Cleveland Force LogoCLEVELAND INDOOR SOCCER PAGECleveland Crunch Logo

Cleveland sports history is rife with All-Star and Hall Of Fame players (and owners) from all eras and in all sports such as Jim Brown, Tris Speaker, Otto Graham, Lou Groza, Frank Robinson, Gerry Cheevers, Bob Feller, Bill Needham, Lenny Wilkins, Omar Vizquel, Nate Thurmond, Paul Brown, Bill Veeck, Bernie Kosar, Jock Callender, Fred Glover and Jim Thome, and of course, LeBron James (simply the greatest of all time).

Prior to the 2016 Lake Erie Monsters and Cleveland Cavaliers, 99 out of 100 Cleveland sports fans would not be able to correctly tell you the last Cleveland major league sports team to win a championship. And no matter how much this particular sport (and its parent) is pooh-poohed here in America, it is the most popular sport in the world and its championship tournament is the biggest sporting event in the world eclipsing even the Super Bowl.

I have been a fan of the game of indoor soccer from the very first game I attended back in the late 1970's. And you can tell from the title and subject matter of this page, the team I was watching was the Cleveland Force; and after that, the Cleveland Crunch (who would later re-adopt the name "Force"). Here was a team, that in 26 years it existed in two incarnations, qualified for the playoffs in 20 of those 26 years, winning three championships in the span of six years, making it that last Cleveland major league sports team to win a championship before the afore mentioned Monsters and Cavaliers.

Indoor soccer (also referred to as five-a-side), American-style, is somewhat different from the official FIFA sanctioned indoor game, Futsal. Americanized indoor soccer resembles hockey to a great degree (probably from being played on hockey sized fields with dasher boards) whereas Futsal is played indoors with a smaller (size 3 or 4) soccer ball and no dasher boards.

Here you will find as complete set of rosters, stats and history as I can humanly make it. If the stats aren't here, I do not have them (yet). Other parts of this site is still under construction, so please do come back and check on my progress.

My gratitude and thanks to: the webmaster of mislcleveland.com who provided much of the roster and statistical information, Kenn Tomasch of kenn.com for additional roster and statistical info, former Cleveland Crunch and Cleveland Force goalkeeper Otto Orf for providing some of the pictures seen in the gallery, the Lake County News Herald for graciously allowing me to use their photos from Game 6 of the Crunch-Kansas City championship series from April of 1996, Jessie Dargle Miller for allowing me to post pictures of her father, "Bearded" Benny Dargle, and various other commercial and personal websites that were used in the culling of information and pictures. My thanks to Alex Louy who spent much time in uploading Crunch/Force videos (too many to count) to YouTube and Otto again for being the inspiration of this page by his posting of the final 15-20 seconds of the Crunch's double overtime victory over St. Louis in 1994 for Cleveland's first sports championship since the 1964 Cleveland Browns and the 1964 Cleveland Barons.

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Disclaimer-The names and images of "Cleveland Force", "Cleveland Crunch", "Cleveland Freeze", "Ohio Vortex","Cleveland Legacy", "MISL", "NPSL", "MSL", "PASL", "MASL", "MLIS, "Major League Indoor Soccer", "Major Indoor Soccer League", "National Professional Soccer League", "Major Soccer League", "Professional Arena Soccer League", "Major Arena Soccer League" and any other indoor soccer leagues/associations and teams used here are properties of their respective owners, entities, leagues and their successors.

This is a *FAN RUN* site. I have no official connection to any of the above entities, teams or leagues. I am doing this so that these teams and players will be remembered as an important part of Cleveland Sports history.

All coding of these web pages is © 2008-2024 M. A. Sopko. Photographs appearing in the photo gallery section are property of Otto Orf, Jessie Dargle and/or others and are used here with permission.

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