While Windischmann was still beaming from the birth of his first child, son Michael, who was two months premature, it was officially announced that the Ridgewood native…
By Dylan Butler
In the span of a few hours last week, Mike Windischmann’s world changed dramatically.
While Windischmann was still beaming from the birth of his first child, son Michael, who was two months premature, it was officially announced that the Ridgewood native was elected to the National Soccer Hall of Fame.
The former captain of the 1990 World Cup team will be inducted with ex-teammates Eric Wynalda and Paul Caligiuri as well as women’s star Michelle Akers on Oct. 11 in Oneonta, N.Y.
Windischmann was voted in by the veteran’s committee, the only of the 295 candidates to receive the necessary 50 percent of the ballots cast.
Wearing a U.S. National Team jersey and a plastic hospital bracelet, Windischmann was still in shock as he sat in the stuffy visitor’s locker room at the Metropolitan Oval.
“It crossed my mind and I always thought, ‘wow, it would be great to be in there with those guys,’ but when I got the news I was totally surprised,” Windischmann told the TimesLedger. “I knew that Michelle and Paul Caligiuri and Eric were going in but to find out I was voted in by my peers, it just shows that the things that I’ve done as I went along, people appreciated it.”
Wary when he first received the phone call two weeks ago because his former teammates on the U.S. National Team were known as practical jokers, the reality began to set in for Windischmann.
“I look at the guys in the Hall of Fame, growing up going to the Cosmos on Randall’s Island and to see those guys in there,” Windischmann said. “To think back then that I would be involved with those guys … especially after the voting, it makes me feel even better.”
Windischmann, 38, made 51 appearances and started 47 games for the U.S. National Team during a seven-year career that culminated with the 1990 World Cup.
“I always said, and maybe people don’t even realize about 1990 and what was going on, but we were kind of the pioneers,” Windischmann said. “We had the World Cup (here) in 1994 and I think it would have been a disaster if we didn’t qualify in 1990.”
The U.S. team ended a 40-year World Cup drought with that appearance and Windischmann started in all three games, including a 1-0 loss to host Italy in Rome.
“Mike was a very passionate player,” said former U.S. National Team coach Bob Gansler, who coaches the Kansas City Wizards in Major League Soccer. “He knew what was going on in the game around the world and was able to go out and play in a very cerebral way. He always did it well.”
Windischmann was a standout player at Adelphi University and went on to play indoor soccer for the Los Angeles Lazers in 1987-88 and outdoors with the Albany Capitals of the American Professional Soccer League.
“Mike had a tremendous left foot, great skill and had a great soccer mind,” said Adelphi coach Bob Montgomery. “He read the game really well, knew where to be at all times and made it easy for everyone to play around him.”
Added former college teammate Ronan Wiseman, head coach of the Long Island Rough Riders: “He was one of the pioneers of the U.S. soccer team. At that stage they were almost all college players and he was one of the founding fathers of the generation to come after him. It’s an honor that’s well-deserved.”
After his playing career was cut short when he tore an anterior cruciate ligament, Windischmann took up coaching. He was the head coach of the boys’ varsity team at Forest Hills and is now the technical director and director of coaching of the Brooklyn Knights.
“Without a doubt a class act,” Metropolitan Oval president Jim Vogt said of Windischmann. “As a coach, you don’t find that class of person around too often.”
Windischmann is also a teacher at JHS 238 in Hollis.
“You go through the sport and you realize when you started, 17 years old, and you realize what my era was, which was the Cosmos and the NASL,” Windischmann said. “I still have autographs of them coming out of the tunnel, Werner Roth, Giorgio Chinaglia, meeting Franz Beckenbauer at the airport.
“To make it there and to see those guys in there as well is the greatest feeling. It’s like the closure of what you really play for and hope for.”
Reach Sports Editor Dylan Butler by e-mail at TimesLedger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 143.
