NASL Indoor season and after having announced just after the Soccer Bowl that he would return as head coach for the following outdoor season, van der Hart was fired. Team spokesman stated "personal issues" and "team morale" as the primary reason and that Assistant Bill Nuttall was named caretaker for the reminder of the indoor campaign. German Eckhard Krautzun who had coached the Houston Hurricane during the 1980 season, was named head coach for the 1981 Outdoor season. The 1981 season saw the team's first decline in average attendance since it had moved to Fort Lauderdale with 13,345 fans per game seeing them finish second in the Southern Division with a record of eighteen wins and fourteen losses, rather than the 14,360 who attended each game during the 1980 season. After defeating the Calgary Boomers and Minnesota Kicks in the first two rounds of the playoffs, the Strikers lost in the Semifinals to the Cosmos. The day after the Strikers were eliminated from contention for Soccer Bowl '81, the North American Soccer League announced that the team would not participate in the upcoming 1981–82 NASL Indoor season, but would return for 1982 outdoor season. Decline The Strikers ended the 1982 North American Soccer League season with an identical eighteen wins and fourteen losses from the previous season which won them the Southern Division title with another decline in attendance of 12,345 average attendance. After defeating the Montreal Manic in the first round of the playoffs, the Strikers failed to qualify for Soccer Bowl '82 when they lost the semifinals to Seattle Sounders. After two season, Krautzun was fired as head coach with former Striker player and head coach of the recently folded Georgia Generals David Chadwick rumored to be interested in the position. His hiring was confirmed a week later. In addition to compiling a record of one win and seven losses in the 1983 NASL Grand Prix of Indoor Soccer, the Strikers played two indoor friendlies during the offseason. The team's attendance continued decline in the 1983 outdoor season and the team recorded their first losing record in an outdoor NASL season with fourteen wins and sixteen losses. Finishing second in the Southern Division, the team was eliminated in the first round of the playoffs by the Tulsa Roughnecks. Relocation Following the conclusion of the 1983 outdoor season season long rumors that the team was looking to move were