Fricker, soccer pioneer, dies of cancer.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

PHILADELPHIA _ Werner Fricker, 65, the former president of the United States Soccer Federation, who was instrumental in bringing the 1994 World Cup to the United States, died of cancer Wednesday at his home in Horsham, Pa., outside Philadelphia

Mr. Fricker, who headed a real estate development company based in Horsham, was president of the U.S. Soccer Federation from 1984 to 1990. He also had played for the United States in the qualifying rounds of the 1964 Olympic Games, and from 1954 to 1969 was a midfielder for the United German-Hungarians of Oakford, Bucks County. He captained the United German-Hungarians to victory in the National Amateur Cup in 1965. He was named to the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 1992.

"He always used to say, `I'm not a fan. I'm a player,'" said his son, Werner Fricker Jr. "He wouldn't watch games on television. When he stopped playing in 1969, for about a year or two, he could not watch his teammates play. He could not go to the German-Hungarian Club. And if he did go, he would drift over to a corner of the stands.

"Of course, as president, he had to watch national team games. He watched the game like a doctor. He loved to talk with the coaches and analyze the games."

Mr. Fricker's primary mission as federation president, he often said, was to improve the national teams. Bringing the World Cup here, Mr. Fricker said in a 1994 interview, was a means to improve soccer in the United States. That mission came after his own playing experience in `64, when the United States failed to qualify for the Olympics after losing to Surinam.

"That's when I found out how disorganized everything was in this country. I told my wife then, in 1964, that someday I would work to change that," Mr. Fricker said in 1994.

His mission succeeded. A year after the World Cup, a first-division league, Major League Soccer, was launched, followed by the 1999 Women's World Cup. This year, a women's league, the Women's United Soccer Association, began play.