| Former Toronto Blizzard star Patrick "Ace" Ntsoelengoe was found dead in his car near Johannesburg on Monday May 8, he was 54. Ntsoelengoe was thought to have died of a heart attack. Ace played three seasons with the Blizzard, 1982, 1983 and 1984 and was a member of the teams that reached the Soccer Bowl in 1983 and the NASL Championship game in 1984. In South Africa he played for the Kaizer Chiefs, perhaps the most famous and most popular team in the country, and was a national legend. At the time of his death he was head coach of the Kaizer Chiefs U-15 team. However, South Africa's apartheid laws, which kept the country out of the World Cup at that time prevented him from getting the attention on the world stage that he deserved. He first played in the NASL in 1973 for the Miami Toros and missed the 1974 season before joining the Denver Dynamos in 1975. But he made perhaps his biggest impression on the NASL during his years with the Minnesota Kicks from 1976 to 1981, being named a first team all-star in 1979 and again in 1982 after he joined the Blizzard. Ace, was inducted into the U.S. National Soccer Hall of Fame in Oneonta, New York in 2003. |