Hank Steinbrecher, Who Helped Elevate Soccer in the U.S., Dies at 77

Hank Steinbracher, a Queens football Evangelist whose passion for the best official of the United States in Sport helped to inaugurate the American mainstream and who, in a previous career in marketing for Gatorade, helped spread the ritual in which victorious players sprinkled their coaches with the refrigerators of sports drinks, died on Tuesday in his home in Tucson, ARIZ. It was 77.

His death, with a degenerative heart disease, was confirmed by the Federation of Football of the United States, of which Steinbricher was secretary general from 1990 to 2000.

Sunil Gualati, who was president of the Federation from 2006 to 2018, said in an interview that Steinbrecher’s greatest legacy was to have American football “be more respected at national and international level”.

In the autumn of 1990, the Federation, the National Sport Government Body, had little money and was managed by volunteers. He had a desperate need for professional administrative skills.

The United States’s National Men’s Team had just played in its first World Cup in 40 years, in Italy; The United States had recently been chosen to host the male World Cup in 1994; And the nascent women’s national team was about to emerge as the main international power.

Later That Year, Alan I. Rothenberg, in Los Angeles Lawyer Who Had Been the Soccer Commissioner for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Became President of the Federation, and he Hired Steinbricher to Be Secretary General, His Top Lieuttenant, Impressed by his Credentials: Mr. Steinbracher Had Been in Collegiate Player, Coach and Manager of the Soccer Venue at Harvard University During Those Games (Olympic Soccer is played in stadiums throughout the host country). And, fundamental to bring a commercial and commercial sensitivity to the Federation, he had been director of sports marketing for Gatorade.

Steinbricher had become part of the company in 1985, in the period in which Jim Burt, a New York Giants nose plate, downloaded a cooling device by Gatorade above the head of the coach Bill Parcells after a victory. Burt’s ancient was intended as a refund for what Burt considered hard treatment from the parcellies in practice. But Gatorade Dousing has become an act of celebration for the giants, especially for the whole 1986 season, while the lineback Harry Carson continued to immerse Parcells after the victories, which ended with the first title of the Super Bowl of the giants, above the Denver Broncos.

Bill Schmidt, then vice -president of Gatorade’s world marketing, said in an interview that with the contribution of Mr. Steinbricher, had sent letters to Parcells and Carson during the playoffs that season, thanking them for supporting the ritual that gave Gatorade advertising. Attached for each was a $ 10,000 gift certificate to Brooks Brothers and an ironic suggestion that embrace their wardrobes.

“So he became synonymous with victory,” said Steinbricher in 2021 to the journalist Michael Lewis, who manages the website FrontroWlver.com. “And you can’t ask for a better marketing than that.”

When Mr. Steinbricher joined the National Soccer Federation in 1990, he needed all the marketing help he could get. At the time, Mr. Rothenberg recalled in an interview, the group’s headquarters was burning in a trailer of the United States Olympic training center in Colorado Springs. Mr. Steinbricher was accused of moving the office to two historic houses in Chicago to help improve the image of the Federation.

He soon went into the air to proselytize for sport, trying to galvanize his passionate but disorganized network. He spoke with local and state football associations with such a lovable and fervent enthusiasm that Mr. Rothenberg gave him the nickname of Reverend Hank.

During Steinbricher’s mandate as General Secretary, the Federation of Football evolved from an operation essentially mothers and pop in one that contributed to raising a sport once considered by many Americans a match for immigrants. He laid the foundations for the professional championships for men and women in the United States and helped to guarantee a place for the United States on the international phases of football.

In 1994, the United States hosted the male World Cup, held in nine cities; It remains the largest world football championship, with 3,587,538 spectators and an average of 68,991 per game. In 1991, the United States team won the inaugural female World Cup, played in China. And in 1996, American women won the gold medal before huge crowds at the Atlanta summer Olympics.

So, in 1999, the United States hosted the largest sporting event ever held for women, filling the football stadiums of the NFL and college for the female World Cup. The final game tense, between the United States and China, attracted 90,185 fans to the Pasadena Rose Bowl, in California, while an audience of 40 million tuned to the game on American television.

When Brandi Chastain marked the winning penalty kick for the Americans, darting his shirt in exultation and creating one of the most Indelible images IN THE HISTORY OF FEMALE SPORTS – Mr. Steinbricher was photographed that seemed to jump in the air, bred weapons, tight punches and mouth in the mouth to celebrate.

But under the celebrations, the tension has simmer Mr. Steinbricher and the American players, many of whom did not believe they had edited the women’s team equally despite his success. A bitter contract controversy They had led American women to hit before the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and would hit the 2000s again in Sydney, Australia. The Federation had appeared so unprepared for the success of women in 1999 that the players of the team organized their victory tour.

“I think people lack the vision in that era for what women’s football could be,” said Marla Messing, organizer of the 1999 women’s world cup in an interview. To be honest with Mr. Steinbricher, he said: “It was in the majority, not an outlier”.

He was hit by criticism; He had considered the development of women’s football among his most proud successes. “I worked tirelessly for the women’s program,” he said Soccer America Magazine for leaving the Federation in 2000. “I remember having gone to the Board of Directors when it was not very popular and I asked them to support $ 1.8 million for women when we don’t have it”.

Henry William Steinbrecher was born on 11 July 1947 in Queens and grew up in the hamlet of Levittown in Long Island. His father, William Francis Steinbricher, worked as a janitor. His mother, Helen Ida (Hammer) Steinbrecher, worked in a jewelry shop and played in a softball alloy. Both died in the early 70s.

Mr. Steinbrcher survived his 53 -year -old wife, Ruth Anne Steinbricher; his children, Chad and Corey; a stepdack, Shawna Moss; A sister, Mary Sirakowski; and five grandchildren.

Football has set Mr. Steinbricher with Wanderlust. He started playing at the age of 6 and was known to take the Long Island Rail Road, the subway and the buses to play with the club teams in Brooklyn and Queens. He starred at the Division Avenue High School in Levittown and won a national championship of small schools in 1970 as a defender with Davis & Elkins Collegein western Virginia. He obtained a degree in English in 1971 and a master in education in 1972 at West Virginia University, then trained at Warren Wilson College and the Appalachian state, both in the North Carolina and in Boston University.

Football for him was sacrosanct. When the coach of the National Men’s Team of Costa Rica, In a non -stated pull, Threatened to travel to Washington in 1997 with a missile to kill President Bill Clinton if the coach’s strategy for a qualifying game of the World Cup against the United States had been revealed by the media, Steinbricher called the White House to report the matter.

His most memorable football moment, at least for his family, occurred while playing with his children in the family home outside Chicago in the 80s. Thanks, Mr. Steinbricher shot in the door in the courtyard, but went up. The ball crashed through a dining room window and landed on the table just as his wife was putting the turkey out.

Not everything was lost. Referring to the National Lampoon family holidays of the time of the time, Chad Steinbrecher said of Türkiye: “I think we recovered it in the true style of the Griswold family”.