Scoring in a Final is its own rare feat.
Scoring the game-winner in two different Finals for two different teams in the same year, now that’s rare air. And that’s just where ‘Amazing’ Andy Atuegbu found himself floating in 1976.
In May, the Nigeria-born forward scored the winner in the U.S. Open Cup Final for the San Francisco Athletic Club. Less than seven months later, he’d score the decisive goal again as his University of San Francisco Dons clinched a second straight NCAA title.
Playing on the infamous hard and dusty surface of the Metropolitan Oval in Queens, site of four Open Cup Finals through history, Atuegbu gave Athletic Club a 1-0 lead in the 30th minute of the 1976 Final. Taking the ball on his own, he rifled one of his trademark 35-yard screamers past Inter-Giuliana’s Jamaican goalkeeper Danville Clarke.
“The field really was a mess, especially compared to what we were used to out in California,” chuckled Atuegbu from his home in the Bay Area, where he’s now retired from a career in the medical-chemistry field. “It was all sand and dirt and it really took some getting used to.”
A stringent San Francisco AC defense ensured that Atuegbu’s goal was the only one the visiting team needed on the day – and that SFAC became one of only five Northern California teams to date to lift the Open Cup (then still known as the National Challenge Cup). The San Franciscans had numerous opportunities, but struggled to finish their chances on the narrow field, which had been watered down before kick-off to prevent the early springtime winds from kicking up too much dust.
For the New York-based Inter-Giuliana, it was a second straight loss in an Open Cup Final, having fallen to five-time Open Cup Champions Maccabee AC of Los Angeles in Torrance, California in 1975.
Match-winner Atuegbu wasn’t able to fully enjoy the extended post-game celebrations with the Dewar Cup. He was a man in a justifiable rush. A plane was waiting at JFK Airport, where he was scheduled to join up with the rest of the Nigerian senior national team for a tour of Europe in advance of that summer’s 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal.
What would have been Atuegbu’s debut on the world stage ended in tears on the eve of the Opening Ceremonies. The Nigerian team – and the rest of the African competitors in that year’s Olympic Football Tournament – announced a last-minute boycott of the Games in response to the IOC’s refusal to ban New Zealand, whose rugby team violated the UN’s sporting embargo of South Africa the previous year.
“We were all in tears,” said Atuegbu, who grew up playing in his hometown of Jos, alongside his three brothers, before earning a scholarship to the University of San Francisco. “A military plane was sent to fly us back to Nigeria and we cried the whole way.”
It wasn’t the only time Atuegbu faced national-team heartache. He was included in the 1980 Nigerian team that would win that year’s Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) on home soil. He was unable to play, however, as his studies in San Francisco took precedence. “It was my senior year and it would have taken me away for a whole month,” he said of missing out on playing for a continental crown alongside his brother Aloysius AKA ‘Blockbuster’ – a Nigerian national team icon of the era. “Maybe if I was a freshman or a sophomore, it would have been OK.”
For many of the players on the 1976 San Francisco AC team, it was the midpoint of an incredible year of victories. The Open Cup title was the first-ever won by a Northern California team – thus making them history-makers in this country’s oldest tournament and joining a trail blazed by Golden State neighbors to the south like the Los Angeles Kickers and the McIlvaine Canvasbacks.
To reach the Final, San Francisco AC had to beat Big Four Chevrolet of St. Louis. The SFAC team, coached by legendary University of San Francisco coach Steve Negoesco, had no fewer than seven starters from his Dons’ team in the lineup for that 1976 Open Cup Semifinal.
The Dons had already won the 1975 NCAA Championship, defeating SIU-Edwardsville 4-0 in the championship game on the Cougars home field. Atuegbu, who was switched from forward to fullback for that game, still managed to score.
It’s one of the elements that made the path to the 1976 Open Cup title so interesting. Big Four Chevrolet had several of those SIU-Edwardsville Cougars players in their lineup, and they were looking for a dose of revenge (which never came). After Brian Higgins gave the Saint Louis club a lead, the English-born Mal Roche, one of those double-duty San Francisco players, tied it up.
Theo Vander Hayden then gave the Dons the lead in the first minute of overtime, but Ty Keough, who’d go on to become a noted soccer broadcaster and whose father played on the 1950 USA World Cup, scored the equalizer (2-2). Atuegbu scored the fourth kick in an eventual shootout win for the Frisco men.
The Dons and their San Francisco AC contingent, including Atuegbu, picked up right where they left off when the college season started in September, rolling to a 20-2-3 record and a second straight appearance in the NCAA Final.
This time, playing against Indiana at the University of Pennsylvania’s soccer field, the margin for the Dons was closer than it had been the previous year. Similar to the goal he scored months before in the Open Cup Final, Atuegbu picked up a ball in midfield, raced forward, and blasted a 20-yard scorcher past Hoosiers goalkeeper Cary Feld.
Atuegbu, who had an assist in the Semifinal game against Clemson, had several other chances against Indiana – and he was eventually named Player of the Tournament for a second-straight year. With a powerful build, the 5-8 170 lb Atuegbu had a knack for getting goals at the right time.
The 1976 victory was the only time San Francisco AC, who changed their name back to San Francisco Italian Athletic Club in 1979, reached the Open Cup Final. But Atuegbu again led the Dons to the NCAA Final in 1977, where they lost to Hartwick.
Atuegbu seemed to get better with every year of his college career. As a freshman, he led the West Coast Intercollegiate Soccer Conference in scoring, earning All-West Honors. As a sophomore, he led the team in scoring, was Player of the Tournament in the NCAA finals and earned All-America honors.
Junior year was more of the same. All-America again, a second straight title and tournament MVP Award. In his senior year, although the Dons fell short in the championship game, he was again an All-America selection.
Atuegbu still ranks among the career leaders at the University of San Francisco. His 87 points rank 10th, 43 goals 4th and 22 assists tied for eighth. And he racked up those numbers mostly while playing as a midfielder. Influential U.S. soccer-based publication Soccer America named him to its College Team of the Century.
He was the first draft pick ever of the NASL’s Oakland Stompers in 1978. When the club moved to Edmonton, he went along. Atuegbu made 55 appearances in two NASL seasons, playing mostly as a defender. He had three goals and 10 assists. “I went with the flow,” he said about uprooting to Canada, before moving to the Major Indoor Soccer League where he scored 31 goals and had 26 assists with the Hartford Helions and the San Francisco Fog. “I was young and I just loved playing the game.”
After a brief stint in Portugal with Estoril, he returned to the Bay area to play for the San Francisco Greek Americans. It was with that team, in 1985, that he’d bolster his U.S. Open Cup bonafides by winning another title nearly a decade on from his first. “There were so many teams in the Bay Area, and the SFSFL, that were so strong and competitive.
“And I was able to celebrate that time,” said Atuegbo about his second Open Cup title, earned at the age of 34, which came in Saint Louis with a 2-1 win against 1957 Champs Kutis. “I lifted the trophy with my teammates and even though it was so long ago, I do remember we were a motivated group of players and it was a great triumph for us.”
Charles Cuttone is a writer/author, historian and three-time winner of the National Soccer Coaches Association writing award. Jonah Fontela is editor-in-chief ofusopencup.com.