Peter Short broke his nose early in his football career and decided against fixing it. Instead, he used it as a badge of courage and as a reminder to opposing forwards and defenders that he was not afraid of butting his head into places where it did not belong.

It was a striking look, but Short was a striking figure. He once ate the ref’s red card after he was sent off, and long before David Beckham became US’s soccer’s quintessential Englishman, the Liverpool-born Short was one of the best center-backs in the original incarnation of the North American Soccer League. Such was his commitment to soccer in the US that he would travel from Canada every week to play games. His life would also end tragically early.

“He did not take any prisoners,” his former team-mate and friend, defender Charlie Mitchell said. “He was a very physical player. He was tall. He had that mean look about him. He must have broken his nose 20 years ago and never wanted to get it fixed. So he looked a little bit like a boxer. He had that tough look about him and he liked to use it to his advantage.”

“I have a picture of him in my office that he hated,” said Charlie Schiano, one of the Rochester Lancers owners, for which Short played for four seasons. “The wind was blowing and he had a smirk on his face and it looks like he’s a prize fighter with a broken nose.”

Short played an old-fashioned type of game, always putting his body at risk, doing what he needed to do to get the job done. “He was his own person, very strong-willed. He said what he felt,” Mitchell said. “He didn’t have two faces. He lived for soccer at a time when it was a way of life.”

Schiano certainly understood Short’s worth as a player. The Lancers were one of seven NASL teams for which the Englishman played. “He was rock solid. He was dependable,” he said. “I can picture him so many times him clearing the ball off the goal line. He was the best central defender I’ve ever seen. As a sweeper he was dynamic.”

Short played at a time when the game was different in America, before Pele and the New York Cosmos transformed the sport. Many clubs weren’t owned by billionaires, but rather by well-to-do businessmen from their own communities. The Lancers, located in upstate New York adjacent to Lake Ontario, was one of them. The team was small enough that Schiano, who even managed the team on an interim basis on several occasions, got to know Short personally and not just as another employee.

“Off the field we would have a beer together and talk soccer,” he said. “He was always a good guy to deal with; never faked an injury not to play. Some players you have problem with, not Peter. Peter was a solid professional, a good friend. Just a dedicated guy to the game of soccer, very proud to be a player in the professional league.” He was proud and good enough to earn NASL first-team all-star honors in 1971 and 1972.



Getting to the USA was an adventure unto itself. Born in Liverpool on 27 October 1944, Short emigrated to Canada to pursue a football career in the 1960s. He thrived there for several years, playing for Toronto Italia before semi-pro and professional football south of the border beckoned.



Back in the day, the NASL was American professional football’s version of the wild west. Pro teams and semi-pro teams and leagues popped up all over the place and flourished for a while. Short became one of the guns for hire. He played in Toronto during the summer. In the fall and spring, he would travel to the USA from Canada for the weekend, all expenses paid, play for a team such as the Newark Ukrainian Sitch of the American Soccer League, and earn $200, a decent amount of money in those days.

Short played with future NASL stars Roy Turner and Carlos Metidieri. Gene Chyzowych, the older brother of future US national coach Walter Chyzowych, took over the Sitch and had Turner, Short and Don Lalka, who lived in Rochester, commute every weekend to play for the American Soccer League side.

One day, however, US immigration officials stopped the Canadian pipeline at the Niagara Falls border crossing, unhappy players were entering the States and being paid in cash.



“So Gene gives me a call. ‘Look, get in your car, jump over to Toronto, pick Peter Short up, drive in by the car and then we can fly [into Newark from] Rochester.’ We do it. We go down and play [for Ukrainian Sitch]. I guess Peter had talked to them already and never came back [to Canada],” Lalka said. “He finished up playing the season for Sitch and the following year was when the league started, Walt Chyzowych was playing for the Philadelphia Spartans and he recommended Peter Short, myself and Turner.”

Short became so beloved during his tenure with the Sitch that he was known to the team’s ardent supporters as Peter Korotki. Korotki in Ukrainian means short. “All the fans loved him,” Lalka said. “They took him to heart. He enjoyed it. It was like they adopted him.”

Short’s fierce style of play had much to do with his popularity, which continued throughout an 11-year career.

