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AYSO Hall of
Famer - Class of 1998
Ricky
was the most prominent American player of the 1980s, at both club and
national team levels. Davis was a star of the U.S. Men's National Team for more than a decade and one of
the leading Americans in the foreign-dominated North American Soccer League. Davis played his first game for the United States against El
Salvador on September 15, 1977, and scored his first full international goal
just six minutes into that game. He went on to play 36 full
international games for the United States, which was a record at that time,
and scored seven goals in those games.
From 1984 onward, he was the regular captain of the national team, including
leading it in the 1984 and 1988 Olympic Games. Perhaps his best game for the United States was a 3-0 victory
over Costa Rica in the 1984 Olympics, in which he scored two goals in front
of what was then the largest crowd ever to see a game in the United States,
78,265. He also played for the
United States in the qualifying rounds of the 1982, 1986 and 1990 World
Cups. After he had played in the
first two 1990 qualifying games, played in the summer of 1988, he suffered a
knee injury in January 1989 that ended his outdoor career.
His final three games in a United States uniform had been at the Olympic
Games in South Korea in September 1988. Davis
joined the New York Cosmos at the start of the 1978 NASL season after
playing one season in college at Santa Clara. He played for the Cosmos from 1978 to 1984, appearing in a
total of 154 NASL games as well as participating in the Cosmos worldwide
exhibition tours. Davis was a member of the Cosmos NASL-champion teams in
1978, 1980 and 1982. Following the retirement of Werner Roth in 1979, he
clearly was the outstanding American player in the Cosmos galaxy of
international stars. Davis continued playing indoors until 1990, in an
attempt to regain fitness and make the U.S. team for the 1990 World Cup. He
had begun playing in the Major Indoor Soccer League in 1983 and, in the
final NASL season, he played for the Cosmos on loan from the St. Louis
Steamers of the MISL. In the MISL, he
played three seasons for the Steamers, one for the New York Arrows and three
for the Tacoma Stars.
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