Before the Union, the Kixx were Philly’s soccer team, and U.S. manager Vlatko Andonovski played for them

The artificial turf looked nice: a bright green surface stretched across the floor of the Spectrum, the iconic arena where the guys from Philadelphia flocked as kids to watch those great Flyers and Sixers teams. But the color was about the only thing appealing about the fake grass the Philadelphia Kixx — a professional indoor soccer team — played on in South Philly.

Other arenas were covered by one piece of turf, while the Kixx played on a field that was pieced together in about five or six sections, none of them seeming to lie flat. It bunched up, had dead spots, and someone said the owners bought it secondhand from another team.

The field was terrible, but it was where so many local stars — the Kixx were always led by players who came from Philly high schools and colleges — were given the chance to become pros in their hometown. The turf was just right.

“We kind of had our own home-field advantage,” said Steve Wacker, who grew up in Holmesburg and played at North Catholic and Temple.

And for a few months, the Philly guys shared that advantage with Vlatko Andonovski, who joined the Kixx in December 2005 for the final season of his playing career and is now coaching the U.S. women’s national team in the World Cup. Next month, the guy who played on that bumpy carpet could leave Australia as a world champion.

“I tell my kids when he’s on TV, ‘I played with him,’” Wacker said. “And they’re like ‘Yeah, right.’”

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Soccer was a niche sport in the 1970s and 1980s in most parts of the region, but it was king in Northeast Philly neighborhoods like Holmesburg, Frankford, Kensington, Juniata Park, and Port Richmond. The sport was brought there decades earlier by European factory workers, played by kids at city playgrounds, and mastered at neighborhood high schools.

“Depending on where you grew up in Philly depended on what sport you gravitated to. I don’t think kids in South Philly played soccer,” said Don D’Ambra, who grew up in Frankford and played for the Kixx in each of their 14 seasons. “Once you started to play, the level was so high. It was something we did every day on the playground. That’s where the love of the game came from. You look at Brazil and these other countries and kids are playing on the streets all day long. That’s what we did.”

Philadelphia had professional teams — the Spartans, Atoms, and Fury all passed through — but the city went more than a decade without pro soccer before the Kixx arrived in 1995. Guys like D’Ambra, who played at North Catholic and St. Joseph’s before turning pro, could stay home.

“Philadelphia is a big soccer town,” D’Ambra said. “Look at the Union and see how many local Philly guys are doing well. The talent has always been there. I feel fortunate. I know a lot of great players who I learned from when I was young and they never had that opportunity to play in their town.”

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Andonovski was 28 when he arrived in Philly, acquired in a midseason trade with the expansion California Cougars. The Macedonia-born defender had played six seasons in the Major Indoor Soccer League, which then was top-flight competition, as Major League Soccer was still finding its footing. Andonovski was an All-Star, considered to be one of the league’s top defenders.

“He was a guy who we saw as a piece of the puzzle and could come in and fill a big need of it,” said D’Ambra, then acting as a player-coach. “He was very smart. A team guy. We treated him like a leader right away. I knew he had good knowledge of the game. He was a veteran, a guy who had been around.”

Added Chris Fehrle: “For indoor soccer, you had to be a good player, but you had to understand the game. I think there were a lot of good outdoor players who didn’t understand how to play indoors. You either picked it up or didn’t. He was a really good technical player. Confident on the ball, really good with his feet, and competitive as hell.”

The piece of the puzzle joined a roster that had five players from Northeast Philly, four of whom played soccer at North Catholic. D’Ambra, Wacker, Pat Morris, and Tim O’Neill came from North, while Fehrle grew up in the Northeast and attended Holy Ghost Prep in Bensalem. David Castellanos grew up in Hunting Park and attended Christopher Dock.

They all grew up soccer-obsessed kids — “We grew up playing outside on the concrete, all the time, non-stop,” Wacker said — in the city’s pocket of soccer-obsessed neighborhoods. Andonovski fit right in with the Philly guys.

“Everyone always says, ‘What’s the best thing you ever got out of soccer?,’” Morris said. “For me, growing up in Kensington and Port Richmond, you don’t meet too many different people. I go to college and play with all foreign guys. I play in the pros with the Kixx, and we have countless foreign guys. Just being able to learn about their dynamic and their culture and their religion. For me, that was the coolest thing.

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The turf was shoddy, but the soccer was serious, and the Kixx, who won two league titles, made the Spectrum a tough place to play. They packed the building on Saturday nights, as the city’s lone pro-soccer team had affordable tickets and a roster of players people could relate to.

“We were kind of the soccer team in town before the Union was around,” Wacker said. “We would get six to 10,000 at our games. It was a great atmosphere.”

They had a kangaroo mascot and a dance team and played with a red-and-white ball that looked like it came from the old ABA while trying to score goals that could be worth up to three points. The players loved it. They made decent money, could live in apartments paid for by the team, received extra tickets as part of their contracts, and felt the history of the old building as soon as they walked into the Spectrum.

“Just from being from Philly, to be in the old Sixers locker room and the old Flyers locker room where they won all those championships, I think guys who aren’t from Philly thought, ‘Ah, it’s just an old building,’” D’Ambra said. “But me, I thought it was great because I’m a sports guy and a Philly guy. For me, I felt special.”

The Kixx practiced in Aston as D’Ambra found a way to coach the team while also making sure he did what he needed to do to play that week. He was the face of the team since it launched and even had his own bobblehead. So why was Andonovski, the new guy from Macedonia, waving him off the practice field?

“Donnie is looking around. He doesn’t know what’s going on,” said Wacker as D’Ambra was supposed to be on the field for all the team’s set pieces. “Then he realizes that Vlatko just wants to go on there for the set piece. Donnie’s mad. He’s throwing the water bottle on the bench and we’re all cracking up. Vlatko just called the head coach off the field.”

And now that guy is running practices for one of the world’s top teams.

The Kixx failed to reach the playoffs with Andonovski, but the Macedonian helped recruit players who played a key role the next season, when the Kixx won it all. They knocked off the Detroit Ignition and celebrated with confetti pouring down from the ceiling.

Three years later, the team ceased operations. MLS was growing, the Union had arrived, and the indoor game was pushed into semi-pro territory. By then, Andonovski was starting to find his way as a coach in women’s professional soccer, as he retired from playing after his season with the Kixx.

D’Ambra became the head coach at St. Joe’s, where Wacker and Morris served as his longtime assistants. They had a picture on their office wall from that night in Detroit, a snapshot of when they were Philly’s pro team.

“I look at it like chapters in life,” D’Ambra said. “I’m on to the outdoor, college chapter of my life, but looking back, there were so many great players and great people. That’s the one thing in Philly, a lot of people liked our team because we had a lot of good guys.”

Morris is now the head coach at Penn State Abington, Castellanos is the head coach at Chestnut Hill College, Wacker is a director at the Ukrainian Nationals Soccer Club, and Fehrle is a director at FC Bucks.

“I say I lucked out,” Morris said. “I never really had a job, right? It’s something that I love to do.”

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So many Kixx players still live in the area, keep in touch, and often get together to trade stories. They reunited on Zoom during the pandemic, and Andonovski, who recently had been hired to coach the U.S. women’s team, jumped on.

D’Ambra sent him a picture of the two squaring off at the Spectrum and joked about how much of a pest Andonovski was before he teamed up with the Philly guys. They all found a way to make soccer their livelihoods, using the passion they had as kids on the street to fuel their careers. And the playing surface is just a little better these days.

“It’s just amazing to say I played with someone who is coaching the women’s national team in the World Cup,” Fehrle said.

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