• “From the Sandlots to the World Cup — INSIDE Seven Decades of American Soccer” By Joseph A. Machnik (2025)
Joe Machnik is now well known as Fox Sports’ on-air rules analyst.
He has also been:
A men’s and women’s college head coach. A pro league head coach and World Cup assistant coach. A referee who officiated pros and college championships. A professional league commissioner. An MLS vice president. An entrepreneur — his No.1 Soccer Camps became the first national camp for goalkeepers. And, of course, he played the game.
Machnik’s memoir begins with his childhood in Brooklyn, where he grew up a hockey fan and played basketball and baseball.
He first witnessed soccer at the parks where he went to play baseball. Machnik started watching the soccer games from behind the goal, comparing the action to what he knew from hockey. When he did so one Sunday at New Farmer’s Oval …
“There were more than a thousand fans surrounding the field,” he writes. “There was an excitement in the crowd that I had not witnessed before. The crowd could hardly be restrained, they were two and three deep surrounding the entire field. I had company behind the goal.”
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