Question: How much in love with a sport does a boy have to be when, at age 14, he asks his parents for permission to leave home and move to England on his own so he can join Reading FC to try to become a soccer professional—and warns that if they say no he will never forgive them? Answer: As much in love as the scared-stiff Bobby Lenarduzzi was when he left home and family to pursue the game that has become so much of his life.

Of course, Lenarduzzi had no way of knowing as he stepped into the Reading dressing room that he would one day become the face of soccer in BC; that he would win a North American Soccer League championship with the Vancouver Whitecaps, and rise through their coaching and management ranks to his current role as president and CEO as the team prepares to step up to Major League Soccer in 2011.

It's been a fascinating, moving, often hilarious journey, laced with characters like Willie Johnston, who once paused while taking a corner kick to accept a beer from a fan; Alan Hinton, who was less than fit but took free kicks so accurately that the Province reported "When Alan Hinton put a corner kick on your head, he'd give you your choice of eyebrows" and Brian Budd, who won the Superstars series competition so often they changed the rules to keep him out.

They all come alive in Bob Lenarduzzi, along with coaches, owners and the madcap adventures, triumphs and failures as Lenarduzzi and Jim Taylor weave the tale of the side, to quote a US TV commentator, "from the village of Vancouver."

Born on March 16, 1937 in Nipawin, Saskatchewan, Jim Taylor of West Vancouver was B.C.'s most widely-read sports columnist. Taylor began his newspaper career in 1954 as a part-time sports reporter at the Daily Colonist in Victoria and later wrote for the Vancouver Sun, the Vancouver Province and the Calgary Sun. He became a nationally syndicated sports columnist, author, and broadcaster. His 1987 chronicle of Rick Hansen's wheelchair journey, Man In Motion, reputedly had a record first printing for a B.C. book. In addition to Taylor's books on Wayne Gretzky, entitled Gretzky:The Authorized Pictorial Biography with Wayne Gretzky, and B.C. Lions` Jim Young, entitled Dirty Thirty. Taylor is credited with the re-write of a Soviet journalist's biography of Igor Larionov. In 2004, he compiled The Best of Jim Coleman: Fifty Years of Canadian Sport from the Man Who Saw it All. A member of the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame and the Canadian Football League Hall of Fame, Taylor was awarded a lifetime achievement award by Sports Media Canada in 2000. He began his writing career as part-time high school sports reporter, drank beer from the Stanley Cup, saw Paul Henderson score "The Goal" in 1972, predicted rookie placekicker Lui Passaglia wouldn`t last with the BC Lions more than one season and wrote more than 8,000 newspaper columns. He recalls his half-century as a sports writer in Hello, Sweetheart? Gimme Rewrite!

Jim Taylor's profile page

Bob Lenarduzzi has been a Vancouver sports icon for over two decades, involved in the sport of soccer as a player, coach, and general manager and representing Canada at World Cup and Olympic levels. Lenarduzzi has been inducted into the Soccer Hall of Fame, United Soccer League's Hall of Fame, the North American Soccer Hall of Fame, and the BC Sports Hall of Fame and he is a
recipient of the Order of British Columbia.

Bob Lenarduzzi's profile page

Bob Lenarduzzi: A Canadian Soccer Story