The 1996 Major League Soccer All-Star Game was the first

Major League Soccer All-Star Game The Major League Soccer All-Star Game is an annual soccer game held by Major League Soccer featuring selected players from the league against an international club or selected players from Liga MX. MLS initially adopted a traditional all-star gam ...

, a

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

match involving all-stars from

Major League Soccer Major League Soccer (MLS) is a men's professional soccer league sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation, which represents the sport's highest level in the United States. The league comprises 29 teams—26 in the U.S. and 3 in Canada ...

. Teams of the best players from each conference played against each other at

Giants Stadium Giants Stadium (sometimes referred to as Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands or The Swamp) was a stadium located in East Rutherford, New Jersey, in the Meadowlands Sports Complex. The venue was open from 1976 to 2010, and it primarily hosted sp ...

East Rutherford East Rutherford is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the borough's population was 10,022, reflecting an increase of 1,109 (+12.4%) from the 8,913 counted in the 2010 census.

, on July 14, 1996. The MLS All-Stars East won the game 3–2, with goals from

Tab Ramos Tabaré "Tab" Ramos Ricciardi (born September 21, 1966) is an American former soccer player and current head coach of Hartford Athletic in the USL Championship. Over his thirteen-year professional career, Ramos played as a midfielder in Spain, ...

Giovanni Savarese Giovanni Savarese (born July 14, 1971) is a Venezuelan football manager and former player, who is the head coach for the Portland Timbers. Club career Professional Breakthrough Savarese made his professional debut at 15, with Venezuelan club ...

and

Steve Pittman Steve Pittman (July 18, 1967 in Wilson, North Carolina) is an American former soccer defender who spent most of his career in the Scottish leagues. He also played professionally in the United States with Major Indoor Soccer League, American ...

while

Preki Predrag Radosavljević ( sr-Cyrl, Предраг Радосављевић; born June 24, 1963), better known by the nickname Preki (), is a Serbian-American former soccer player and coach. He is currently an assistant coach with Seattle Sounde ...

and

Jason Kreis Jason Clarence Kreis (born December 29, 1972) is an American soccer coach and former player who currently serves as an assistant coach for MLS club Inter Miami CF and as head coach of the United States under-23 team. He coached Orlando City S ...

scored for the MLS All-Stars West. MLS All-Stars East midfielder

Carlos Valderrama Carlos Alberto Valderrama Palacio (Colombian Spanish: ; born 2 September 1961), also known as ''El Pibe'' ("The Kid"), is a Colombian former professional footballer and sports commentator for Fútbol de Primera, who played as an attacking mid ...

was named as the game's Most Valuable Player.

Kevin Stott Kevin Stott (born 1967) is a soccer referee for PRO from the United States. He was a FIFA referee from 1995 to 2008. Stott was selected as a referee for the 2006 FIFA World Cup The 2006 FIFA World Cup, also branded as Germany 2006, wa ...

refereed the game, which was attended by 78,416 spectators.

Venue

Match details

External links

All-Star Game flashback, 1996
at MLSsoccer.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Mls All-Star 1996

1996 File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A Centennial Olympic Park bombing, bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical Anti-abortion violence, anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 8 ...

Soccer in New Jersey

All-Star Game An all-star game is an exhibition game that purports to showcase the best players (the "stars") of a sports league. The exhibition is between two teams organized solely for the event, usually representing the league's teams based on region or div ...

1996 in sports in New Jersey Sports competitions in East Rutherford, New Jersey 20th century in East Rutherford, New Jersey July 1996 sports events in the United States