He might’ve been a standard-bearer for a demographic criminally underrepresented in British football. An unlikely star of Sikh heritage in an era when British Asians were virtually absent from the game. Roger Verdi, a son of ethnic Punjabis, who changed his name to help navigate the murky waters of less enlightened times. A boy coming of age in the 1960s who shrugged off early jibes and doubts to land youth deals at two of the country’s top clubs and, apparently, nearly a third. From one angle, the world appeared to be at his feet.
It’s a fantastical image – mostly because the dream didn’t quite work out the way Rajinder Singh Virdee had intended. But also because minds continues to puzzle over when the first significant footballer from Britain’s sizable ethnic south Asian community will emerge.
Nevertheless, as the 1970s commenced, the world beckoned. For Verdi, however, it was on a different stage. The glamorous world of a developing game in North America called. Yet he had essentially been chased there, faced with limited opportunity at home following his release from Ipswich Town before he could make a first-team appearance. It was a dizzying platform for the 18-year-old. His youth career had been solid. He’d also signed schoolboy forms with Wolverhampton Wanderers at 12. It just wasn’t quite what he wanted. It wasn’t Britain. Instead, he became a member of the supporting cast in the fabled days of the North American Soccer League, when it was dominated by a glitterati that included Pele, Eusebio and George Best.
He was to share a pitch with these superstars, which he acknowledges was a joy, and he played on the same team as legendary Chelsea goalkeeper Peter Bonetti as well as Scotland and Liverpool great Graeme Souness. But what soon becomes clear is a lingering sadness, a feeling he can’t quite shake that he might’ve had a career somewhere, anywhere in the top four divisions in England.
“When I couldn’t find any club in England, I knew I couldn’t give up,” Verdi explains with a sigh, lamenting the loss of an opportunity at hometown club Aston Villa shortly before the end of his apprenticeship at Ipswich. He grew up in Smethwick, close to the home ground of Premier League West Brom, after moving to the Birmingham suburb from Kenya, where he was born. He wasn’t a supporter of either club, but the thrill of playing on home soil appealed.
It didn’t work out, but there was little time to be despondent. In an ironic twist, it was a former West Brom star who held the key to America. “I had put in too much work as a youngster and was looking for a miracle to happen. And it did when I received a call from Bobby Cram, the ex-Albion and Colchester full-back, who had a coaching job offer in Vancouver. I didn’t haste and packed my boots with one bag, and was off to London Heathrow to meet Bobby and off to Vancouver, not knowing of what to expect, but I felt happy to venture on a journey where I could play football.”
In Vancouver, he was off-radar, operating in a minor league. Then he was spotted in a friendly, impressing his NASL opponents. “I was in Vancouver four or five months,” Verdi recalls. “We played an exhibition game. It was with Montreal Olympique of the North American Soccer League, and I played right-back. They had a good winger on the left side. He was supposed to be one of the best players. I just shut him down.”
There commenced his unlikely journey among the big names. After Montreal, there were stops at Miami Toros and St Louis Stars, where he got to know Bonetti. In Montreal, he remembers high-jinx with Souness, who he had played against as a youngster when Verdi was with Ipswich and Souness with Tottenham Hotspur. It was hotel and drinking mischief that landed a group of players in the sort of trouble which Souness the manager might have dished out. But mostly, Verdi says, his off-the-field activities subverted the glamor generated by the likes of notorious socializer George Best. “In all honesty, it was like part-time football, the season was short and players come and go each season,” Verdi says gravely. “Some bring their families. It was like a holiday and also play football. The sad thing was that you never knew if that club you were playing for was going to be in existence the following season. I had seen a franchise in one state and next year it’s either moved or gone.”
His musings are curious. Because behind this mystique lurks at least one shining moment. Seven years into his North American stint, Verdi was playing for St Louis and they came up against Pele and the New York Cosmos. Next up were Seattle Sounders, apparently wary of a little-known defender who accomplished what few before him could muster. A United Press International report from May 6, 1977, sets the scene: “Seattle expects some tough marking from Stars defender Roger Verdi, who was named NASL defensive player of the week when he held Pele of the Cosmos to just three shots.” Quite a feat. For Verdi? Somewhat. After relating a more nuanced resume of both times he faced up to Pele, he quickly points out Pele’s advanced years by this stage – 35.
