“Pele and I were in a limo,” Terry Cecil, an Aston Villa fan, recalls from his home in California. “We were in Atlanta with the Ford Motor Company and on behalf of a youth soccer project.
“Someone had told me he might not be happy at Puma. Back then, Pele and Puma and his boots were historic. So I said, ‘Would you be interested in going with another boot?’ Mick Hoban was working at Umbro and I knew Mick from our Aston Villa and Atlanta Chiefs connection.
“‘Would you be interested in Pele?’ I asked. Mick thought it was a joke. But in the end, we got the deal done and Umbro became entrenched in Brazil. I was at IMG (the International Management Group) and we represented Pele, Tiger Woods, Arnold Palmer and Wayne Gretzky.”
Tracing this story back involves Doug Ellis, the late and legendary Aston Villa figure, the club itself and Cecil’s father, Richard, known as Dick. All three components came together to forge an unlikely kinship, resulting in Villa nearly being sold to the Atlanta Braves. What is more, it merges Pele, Woods and, as you will learn, The Beatles and Martin Luther King, into an extraordinary tale.
Had Dick’s acquisition of Villa gone through, it would have marked the first infiltration of American owners in British football and paved the way for the influx of North American influence now. As it transpired, 35 years passed until Villa had its first American owner when Randy Lerner bought the club in 2006. Presently, Villa are co-owned by Wes Edens, an American billionaire.
While Dick was born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska, it truly begins in Milwaukee. In the late fifties, Dick started coaching youth baseball before working for the MLB’s Milwaukee Braves as a scout.
Incrementally and with every passing promotion, Dick rubbed shoulders with senior executives. He was appointed head of operations and then, with his foot firmly in the door of the organisation, went on to be named vice-president, and eventually president, of ‘Braves Productions’, in charge of booking events at the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.
“When he was VP, the franchise said, ‘We’re going to move from Milwaukee to Atlanta and you’re going to be the Atlanta-based lead executive’,” says Terry. “His job was to build the stadium and run the business affairs. He soon realised he needed more events at the stadium than just baseball. So he put on his first concert in 1965… The Beatles.”
The following year and with an ignited curiosity for large-scale events, Dick watched the soccer World Cup in England. Technological advancements in television meant the tournament was broadcast across continents.
“It was the perfect time,” says 62-year-old Terry, who is part of the pickleball international committee and CEO of the International Neurodiversity Alliance. “My father took a look and just said, ‘I want to be a part of this’. In ’67, he became part of a founding group that designed the first big pro league here, known as the NPSL (National Professional Soccer League).
“America had money and we were looking to England to sign players. He struck up a connection with Doug Ellis through business and went over with the intention to buy Villa. He and Doug got very close to a deal but the regulations regarding how to purchase a club made it tough. So he decided to sign a lot of Villa players, including Mick Hoban, Peter McFarland, Vic Crowe and Phil Woosnam. They all came over to sign for his team, Atlanta Chiefs.”
Terry Cecil, right, with Peter McFarland in more recent times (photo courtesy of Terry Cecil)
The Chiefs were founded the year after the 1966 World Cup and were the brainchild of Dick, who was still serving as vice president of the Atlanta Braves baseball franchise. Its name was derived from Atlanta’s Native American branding, with bosses intending to create marketing symmetry between ‘the Chiefs’ and ‘the Braves’.
Dick saw value in having a professional soccer team based in Georgia, which, in turn, added events to the Atlanta stadium. It would become the Chiefs home ground for four of the first five seasons.
Dick recruited Woosnam to coach the side. Woosnam had spent four years at Villa but left in ’66 as part of the Chiefs’ start-up project. He and Dick would regularly go abroad on scouting trips, to sign players from countries ranging from France, Zambia and Ghana. Within two years, Atlanta Chiefs had won their first NASL (North American Soccer League) title.
The image below was taken on that day in 1968. Three former Villa figures are in the picture; Woosnam on the far left, Woodward in the tie — he left Villa to be the Chiefs business manager but returned in the seventies as commercial director — and former Villa player and manager, Crowe, lifting the trophy.
English influence continued to permeate the Chiefs’ early history. In 1968, once more attempting to drive revenue and events at the stadium, they hosted Manchester City across two friendly matches.
City, at the time, were champions of England but lost the first game 3-2. City’s assistant manager Malcolm Allison was hardly magnanimous in defeat, insisting the Chiefs “couldn’t play in the fourth division in England”. City requested an immediate rematch and lost again, this time 2-1. Ray Bloomfield, who had joined from Villa, captained the Chiefs on the day.
A few months later and as a precursor to the limousine story, Atlanta hosted a Pele-led Santos side in another exhibition match. Santos’ 6-2 victory was in front of more than 25,000 spectators.
The initial burst of appetite for soccer in America quickly simmered, though, with the NASL enduring a sharp decline. Twelve of the 17 teams folded in the late sixties, not helped by the expiration of broadcast rights. The five remaining sides played double round-robin tournaments in efforts to increase the number of fixtures, but the league was a sinking ship. The Chiefs could no longer warrant the operating costs of playing at the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, leading to the club being sold to the owners of the professional basketball team, the Atlanta Hawks.
In the 1973 campaign, after Dick had left to become Coca-Cola’s first global sports marketing executive, the Chiefs were renamed the Atlanta Apollos by the new owners.
Dick returned to Atlanta’s third iteration in 1979 as president and co-owner, helping to grow the sport’s profile in the United States to the extent that he would, a decade later, serve as a senior consultant to the 1994 USA World Cup committee.
