Mark Santel (born July 5, 1968 in Saint Louis, Missouri) is a retired U.S. soccer midfielder. Santel played professionally in three leagues, the Major Indoor Soccer League, American Professional Soccer League and Major Soccer League. He also earned eight caps with the U.S. national team between 1988 and 1997.

Santel was born and raised in Saint Louis, Missouri. He played soccer from youth as a member of the renown local club Scott Gallagher. He also attended Christian Brothers College High School where he played on the boy’s soccer team, earning team MVP honors in 1988.^[1]

After graduating from high school, Santel attended Saint Louis University where he played on the men’s soccer team. In both 1988 and 1990 he was selected as a first team All American.

In 1991, the Wichita Wings of Major Indoor Soccer League (MISL) drafted Santel. However, he actually played the 1991-1992 season with the St. Louis Storm (MISL). In 1992 he began playing for the Colorado Foxes of the American Professional Soccer League (APSL) and would remain with the team through the 1995 season. He was a member of both the 1992 and 1993 APSL champsionship teams.

As Major League Soccer (MLS) prepared for its first season, it signed dozens of players to league contracts. In order to ensure an initial equitable distribution of talent, the league allocated high profile players to each team. As part of this process, MLS allocated Santel to the Dallas Burn. In both 1996 and 1997, Santel was elected to the MLS All Star team. On December 4, 2000, the Burn traded Santel to the Kansas City Wizards for a third round draft pick. He spent one season with the Wizards, playing twenty-one games before retiring at the end of the season.

In 2002, the Lou Fusz Soccer Club of St. Louis hired Santel as its girl’s program director.^[2]

In December 2004, he was hired as the sales and marketing representative for Velocity Sports Performance, a sports training facility in Chesterfield, Missouri.

In 1987, Santel was a member of the U.S. U-20 national team which competed at the 1987 FIFA World Youth Championship. ^[3] Santel went on to earn eight caps with the senior U.S. national team between 1988 and 1997. He scored one goal.^[4] His first game with the full national team came in a January 10, 1988 loss to Guatemala. He did not appear again with the national team until February 1, 1991. Then he played sporadically until his last game in 1997. His national team goal came in a November 14, 1993 shellacking of the Caymen Islands. Final score was 8-1.

Now Mark is the Head coach of the boys soccer team and the girls soccer team at Barat Academy.

Co-author of the children’s book Soccer Dreamin’.

[edit] External links

• MLS stats
• Photo of Santel