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 another league. MLS initially adopted a traditional all ...

, a

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 Football player, players who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a Ball (association football), ball around a rectangular f ...

match involving all-stars from

Major League Soccer Major League Soccer (MLS) is a professional Association football, soccer league in North America and the highest level of the United States soccer league system. It comprises 30 teams, with 27 in the United States and 3 in Canada, and is sanc ...

. 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) was a stadium located in East Rutherford, New Jersey, in the Meadowlands Sports Complex. The venue was open from 1976 to 2010, and primarily hosted sporting events and ...

East Rutherford East Rutherford is a borough in Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is an inner-ring suburb of New York City, located west of Midtown Manhattan. As of the 2020 United States census, the borough's population was 10,022, an inc ...

, 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 coach. Over his thirteen-year professional career, Ramos played as a midfielder in Spain, Mexico, and the United States. The first player to sign wi ...

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

and

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

while

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

and

Jason Kreis Jason Clarence Kreis (born December 29, 1972) is an American soccer coach and former player who is the director of operations and special projects for Major League Soccer side Real Salt Lake and the former head coach of the United States unde ...

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 m ...

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 was the 18th FIFA World Cup, the qu ...

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 1996 was designated as: * International Year for the Eradication of Poverty Events January * January 8 – A Zairean cargo plane crashes into a crowded market in the center of the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo ...

Soccer competitions in New Jersey

All-Star Game An all-star game is an exhibition game that showcases 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 division, bu ...

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