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In a few weeks, the United States men’s national soccer team will begin the final stage of regional qualifying for a place in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. For the American team, a berth in the 32-team tournament would mark its seventh straight appearance in the world’s biggest team sporting event.

Thirty years ago, however, the United States was in the waning years of a World Cup famine that lasted a generation. At the same time, the first North American Soccer League, dominated by aging international stars and with few recognizable American players, was two seasons from vanishing after explosive growth and a just as prodigious crash.

The league’s last commissioner, the New York businessman Howard Samuels, latched on to a novel idea: enter a team, the national team, Team America, in the league playing in Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington. Samuels enlisted a friend, Robert K. Lifton, and began a joint effort with the United States Soccer Federation, the sport’s national governing body. The idea was to entice the top American players to leave their club teams, on loan, and join Team America. It was not that easy. Ultimately, it was not successful.

It was a noble, novel — some would say naïve — experiment in engineering a soccer project with little precedent before or since in any sport. In the past, Eastern European nations would seed a couple of top club teams with their best (so-called amateur) players, who easily slid into the national team. More recently, the national team of Antigua and Barbuda played together in a North American minor league. In ice hockey, the United States junior national team, which recently won a world championship, was entered as a unit in the ECHL.

“I think the concept has a lot of merit, even today,” said Francisco Marcos, who at the time was an executive with the Tampa Bay Rowdies, which sent three players — Perry Van Der Beck, Pedro De Brito and Arnie Mausser — to Team America. “In those days, the national team got together only a few days before games. The idea was to have the best American players together every day and playing against tough competition. It wasn’t a crazy idea.”

In context, Team America was a desperate gambit on three fronts: part of a last-gasp of the ill-fated N.A.S.L.; the squad would form the nucleus of the Olympic team (there was no women’s competition at the time) for the 1984 Los Angeles Games; and then carry on in qualifying for the 1986 World Cup at a time the United States had not played for world soccer’s ultimate prize since the 1950 tournament in Brazil (when a team of part-timers stunned mighty England).

“The devil was in the details,” said defender Jeff Durgan, the captain of Team America who had left the security of the Cosmos and the daily luxury of training with players like Giorgio Chinaglia, Franz Beckenbauer and Johan Neeskens. “The league was in serious jeopardy. It was a last-ditch effort to try to feature American players and energize the national team program. I was 20 years old and had a good situation with the Cosmos, but I wanted to see soccer survive.”

While Durgan and his teammate Chico Borja left the Cosmos for Team America, perhaps the most recognizable American at the time, Ricky Davis, declined an invitation from the national team coach, Alkis Panagoulias, a naturalized citizen from Greece. Davis was not alone. The absence of strikers like Steve Moyers and Mark Peterson meant Team America had to enlist naturalized citizens like Alan Merrick and Alan Green.

“It was very difficult,” Panagoulias, who died last year, said in an interview with The New York Times in 2006. Before taking the job, he had been the coach of Greece from 1973 to 1981 and had earlier led the New York Greek Americans to three United States Open Cup titles in the 1960s.

In the 1983 season, Team America got off to a good start, going 8-5 in the first two months, including a victory (in a shootout) over the star-studded Cosmos. There was a photo shoot on the steps of the Capitol building and an audience at the White House on May 4, 1983, with President Ronald Reagan (who stumbled when he said “We’re very proud and happy to have this team and to be represented for the first time in the World Cup.”). But it turned sour over the summer when the club went 2-15, averaging only 12,000 fans at home games, and finished the season, its only one in the league, with the worst overall record (10-20, scoring only 33 goals) in the N.A.S.L.

“I thought it was a great concept, initially, because having a national team playing in a domestic league would have set the stage for cohesiveness within the team,” Merrick said in a 2007 interview with the Web site of the United States national soccer players.

But it was not to be. Team America was disbanded after one season. The N.A.S.L. folded after the 1984 season. Players from Team America comprised the core of the roster that went to the Olympics, but the team failed to advance past the opening round. The United States then again failed to qualify for the 1986 World Cup, crashing out after a home loss to Costa Rica, but then qualifying for the 1990 tournament in Italy after a 40-year absence.

“In hindsight, after 30 years, I understand that very few efforts that try to serve multiple masters succeed,” said Durgan, a native of Tacoma, Wash., who joined the Cosmos as a teenager and now lives in Michigan and works for a software company. “There were two goals at odds: trying to secure stability for the N.A.S.L. by putting together a show and wrapping it in the flag versus trying to develop players for the national team. We were focused on the moment, rather than looking at the long road ahead.”