Steve Zungul
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Slaviša Žungul, known in the United States as Steve Zungul (born July 28, 1954 in Yugoslavia) is a Croat soccer player, who spent most of his career playing in the United States. His unofficial title was the "Lord of all Indoors".
Zungul began his career in his hometown of Split, playing for Hajduk Split starting in 1971 and continuing until 1978, leading the team in scoring every season. He would score a total of 250 goals for Hajduk over his seven seasons and lead them to two Yugoslav championships. He earned 14 caps for Yugoslavia and played in Euro 76. But he never played in the World Cup because he did not serve in the Yugoslav army.
Zungul came to the United States to play indoor soccer with the New York Arrows. The Yugoslav Football Union had not seen the harm of letting him go there, but had not foreseen that Zungul did not want to return to Yugoslavia. The result was that Zungul did not play outdoors again until he went to the Golden Bay Earthquakes of the North American Soccer League in 1983 and 1984, winning the NASL MVP Award in 1984, the league's last season. Zungul registered 20 goals and 10 assists in 24 games that season, but could not keep the Earthquakes out of the bottom of the Western Conference.
Zungul led the MISL in scoring in 1980, after finishing second in 1979, while playing for the New York Arrows in both seasons. Zungul would dominate the league for the next four years, leading the league in scoring each year from 1980 to 1983. After focusing on the NASL for a year in 1984, he returned to the MISL to lead the league again in 1985 and 1986, this time playing for the San Diego Sockers. He went to the Tacoma Stars from 1986 to 1988 before returning to San Diego and ending his career in 1990. It was not until 1987 that his run as top scorer finally came to a close, as another indoor luminary, the Dallas Sidekicks' Tatu, took Zungul's place at the top of the scoring charts. Zungul was also named the league's MVP from 1979-1982, and then again in 1985 and 1986. At one time, he was the all-time goal scoring leader in indoor soccer with 715 goals. That currently ranks fourth behind Hector Marinaro, Zoran Karic, and Tatu.
