The 1913-14 season saw the launch of the National Challenge Cup, the competition now known as the US Open Cup, by the recently founded United States Football Association. While the National Challenge Cup would quickly become the singular competition for the title of Champion of the United States, the American Cup tournament had been founded in 1885 by the American Football Association, the first soccer governing body in America. The winner’s list of the American Cup was dominated by teams from New England, New York and northern New Jersey and much of the impetus behind the founding of the National Challenge Cup stemmed from the desire for a more nationally representative competition that would involve teams from as far west as Chicago, Detroit and St. Louis. Nevertheless, in 1913-14, the American Cup remained in the minds of many—at least on the East Coast—the competition for determining a national champion.

Tacony v Paterson for the 1913 American Cup

Philly in the American Cup

Tournament records are incomplete for much of the twenty years following the inaugural American Cup tournament in 1885 and it is unclear when Philadelphia teams first entered the competition. An article on the American Soccer History Archives website suggests that Philadelphia Hibernian, Philadelphia Wanderers and West Philadelphia FC competed for the Cup “in the early years of the competition” but no dates are given. What is certain is that, in 1896, the John A. Manz team became the first team from Philadelphia to win the American Cup. The first area team to enter the American Cup was the Trenton team in the second American Cup tournament in 1886 which lost in the first round. Trenton FBC made it as far as the semifinals in 1887 before being crushed by Clark ONT 5–0. A Trenton team entered the tournament in 1888 but forfeited before their first game. Trenton lost in the first round in 1889. That same year, Trenton Rovers played a scoreless draw with ONT but forfeited the replay. In the 1890 tournament, Trenton advanced as far as the semifinals where they were defeated 5–1 by Kearney Rovers.

Economic hard times played a role in the suspension of the tournament from 1899 through 1905, but local teams, such as Philadelphia Thistle in 1908, entered the tournament when it began again. The 1909-10 competition saw a record 29 teams enter the tournament with Philadelphia Corinthians, Philadelphia Hibernians, Philadelphia Thistle, Tacony FC and Camden FC all making it to the second round. Tacony would go on to win the Cup in 1910. Philadelphia Hibernian made it to what became a two-legged final in 1911 only to lose to Rhode Island’s Howard & Bullough. Four area teams made it to the second round in 1912-13 with Tacony appearing in a final that would be played over three games before Paterson True Blues emerged the winner. The 1913-14 tournament saw four area teams in the second round, Tacony FC, Philadelphia Hibernian, Victor FC of the Pennsylvania League and Bethlehem FC of the Allied American League. (A team called Victor Athletic also played in Philadelphia’s United League.) Three area teams were still alive in the semifinals.

The 1913-14 tournament would be plagued with poor weather and an astounding number of near epic replays. In the end, it would be Tacony facing Bethlehem in the final.

The soccer scene in 1913-14 Philly

The strength of the Philadelphia soccer scene was growing in the 1913-14 season with at least six leagues in operation. These included the Pennsylvania League, the Allied American League, the United League, the Cricket Club League, the Northeast League and the Junior League. Notices from unaffiliated teams in search of opponents for games regularly appeared in contemporary editions of the Philadelphia Inquirer as did announcements of exhibition games and inter-city match-ups such as the game between Philadelphia Hibernian and the then current American Cup holders Paterson True Blues on November 27, 1913. Hibs crushed the visitors, 5–1.

Philadelphia Hibernian in 1914

The season results for the Allied American League show three divisions containing 24 clubs. The Cricket Club League was strong enough to have two divisions. The reach of the first division of the Allied League extended outside of Philadelphia to include Bethlehem FC and Reading FC. The city’s Allied American Football Association had 35 member clubs that season and the association’s Allied Amateur Cup tournament drew 18 entrants. AAFA official Oliver Hemingway wrote in the 1914-15 Spalding Guide to Soccer Football, “The Allied American Foot Ball Association of Philadelphia again proved during the season of 1913-1914 that amateur soccer can be run and played better than by professionals in and around Philadelphia.”

While the standard of play varied among the city’s teams, the level of competition was fierce. Fights between players during games were not uncommon and referees often found themselves in difficult situations. Conflicts did not not stop with players on the pitch during game time. On October 26, 1913 the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that a match at Starr Garden Park between Glenwood Rovers and the Starr Garden team ended in a 1–0 win to the Rovers, “the spectators interfering at every stage of the game.” The report continued, “After the game was over 300 spectators started fighting with the Rovers and a riot call was sent in.” Such disturbances were apparently persistent enough for the Inquirer to suggest on March 30, 1914, “It would be a good idea for those who take an interest in the game in future to assist the referees as much as possible and at the same time protect the visiting players when leaving the grounds.”

