Rapids’ 30th anniversary ‘Original Green’ kits, which will make their home debut Saturday night when Balboa’s number is immortalized.
“My dad made it clear to me when I was a younger player that if you’re going to be a defender, you’ve got to do things differently than most to stick out,” Balboa said.
He certainly did for young players like Chris Armas, another original MLS player for the L.A. Galaxy and Chicago Fire, who is now the Rapids’ head coach.
They shared fields on opposite sides for years in the MLS before they finally joined paths for a U.S. Men’s National Team match that turned out to be Balboa’s last. It was a friendly against Iran in 2000, which the teams drew, 1-all.
If there was a torch to pass from one future National Soccer Hall of Famer to another, it was in the form of Armas’ sweltering half-volley for his first goal in red, white and blue. Armas doesn’t recall much about the match aside from the goal — his first of two in a lengthy international career — but he and Balboa reminisce on those times often.
“Although I was right behind him as one of the pioneers, his group — that national team group of him, Tab Ramos, John Harkes and (Eric) Wynalda — those guys paved the way for all of us,” Armas said. “They were the ones, those marquee players on each team. … They were the household names, and I remind him of that and I thank him for that.”
Balboa, whose jersey will be just the fifth to be retired in MLS history, has waited for this moment for a handful of years. The club floated the idea the year after it retired Pablo Mastroeni’s No. 25, but Balboa declined because it would have been “disrespectful” to retire another jersey so soon.
This year — the league’s 30th season, a year before a World Cup stateside — felt like the right time.
As much as preparation has been an emphasis for his playing, coaching and broadcasting career, a jersey retirement ceremony is new ground.
“Come the 16th, you’ll see a babbling fool more than likely, in tears, trying to get words out,” Balboa said.
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