Bill Nuttall on saving Pelé’s penalty and building a US team from scratch

Former goalkeeper and US Soccer general manager is hosting the Spain team at his training camp in Chattanooga

>At the foot of Signal Mountain on a bend in the Tennessee river, over the little level crossing like a postcard of America, past the sheriff at the gate and through an avenue of pines, the perfect pitch awaits Lamine Yamal, Rodri and the rest. So does a man. He’s 6ft 3in, 78 years old, his name is Bill Nuttall, and he’s here every day.

>“I’ve got nothing else to do,” he says, laughing. He’s done it all: he cleaned out Pelé and got cleaned out by Gordon Banks, coached Gerd Müller and built a US national team from scratch, the hosts making history in 1994. He also brought Spain here, an even better host now than he was back then.

>“Isn’t that a story and a half?” he says at the selección’s training base five miles outside Chattanooga, home to the World Cup favourites. Well, it’s one of his stories. He has hundreds and, boy, can he tell them. The only problem is knowing where to start.

>Let’s begin at the beginning. It’s 1976 and Pelé has just hit town. It’s the North American Soccer League season opener, the New York Cosmos at the Miami Toros at Tamiami Park. The Cosmos are winning 1-0 when the ball reaches Pelé, all alone, on the edge of the area. Enter, Nuttall.

>“I was the Toros goalkeeper. I’m looking around, can’t see anyone, so I go out and flatten him,” he says. “Today, you’re gone. I didn’t even get a yellow, but it was a penalty. Pelé looks at me, walks up and … I push it wide. There was no footage then but some guy got a couple of stills. You see me diving but not touching the ball.”

>With that, Nuttall cracks up again and so it starts, a life in 90 minutes and quite the cast of characters: from player to coach to team manager.

>“Here we were in the NASL, chugging along, averaging 3,000, 4,000 a game. Then Pelé comes and the whole thing goes crazy. The Cosmos started adding internationals. Eusébio was at Toronto. We played at the Yankee stadiums, all the hoopla. It’s America: all glitz and superlatives. The Cosmos magnified that but they were a team, not the Harlem Globetrotters. I found it fascinating.

>“We moved to a 19,000 stadium called Lockhart, in Fort Lauderdale, and became the Strikers, but I didn’t end the year well. I’m 28, also working as a coach at FIU [Florida International University] in Miami. Ron Newman, the coach, calls me in and says, ‘I’m going to cut you loose. I’m bringing in another goalkeeper, with more experience.’ Oh. OK. I said: ‘I understand I’m out of here but do you mind me asking who?’ He says: ‘It’s Gordon Banks …’

>“He’s semi-retired. He’s had the car accident. I said: ‘Ron, I won’t be a problem. I just want to train with this guy.’ Gordon and I got close. I am fas-cin-ated. There’s Gordon and he’s doing this with one eye. You try doing anything with one eye, period.

>“I ended up as assistant coach, under Cor van der Hart, who had been Rinus Michels’ right-hand man. We had five big internationals. Nene Cubillas, Brian Kidd, Jan van Beveren, Ricardo Villa – strange guy, Ricardo – and Gerd Müller, the nicest man you could ever meet, such a humble guy. All this press came to see him, every German tourist. But he always wore the same polo shirt, he could give a flip.

>“Every time he got anything, he gave it to the staff. But he hit the juice hard. It got very bad back in Germany but Bayern Munich really looked after him, cleaned him up. I saw him years later, gave him a big hug. I was so pleased to see how they took care of him.”

>How does a guy like you coach guys like that? “I don’t,” Nuttall says, laughing. “I did the warm ups. Technical reports, scouting, corners.”

>Something bigger than coaching awaited. When the US were awarded the 1994 World Cup in 1988 they had no professional league and barely had a national team, just what Nuttall calls “a college all-star team”. It was his job to build one. He can still hear the laments, the plan to avoid them becoming a laughing stock. “‘Why do they give the World Cup to a third-world country?’ ‘This is going to be a joke.’ ‘They don’t know how to play football.’

>Alan Rothenberg wins US soccer presidential elections just after the 1990 World Cup. He says: ‘We’re going to have to have a standing national team ready for 1994.’

>“Alan, and Hank Steinbrecher, the general secretary, get Bora Milutinovic as coach. Hank and I have known each other for years. He calls me and says: ‘I need to find a general manager who understands foreign coaches, the national scene, and has no baggage.’” There’s a grin. “I said: ‘I’m in.’ I was in marketing at Mitre.”

>“My job was to sign players, organise it all, find a facility. We went to Mission Viejo, outside Los Angeles. That was their home for three years. The players were owned by the federation. Most were college kids saying: ‘Shit, I can go to Mission Viejo, train there, get paid, maybe go to the World Cup.’

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>“I had to find games because we had zero money and a coach who says he needs competition. As hosts, we didn’t even have qualifiers. I got lucky that the Soviet Union broke up: one potential game became six or seven. For three years we played somewhere in the world every 10 days.”

>The team they built made history, reaching the last 16 before Brazil ended their run. “Brazil toyed with us, but that’s not the point: we lost [only] 1-0 to Brazil, world champions,” Nuttall says.

>He, meanwhile, landed back at El Toro naval station and packed it all away, turning Mission Viejo back to the city and the players over to their new lives. “The national team experiment,” as he calls it, was finished. “You’re going at 100mph and suddenly, screech, it stops.”

>Thirty-two years on, the World Cup is back. Nuttall left US Soccer that same summer, but remained connected. He also came to live in Chattanooga, close to his granddaughters. In 2015, he had brought the US women’s team to town as part of their World Cup victory tour, and as the US prepared for the 2026 men’s edition, an idea formed: Chattanooga would make a great place for a base camp. The grounds at the $70,000 (£53,000)-a-year Baylor prep school where his granddaughters go, five miles outside the city, were ideal. “So,” Nuttall says, “I call a guy I know at Fifa and say: ‘What’s the process?’”

>Long, it turns out. A host committee is set up, an inspection committee comes and Chattanooga is included in the first catalogue. “New York, Philadelphia, Washington … and Chattanooga. People are like: ‘What the hell are they doing there?’” Nuttall says, laughing again.

>“The Germans come the first week. The Dutch. The Japanese. The most organised first. It goes quiet for a bit. A representative from Spain comes. A week later, five more of them come back: staff, coaches.

>“Spain fall in love. They loved the privacy, the size of the city, Baylor, the whole ambience. ‘Who else is looking? We want it.’ There are so many calls, visits, staff showing us drawings of what they need; we’re doing everything we can, getting everyone on board. Spain even invite us to the Copa del Rey final, treat our staff like royalty. They were so lovely.”

>Nuttall cracks up again. “They originally wanted the whole school campus but it’s like: ‘You want million-dollar players in a 2 x 4 dorm? With no bathroom?’ So a hotel is set up downtown, the work is done to make it just right. Spain pay to make this base just right – where we’re sitting now has been put up on the tennis courts – and the same goes for the hotel.

>“A lot of it will be taken down again but I’m sure they’ll keep some; it’s pretty cool. Everyone will be like: ‘I want to stay in Lamine’s room. Which one’s Lamine’s?’ Every room will be Lamine’s. He’s 102 … 103 … and 104. The whole thing is just surreal. The city has been so excited. Everyone bought into it, gave so much, without realising the magnitude of the World Cup.”

>Now they know, hosts and hosted happy. After three weeks here, Spain reluctantly leave Chattanooga on Tuesday. Once more across the river and over the rail tracks where, for the last time, they’ll be watched by the goalkeeper who flattened Pelé and welcomed them into his home and theirs.