March 29 (1981)

Steve Zungul scores his fourth goal of the match with 30 seconds left to lift the New York Arrows to a 6-5 win over the St. Louis Steamers in the MISL championship game at the Checkerdome before 17,206 fans. Tony Glavin scores twice for the Steamers. The Steamers think they have broken the 5-5 tie with seven minutes left when Emilio Romero drives a shot off the inside of the post. But the ball ricochets across the goal mouth and stays in play. With the score tied and time running out, the Steamers launch an all-out attack. Zungul, “The Lord of All Indoors,” who scored an incredible 108 goals in the 40-game regular season — 58 more than the league’s No. 2 scorer — stays behind. The Arrows’ David D’Errico wins the ball in front of the Steamers’ bench and directs the ball to Luis Alberto, positioned just outside the attacking third. Alberto immediately sends the ball to an unmarked Zungul at the top of the penalty area. Steamers’ keeper Slobo Ilijevski dives too late to tackle the ball away from Zungul at the “D” on the edge of the penalty area, and, as Zungul stumbles, he manages to get off a shot that rolls into the net. “We are a better team than they are,” Zungul tells St. Louis Globe-Democrat sportswriter Dave Lange afterward. “I play to win. I’m a winner. But you have to have luck.” The MISL title is the third straight for the Arrows, coached by former St. Louis Stars player and Yugoslavian native Don Popovic. Popovic had convinced Zungul to leave his native Yugoslavia in 1978. Zungul had been one of Europe’s top young forwards when he played outdoors for Hajduk Split in Yugloslavia, scoring 177 goals in six seasons, and had appeared 14 times for the Yugoslavian national team. Initially banned by FIFA from competing outdoors for allegedly deceiving Hajduk Split when he moved to New York, Zungul will win his case to play outdoors in the U.S. Supreme Court. Zungul will amass 36 goals outdoors in two seasons with the NASL’s Golden Bay Earthquakes in 1983-84. He will go on to score 715 goals indoors from 1978-90, retiring as indoor soccer’s all-time leading scorer, a mark since surpassed by several others. H will be named to the U.S. Soccer Hall of Fame in December 2022.