''We have a lot of talented players in this country,'' said Alkis Panagoulias, the coach of the national team. ''The major problem is that we do not have a competitive league to give these players the kind of competition they need. That has been the most frustrating problem.''

What infuriated him more than the lack of a competitive outdoor league, Panagoulias said last week, was the lack of cooperation on the part of the M.I.S.L. He said that, except for the San Diego Sockers, everyone else in the M.I.S.L. considered the national team's success or failure irrelevant to the M.I.S.L.'s business.

''I don't want to talk about them and Earl Foreman because I'll say bad things about them,'' Panagoulias said about the M.I.S.L. and its former commissioner, who stepped down last month after serving in that post since the league's inception in 1978.

Panagoulias said that even if he had all the M.I.S.L. players he wanted, it would not be much help to the national team unless he could have them long enough to get them re-adjusted to outdoor play. He said that, right now, ''only two or three'' of the players in the M.I.S.L. can be effective outdoors.

''I want the people out there to understand that soccer and indoor soccer are two entirely different things,'' Panagoulias said. ''I'm discovering more and more as I go along that indoor players have a lot of difficulty playing outdoor soccer.''