In the late 1960s, the brand-new North American Soccer League knew it faced a challenge: attracting U.S. fans in a country where soccer was way down on the list behind baseball, football, basketball and hockey.

That’s one reason the Baltimore Bays hired Clive Toye away from his native England to run the team. As a former sportswriter, he knew soccer. A few years later, in 1971, he joined the expansion New York Cosmos for their inaugural season. One of his tasks was to create excitement any way he could.

Clive Toye, president of the Chicago Sting soccer team of the North America Soccer League in his Chicago office on Jun. 15, 1978. (Fred Jewell/AP)

"For example," Toye says, "I brought Moscow Dynamo in at a time when relations between the U.S. and Russia were extremely hostile."

That was in 1972.

"So you can imagine the headlines: 'The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!' And we had front-page stories about it, mentioning soccer," Toye says. "No other way could we have gotten soccer in those days on the front page."

But Toye found some more ways to do that.

Cuba Beckons

In 1977, he signed international superstars Pelé and Franz Beckenbauer. He took the Cosmos on a world tour that generated splashy headlines and drew large crowds. In New York, anyway, Toye had succeeded in building a fan base. At the end of 1977, Toye left the Cosmos to join the NASL’s Chicago Sting. But the Sting had no superstars.

In early 1978, Toye got a call from the Cuba Soccer Federation. It wanted to bring the Sting to Havana for a friendly match, or amistoso, against the Cuban national team. Toye knew the 20-year-old embargo of Cuba by the United States could be a problem. But …

"It was a period when something could happen, some weakness was there," Toye says. "And, knowing political weakness, I took advantage of it to try and get to Cuba."

People walk by a classic car parked outside the Revolution Museum in Havana in 2008. (Javier Galeano/AP)

The Sting were training in Haiti for the upcoming season. They had been there for weeks.

"I found an old World War II Dakota troop carrier at the airport in Port-au-Prince and rented it," Toye says.

Toye told the players that he had set up a friendly match with the Cuban team.

"It was pretty hot down in the Caribbean," says former Sting forward Dan McCrudden. "We were ready to be home."

McCrudden says team officials pressed their case.

" 'Hey, listen, you’re the first team, United States professional team, to go into Cuba since the ’59 revolution. It’s gonna be a great opportunity and pretty exciting.' So I think we started to get a little bit pumped for it."

McCrudden is a U.S. citizen, so he knew he wasn’t allowed to travel to Cuba. Team captain Bruce Wilson, a Canadian, didn’t have to worry about that. He had another concern.

"It was a little bit scary, to be honest," Wilson says.

On March 19, the team boarded the DC-3 Dakota.

"It was an older, rickety-looking thing, and sounded like an old and rickety thing," McCrudden says.

A Douglas DC-3 transport plane similar to the one used by the Chicago Sting to fly from Haiti to Cuba. (Remy de la Mauviniere/AP)

The transport plane circled Cuba several times, leaving the team to wonder if there were clearance issues — or worse. Wilson remembers the first thing Toye did when they arrived at the airport.

"Clive Toye was very happy to get his supply of cigars," he says.

"I asked someone, I said, 'Does anyone have a cigar on them?' " Toye says. "And a guy said, 'How many you smoke?' And we all had a good laugh and a good chat."

Toye talked up the airport officials while players passed through Customs. On the way to the team hotel, McCrudden and Wilson took in the sights of Havana from the team bus.

"We were looking around, and it was like all these old U.S. cars from like the 1950s that you’d seen in pictures," McCrudden says.

"The pollution was absolutely rampant," Wilson says. "Everywhere you looked, there were soldiers."

Not An Ordinary Trip

The Cuban hosts took them on tours of the city.

"It couldn’t have been pleasanter," Toye insists. "It was, in many respects, a typical visit by a soccer team to play a soccer game."

But, in other respects, it wasn’t.