Verdi still seems to draw some comfort from the man-of-the-match performance, though not without a disclaimer. “Pele did not speak great English but he did say to me: ‘Are we married?’ I said: ‘Yeah, but we’re getting a divorce at full-time.’
“But there was one time when I thought I had him boxed in at the corner flag and he just spun the ball round me and then he was gone. I couldn’t believe it.” So Verdi did at least get some of the old Pele treatment, what he later calls in reference to the awe he felt on watching the effortless displays of George Best for the Los Angeles Aztecs “chasing shadows. Best was unbelievable,” he says.
“I was with the San Jose Earthquakes by then. It was 1978, in the Coliseum, I think. Best had his problems, but football came easy to him. He was out of this world, could do anything with a ball.” He marveled, too, at Franz Beckenbauer, also of the New York Cosmos. “He was so arrogant, supreme confidence. I remember warming up and just staring at him, just the way he moved – an incredible level of ability. I was like a kid. I had watched all these guys in their peak. Carlos Alberto as well.”
The record books also record for posterity Verdi’s lowest NASL moment. He was the Miami Toros player who took the decisive penalty in the 1974 NASL championship game against the Aztecs at the Orange Bowl – and missed. “I used to take penalty kicks all the time,” Verdi says. “When they had a draw, it wasn’t a draw. The American mentality was they want a winner. It was like, if we’ve got 10 minutes to go, we’ll get Roger on there for penalties. I took six out of six back then. Come to the final, all I’ve got to do is put it in. I don’t know what happened, but I hesitated. I never do that because when I took the penalty kicks, I know where I’m going all the time. I changed; I have no idea why. I went, I changed my mind as I was making my run towards the ball. It went over the bar. They had a Trinidadian guy, Tony Douglas, he came up and knocked it in and that was the winning goal.”
Verdi is convinced his true potential was never realized: “I’m not saying I would have been a superstar or even a first division player, but surely I could find a club somewhere down the divisions.” Before leaving England, he recalls going for what he thought might be a trial at a non-league club. He did not get that far. “The manager didn’t know who I was. He knew my name. But he didn’t know of my race. And I went to watch the game and then in the clubhouse I met him. I went up there and I said hello. He said: did you enjoy the game? That was it. No communication. I could sense by the mannerism when we met. I think in those days, they were very narrow-minded, they couldn’t see.”
Verdi believes he got as far as he did through sheer grit, choosing to live outsidehis culture rather than becoming an engineer or a doctor and marrying within his faith. His parents did not play a part in his football dream, though neither did they do anything to oppose it, he points out. “They never once saw me play, but they were great parents,” Verdi says. “I had no guidance, and there was no real football development when I was a youth. You could either play or you couldn’t. I was a midfielder and then through an injury someone suddenly saw I could play in defence.” The racial barrier is gone today and only cultural pressures might remain as an obstacle for young South Asians in Britain, Verdi muses happily. But not before wondering where he might’ve reached had he been born into the current generation.
No one can accuse him of not trying. Which recalls the quirk of his re-christening as Roger Verdi. The doctored portmanteau of his real name – Rajinder Singh Virdee – even drew Italian interest until it was discovered he was as Italian as bhangra music. Back in the US, the Roger Verdi of today works as a warranty manager at a construction company. He has been involved in coaching at various levels and, at 62, allows his mind to wander. “I think it would be interesting to see how I would coach and manage a small struggling club and see if I could get the best out of them and take them to the next level.”
He remains a skeptic of top-flight soccer in America. For all its stability, Verdi laments, Major League Soccer bears echoes of the NASL he knew on the playing level. Yet he retains hope the country’s academy programs provide the sort of development that eluded him.
“The NASL was just starting to grow back then. The commissioner was Phil Woosnam, former Villa player, and I really didn’t know what to think of it, as it was very new to the American public. We did a lot of promotions, clinics at schools, summer camps, etc. It was not what I wanted from football but it was all I had, and I had to make the best of it.”