“My father stayed active,” smiles Terry. “In ’86, he bought the rights to the FIFA World All-Star game to benefit UNICEF. I got to work on that, where we had Diego Maradona and Franz Beckenbauer playing.”
A copy of the Daily Mail at the time of the proposed takeover (Terry Cecil)
“I talked to my father about him buying Villa,” says Terry. “The plan was for us to own the majority of Villa. I’m not sure how much exactly, whether it was 80 or 100 per cent. There were so many owners at the time and the laws were just so complex and new that they prevented the sale. An investment like this had never really happened before, so it was novel for everyone. But he and Doug came extremely close to completing a deal and the owner of Villa would have been the Atlanta Braves baseball team.
“I’m glad they didn’t buy Villa because could you just imagine the reaction in England back then? When you look at baseball in America, especially in the fifties and sixties, it was so powerful. The NFL and NBA weren’t that strong then. Baseball was the backbone of America. Doug must have seen that by aligning with this, Villa would be broadening out and have to support a stable support system, financially. He was pretty forward-thinking.”
In the late sixties, a handful of English teams travelled to the States and represented NASL sides in lucrative tournaments, with Villa being Atlanta’s representation.
A programme from when Villa represented Atlanta in a tournament (Terry Cecil)
“These people were thinking of things that even today, they probably aren’t thinking as deeply as they should,” says Terry. “It’s all about investments and TV ratings, whereas this was all natural. It was about respecting the passion organically. My father and Doug saw a way that benefitted both parties while protecting the identity of both clubs.”
Terry recalls tales from his childhood and how his youth was intertwined with his father’s Villa affiliation. Players befriended Dick and would travel to the U.S. for parties at the family house. Tommy Docherty, Villa’s manager from 1968 to 1970, was a close friend. This undoubtedly helped to grease the wheels for players moving between the two clubs — a relationship which proved to be reciprocal.
Crowe, for example, signed for the Chiefs and was tasked with marking Pele in the friendly against Santos, and returned to be Villa’s manager after Docherty left in January 1970. Moving in the opposite direction, Freddie Mwila and Emment Kapengwe — two Zambian players Dick and Woosnam had scouted — joined Villa.
Crowe against Pele when the Chiefs hosted Santos in 1968 (Terry Cecil)
“Doug and my father maintained a good relationship,” says Terry. “They wanted to build a project together, rather than just the sense of stealing each other’s players. When I was 17, I got the opportunity to train with Villa. I was probably the first American to ever go over. Ron Saunders was the manager and when I showed up, he didn’t want to talk to me. He was, like, ‘What is an American doing here?’ I lived in a hostel and became friends with young youth players like Colin Gibson and Gary Williams.”
Terry, right, and Villa’s Gary Williams in 1977 — five years before Williams played a key role in Villa’s European Cup triumph (Terry Cecil)
Dick and his wife, Pam, were civil rights activists in Atlanta. They were entrenched in the community and were heavily involved in protests, with Pam participating in the Selma Marches — three protest marches from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama in 1965, rallying against the system that blocked Black Americans’ right to vote.
Within a period of significant racial conflict, Dick worked alongside civil rights leaders to accomplish equality in sports. One of his greatest successes was ending the racial segregation that would exist during the Atlanta Braves’ pre-season training.
“Both my parents were friends with Dr Martin Luther King and his wife Coretta,” adds Terry. “Atlanta was at the centre of the Civil Rights movement. My father made a huge effort to sign African players and went to Zambia to stage soccer trials. He signed Freddie Mwila and Emment Kapengwe, who both joined Villa from the Atlanta Chiefs. Villa signing them and having black players was a pretty historic moment.”
Dick with a ball signed by Mwila (Terry Cecil)
After a two-month trial at Atlanta and under the watchful eye of Woosnam, by then the Chiefs’ manager, Mwila signed permanently. His name would be further steeped into Chiefs history after scoring the winning goal in the 3-2 victory against City.
Mwila was 21 and his performances in those marquee fixtures, along with Kapengwe, convinced Docherty to take them to Birmingham in August 1969. They became the third and fourth Black players to play for Villa after Willie Clarke and Stan Horne.
A multitude of factors, most notably a downturn in Villa’s overall form, contributed to the pair making a combined total of four appearances and once Docherty had left upon Villa’s relegation to the third division nine months later, Mwila and Kapengwe returned to Zambia.
Still, Villa and Atlanta had established a partnership akin to a multi-club model by the early seventies and while Kapengwe remained at home to impart the soccer expertise he had acquired to locals, Mwila re-joined the Chiefs.
The Chiefs became the Apollos, with its brand remaining on the shelf until 1979 when the Colorado Caribous franchise moved to Atlanta with Dick and Ted Turner as owners. Until the franchise folded again in 1981, they played two seasons back at the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.
Dick with Pele when Santos came to play the Chiefs in 1968 (Terry Cecil)
Dick died in August 2023 after going on to serve in several more roles. As well as a senior consultant to the 1994 World Cup and a producer for the UNICEF World All-Star Games, he acted as chairman of the National Professional Soccer League Players Committee and was a consultant for the 1996 Olympics, held in Atlanta. The following year, Dick was inducted into the Georgia Soccer Hall of Fame.
Beginning in baseball, Dick held an integral role in founding the first American soccer league and through several iterations, aiding Atlanta United’s success in MLS. According to a 1968 report by the Chiefs, fewer than 150 people were playing organised soccer before the league’s inception. Two years on and that figure exponentially grew to 16,000.
“The ’66 World Cup and Villa were key in my father’s love for soccer,” says Terry. “It’s why I’m an enormous Villa supporter now. There’s a deep history with Villa in Atlanta.”
