Soccer or futbol in the new world

 

Me, circa 1959, greeting the Ukrainian National Football Team in the US.
My favorite player was Noha (a name meaning 'leg') standing to my right.

My father, Marian Korzeniowski, was coach of the Ukrainian National Football Team in the US, Philadelphia to be exact, in the late 1950s, early '60s. Theirs was a powerful team that traveled the country and occasionally the world to play 'футбол' or 'копаний мяч' or kick ball as my father called it. They were considered the best in America, not that soccer was very big in America at the time. 

Tato recruited players from all over the world, including Brazil, which meant he had to learn all their languages. My father told me he spoke 13 languages. I know he spoke Ukrainian, Polish, German, Austrian, Italian, Chech, Slovakian, Portuguese and English. I don't know what the others were, perhaps Spanish and Russian among them.

It was the Ukrainian diaspora's way of kicking it to the Soviets who kept them from returning home after the war. They made their way the only way they knew, by being the best, the strongest, the most fit and ready to defend their honour, their liberty and their freedom. 

My dad, on the left wearing a suit.