In 1967, he played with the Philadelphia Spartans of the National Professional Soccer League, which morphed into the NASL. He scored both goals in Philadelphia’s franchise-opener, a 2-0 win over the Baltimore Comets on 16 April 1967. He went to the Cleveland Stokers of the NASL in 1968 and then to the Dallas Tornado the following year, once securing a hat-trick in a wild, 4-3 win over the St Louis Stars. In 1970, the Rochester Lancers had jumped from the ASL to the NASL. Rochester were looking for a center-back and Short was interested, and he would spend four years with them.

Mitchell remembers Short as a “great jokester ... great in the dressing, great socializer.”

“He spent a long time over in America, long before I got there, with Cleveland and places like that,” Mitchell says. “He would know a lot of places in the league. When we would go to some other town, Peter would know somebody. So after the game, Peter already had set things up so we could go socialize some place. When I say socialize, have a couple of drinks, go back to the hotel. Nothing crazy.”

Short became one of the cornerstones of the Rochester backline. He was demanding, probably more of himself than team-mates, wanting maximum effort.

“He pushed everybody to play hard,” said Sal De Rosa, who coached the Lancers to the 1970 NASL championship. “He used to argue with [midfielder] Gladstone Ofori, who was a good, but lazy player on the field. He felt he and everyone else had to give 110%.”



Metidieri, a Brazilian and the only player in NASL history to win back-to-back Most Valuable Player honors and scoring crowns, remembered those arguments.

“Peter and I were like this: We hated each other now, loved each other later. I’m a lazy player,” Metidieri said. “He likes to run and fight. He used to call me, ‘You lazy bum.’ We hated each other on the field and got drunk at his parties. I’m glad I had a few good times with him. I met my [first] wife at one of his parties.”

Those broken noses did not happen by accident. At 6 ft, Short earned a reputation as a relentless header of the ball, whether it was protecting his goal or trying to break down an enemy’s defense. On set pieces, he was an imposing target player.



“At that time I used to take the corner kicks for Rochester,” Mitchell said. “I would just ping the ball into the near post and Peter would be running to the near post and I knew he scored quite a few goals that way.”

On the other end of the pitch, he dominated the air in the penalty area. Mitchell said the goalkeepers, Dick Howard and Claude Campos, “didn’t even come for the ball because they knew Peter would win it. That was always comforting. I always played next to him and I’d let Peter win the ball and I would take the drop-offs.”

Former US Soccer official Thom Meredith, who worked for the Tornado, remembered when Short went over the top to combine his hunger and passion for the game. “He came on a rough tackle, that was no surprise,” he said. “The referee came over and held out a red card. Peter grabbed it from him, put it in his mouth and ate it.” It’s remains a mystery how the official got on for the rest of the match without his precious red card.

Short’s playing career was never the same after he left Rochester. He played for Dallas again, Denver Dynamos in 1974, Vancouver Whitecaps in 1975 and Minnesota Kicks in 1976 and 1977 before retiring. He became director of player personnel of the Los Angeles Aztecs from 1978-1980, Tornado coach in 1981 and directed the Earthquakes to a 13-14 mark before resigning late in 1982.

His life was to end abruptly, and violently. On February 22 1984, Short was the victim of a robbery attempt near his garment-cutting business in Los Angeles. Dennis Garbutt, then 18, and two other youths, tried to rob Short after he left work one night. Short resisted and paid with his life. Garbutt, who pleaded guilty to first degree murder and his admission that he used a firearm during a crime, received a 27-year to life sentence. He is still in prison.

“When we lost him, we lost a great guy,” Schiano says. Short’s former team-mate Howard agrees: “It was such a tragic end. Unbelievable.”

As American pro soccer grew in a new direction, Short and his colleagues were forgotten – until a 21st century incarnation of the Lancers, who play indoor football in the Major Arena Soccer League, made sure the world would remember players such as him and his contemporaries.

Lancers owner Sal Fantauzzo created a Wall of Fame to keep the memories of the original Lancers and Peter Short alive. On December 27 2014 Short was inducted in a special ceremony prior to a match. “Mr Short,” Metidieri said, “will always be in my memories for the rest of my life.”

And in with many football fans as well.