looking in on: soccer

Saturday, July 1, 2006 | 8:10 a.m.

As an 11-year-old boy, Barry Hearn fell in love - with a soccer club. When he became a successful entrepreneur, he bought his love for 2 1/2 pounds. That $5 investment finally paid off.

Stocky striker Lee Steele slipped a goal into the left side of the net in the fifth minute of extra time, giving Leyton Orient a 3-2 victory over Oxford United. It was May 6, the final day of the season, and the win clinched promotion for Orient, allowing it to escape the bottom of four English football leagues.

It also earned the lads a holiday in Las Vegas.

"It was like being involved in a car accident, where everything around you just froze for that moment," Hearn says, recalling the final moments of the win. "It was sublime pleasure, the likes of which could not be induced by drugs or love affairs or sexual fantasy.

"Grown men - tough guys from the East End of London, the poorest borough in London - were reduced to tears of joy. Only sports can do that."

For three years, Hearn dangled the dream in front of his players. Get promoted, go to Las Vegas. Twice they failed but asked anyway. No, Hearn replied sternly.

Finally, they won, and Hearn proclaimed to the BBC, "It's Viva Las Vegas for Leyton Orient!"

The 30-strong contingent arrived Tuesday, shaving 38,000 pounds, about $70,000, from Hearn's bank account.

Late that night, the 58-year-old soccer boss sits inside a Mandalay Bay ballroom, sips a glass of red wine and explains his lifelong affair with the club.

He stood - the cheap "seats" at many English grounds are standing-room terraces - through his first game, a 2-2 draw with Falkirk in 1959. The man to his left asked him what he would do later that night, and he said he would be seeing "Julius Caesar" at a cinema with his mum and dad. When they play the national anthem at the end, the man said, watch the credits and look for the name of the costume designer. The man's daughter was Edith Head, the most famous costume designer in Hollywood.

The proud father lived a walk away from the football ground; Hearn and his parents, a 10-minute underground tube ride away. Leyton Orient always has been the heart of a blue-collar neighborhood of tightly packed row houses about six miles east of central London. Because of nearby industry, the area was heavily bombed during the World War II air raids. Now, the area surrounding the stadium is very cosmopolitan, an exotic mixture of Afro-Caribbean, Asian, Eastern European and older English residents.

"In between," he said, "there's this little jewel called Leyton Orient Football Club."

Only Fulham has been playing soccer in London longer than Orient, which started in 1881. Employees of the Orient Shipping Co. started a team with an underdog status that has endured.

"It's an anomaly in today's society," Hearn says. "It's not built around success. It's built around endeavor. (Fans) will associate their own life with the life of their team.

"They are not champions of industry or landed gentry. All they can do is try. It's interesting. It's a club with a massive heart, for some reason. Even if the arms and legs aren't working too well, the heart still beats strong."

In 1961-62, Orient finally made it to the top rung of English soccer - what is now called the Premiership. It was its first - and only - season there.

Hearn parlayed a career promoting boxing and snooker events into Matchroom Sports, a sports promotion company that has become the world's biggest supplier of televised poker.

In 1995 he bought his dream team for 2 pounds, 43 pence. The owner, Tony Wood, was forced to sell when his coffee plantation in Rwanda was destroyed and his 200 million-pound fortune evaporated during the country's civil war. The sale was captured in a British TV documentary, "Orient: Club for a Fiver."

Hearn smiles as he recalls what they didn't tell him. The club was carrying a million pounds of debt.

"That was in the small print," he says. "It was one of those things where your heart rules your head for a moment. Instead of mistresses and Ferraris, it's better to have a football club. It doesn't get you into as much trouble."

Hearn tried to revitalize his club. He renamed the club's Brisbane Road grounds the Matchroom Stadium. He sold the corners of the stadium to a residential real-estate developer. Soon, construction of the North Stand will begin. By Christmas, Leyton Orient should have a four-sided ground with room for almost 10,000 fans. The team always has had its own rule - it employs only local players.

"Sometimes it's difficult to have principles like that and have a successful team," Hearn says. "But last season is when everything gelled. Suddenly, we had a proper team."

The American sports system is foreign to Hearn. He calls it protectionist and laissez-faire because American owners don't have to worry about losing millions of dollars in television revenue if their team falters and is relegated to a lower league.

Across the pond, every point and pound matter. Every single result is vital to Leyton Orient's survival. There is no comfort zone.

"It's much more like a jungle," Hearn says. "No one really suffers in the American system. In our system, you can't have a day off. You can't have a year of noninvestment. Do that, you're dead."

If Leyton Orient finishes in the top three of League One next season, it will be promoted to the Coca Cola Championship, one step away from promotion to the Premiership. But a poor 2006-07 season would drop the team back to League Two.

"Obviously, to be relegated is very detrimental to the future of a club," he says. "Only 20 years ago, Oxford was in the FA Cup final. A big slide. Now, they've been relegated out of the Football League. That's a drop into a bottomless pit."

The owner is familiar with the view from the bottom. Leyton loses money every year, he says, yet its coaches and players run free camps for the 300,000 kids in the area. Hearn called it the biggest system of community welfare in football.

"It shouldn't really exist," he says of the club. "But it exists because we have a passion for what we do. We come from that area, and it's nice to put something back. It's what football is."

Hours after the team's plane landed, Hearn is playing poker at Mandalay Bay when one of his players walks up to him.

Incredible being in Las Vegas, the player tells the boss. Then, he cuts to his point. What all the boys want to know is where you'll take us if we get promoted from League One to the Championship?

Show me what you can do, Hearn says, and I'll have to show you how I can surprise you.

"It's a little game, isn't it?" Hearn says. "That was 'mission accomplished' for me. The seed is in their heads. That's all I want to achieve."

And, eventually, promotion to the Premiership?

"If you don't have the dream, you wouldn't be in it," he says. "The chances are a million-to-one. But if you're a dreamer, a million-to-one is still a pretty good bet."

Sprechen Sie deutsch?

Anyone figure out what that Munich crowd chanted last Saturday at the end of Germany's 2-0 victory over Sweden in the second round of the World Cup? We offer a rough translation.

"You can't play soccer," thousands roared in unison, "so you build furniture!"

Kudos

To Las Vegas Premier '87, the only Nevada club team that made it to the championship game in the recent U.S. Youth Soccer Far West Regionals in Boise.

Premier lost the Under-19 boys title match, 2-0, to Cal South. We'll keep an eye on that Premier squad over the next few months.

Good call

Reader Jeff rang to correct us on the referee mess during the Holland-Portugal match. We erred by saying the Dutch played Argentina in that one. Owe that to eyeballs that are starting to look like little soccer balls. Thanks, and keep reading.

Match of the Week

England vs. Portugal, today

The British are 3-2-5 lifetime against the Portuguese, including a 2-1 victory in the semifinals in England in 1966. Then the English won the World Cup at Wembley against West Germany.

The biggest question in today's quarterfinal match in Gelsenkirchen will be: Can English midfielder Frank Lampard score? He's 0-for-21 in the tournament.

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