Pro Soccer League on Hold? : FIFA meetings: Play might be delayed until 1996, when Olympic teams will be in the news.

NEW YORK — Major League Soccer, Alan Rothenberg’s proposed first-division league that was supposed to begin operations in April, probably will be put on hold for a year.

The possibility that the league’s debut might be postponed had been voiced in the past, but took on added significance Tuesday when Rothenberg admitted a delay is being considered.

That the U.S. Soccer Federation’s president, who earned $7 million as chairman and chief executive officer of World Cup ‘94, would make such a statement at a time when FIFA leaders are in town, suggests MLS will not get off the ground April 15 as promised.

“Obviously, the later in the game it gets, the more you have to analyze whether to start in 1995 or 1996,” Rothenberg said, adding that there is a possibility the league kickoff will be delayed.

“I hope to be able to make an announcement within the next 10 days or two weeks,” he said.

According to the MLS business plan provided to prospective investors, the anticipated 12 teams already should have been announced, should have signed stadium contracts and should have been actively seeking coaches, players and fans.

Instead, no official announcement has been made since June 15, when charter franchises were awarded to Los Angeles, Boston, New York, New Jersey, San Jose, Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio. At the time, Rothenberg said five more would be awarded by September or thereabouts.

But although it has several large investors and a television contract, the proposed league has not been able to generate enough financial investment to allow it to name any more franchises. It is believed to have scaled back from 12 teams to 10 and to be working to complete stadium contracts in those 10 cities.

Rothenberg would not discuss MLS financial affairs, saying only that legal documents were being circulated for signature and that an announcement would be forthcoming.

If MLS does delay until 1996, it would mean trying to generate interest in a new venture during an Olympic year, when the public’s sporting attention will be firmly focused on the Atlanta Games.

That could be either a hindrance or a help.

Both men’s and women’s soccer will be a medal sport in 1996 and the U.S. teams will be receiving more attention than usual, so that could help MLS. But it is just as likely the league would have to go into hiatus during the Games or risk vanishing from sight altogether.

Olympic soccer was the main item of business for FIFA leaders on the first day of their scheduled three days of meetings in New York.

The Olympic Committee of world soccer’s governing body met for two hours in the afternoon to hear what amounted to a progress report on plans for the men’s and women’s tournaments at the Atlanta Games.

Earlier, key committee members had spent six days touring Atlanta and each of the outlying sites where soccer will be played--the Orange Bowl in Miami; RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C.; the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Fla.; Legion Field in Birmingham, Ala., and Sanford Stadium in Athens, Ga.

They came away satisfied that soccer in 1996 will be as powerful a draw as it was in the 1984 Games, when attendance surpassed 1.4 million, the best of any Olympic sport. The only recommendations by FIFA were that Birmingham would have to replace its artificial surface with grass and that the hedges would have to be trimmed in Athens.

Other than those gardening notes, all seemed well.

“We’re very far along in comparison to World Cup ‘94,” said Sandra Cress, Olympic competition director for soccer. “It didn’t even have its sites picked at this point in time, so (FIFA members) were very impressed with the local preparation that’s already under way.”

The men’s and women’s tournaments will be played as parallel competitions, featuring double-headers in many cases. Women’s soccer, an Olympic sport for the first time, will be an eight-nation event. The United States, as the host, qualifies automatically. The seven other participants will be the top seven finishers in the second FIFA Women’s World Championship in Sweden next June.

The men’s tournament will feature 16 countries--five from Europe, three from Africa, three from North and Central America and the Caribbean (CONCACAF), including the United States; two from South America, two from Asia, and one to emerge from a playoff between Asia and Oceania.

The European under-21 championship tournament, now in progress and involving 43 nations, will provide the five teams from that continent. In other regions, qualifying play has yet to begin, although early favorite Brazil already has put together its team and defeated Chile last week in Concepcion, Chile, 5-0.

If approved by FIFA’s Executive Committee on Thursday, the Atlanta Games will be the first in which sudden death will be used to settle tied games after the first round. There will be no fixed overtime period and no use of penalty kicks as tiebreakers. Instead, the first goal scored in overtime will end the game.

The so-called “golden goal” had been proposed by FIFA General Secretary Joseph (Sepp) Blatter after the Brazil-Italy World Cup final at the Rose Bowl in July had to be decided by penalty kicks.

As for television coverage, the fact that NBC does not have a cable affiliate such as ABC’s link with ESPN, means that soccer could suffer from little or no exposure, as was the case in 1984 when ABC ignored the sport.

But Cress said organizers are working to make NBC programming executives more aware of soccer.

“Nationally, NBC already has got an extensive idea of what they plan to broadcast,” she said. “They go with the big eight (sports), it’s pretty formulaic, but we’re working very hard to try to get soccer on the program and in their minds. Certainly, ABC’s (rating) numbers from the World Cup are a big help.”

Between now and 1996, Cress said, work will continue to build interest in soccer in the five venues, especially the smaller cities.

“We have cities like Birmingham and Athens that have never hosted an international soccer match,” she said. “So we have to work with U.S. Soccer to sow some seeds and get (the cities) a little more educated in the sport and get their level of interest up.”

One way will be to have the U.S. national and/or Olympic teams play games in the Olympic cities, Cress said.