While area soccer supporters were justifiably excited as the final rounds of the American Cup competition drew the eyes of the country’s soccer community to Philadelphia, that enthusiasm was not shared by local fans of other sports as match cancellations caused by poor weather, scheduling conflicts and cup replays caused the soccer season to stretch on into the spring. After wet weather caused the cancellation of a National League meeting between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Boston Braves, a comment on the editorial page of the May 7, 1914 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer read, “No matter how bright the morning after a day of continuous rain, there always seems to be a hopeless void when we turn to the sporting page and have to read about soccer and other near-sports instead of a full account of the game that should have been played yesterday.”

While the backing of some Philadelphia newspaper writers may have been lacking, boosters in Bethlehem signaled their support of Bethlehem FC when they formed the Bethlehem Athletic Association soon after the start of the 1913-14 season. The Inquirer reported on November 27, 1913 that “local businessmen and Bethlehem Steel Works officials have undertaken to finance the trips that the club will be compelled to take out of town when drawn to play with other teams anywhere in this country.” Bethlehem was serious about their national aspirations.

Path to the Semifinals

Boys' Club in 1914

American Cup play began easily enough for Tacony, who easily defeated Trenton Hibernians 3–1. That Tacony forfeited their opening round National Challenge Cup match against Kensington FC scheduled for the same day indicates the higher value some clubs placed on winning the American Cup title at that time. Higher value or not, the Inquirer noted on November 3, 1913, “There is something radically wrong in the arrangements when a team is scheduled to play two important cup games in one afternoon.”

First-time entrant Bethlehem trounced Wissinoming FC 5–1 in the preliminary round and advanced again after that when Trenton Caledonian forfeited their first round Cup tie with the Steelworkers. In other first round action for Pennsylvania District clubs, Philadelphia Hibernian crushed Smith FC 8–0, and Philadelphia’s Victor FC emerged the 3–2 winner over fellow Philadelphia side Boys’ Club, a team that would be better known as Lighthouse Boys’ Club.

In the second round of the Cup, Tacony continued their dominating form, dropping General Electric FC 4–1. Philadelphia Hibernian destroyed eventual finalists in the inaugural National Challenge Cup, Brooklyn Celtic, 7–1 and Victor steamed past Locomotive FC 4–1. Bethlehem traveled to Holyoke, MA to face the textile mill-sponsored Farr Alpaca FC team and returned to Pennsylvania the 3–1 winner.

Four Philadelphia-area teams were in the field of eight teams in the next round, the quarterfinals of the competition. Tacony brushed aside Brooklyn Field Club, eventual winners of the National Association Football League title, with a 3–2 win while Philadelphia Hibernian edged past the current American Cup holders Patterson True Blues with a 2–1 win. But for Victor FC and Bethlehem, it would take seven games to determine who would advance to the semifinals.

Patterson True Blues in 1914

Victor had drawn Jersey City’s Jersey AC for the quarterfinals, playing them at Philadelphia Hibernian’s grounds at Third and Lehigh on December 27, 1913. After a scoreless first half dominated by Victors, the home team took a 1–0 lead 22 minutes into the second half. Soon after, Jersey tied and the match ended in a 1–1 draw. The replay in Jersey City on January 11, 1914 was scoreless after regulation time and remained so after extra time and so the series stayed tied at 1–1. The January 12 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Jersey was close to scoring what would have been the winning tally three minutes into extra time with a one-on-one breakaway when the attacker to “fell down ignominiously” five yards from goal. The teams met again in Newark at the West Hudson Oval on January 25, 1914 and at the half Victor was leading 3–0. But a furious comeback was launched by Jersey and the score was tied at 3–3 with two minutes remaining in the match when Jersey scored to finish the game as 4–3 winners.

Bethlehem faced an even more difficult path to the semifinals against West Hudson AA, a three-time American Cup winner who had last won in 1912. Playing in Bethlehem on December 27, 1913 in front of 2,000 spectators on a field “covered with ice and snow,” the Inquirer reported on December 28 that the first half was “played at a terrific pace” but ended scoreless. Bethlehem took the lead 20 minutes into the second half when a corner kick glanced off of a West Hudson defender and into goal. Soon after, the Bethlehem goalkeeper made a stop on a shot from a breakaway but the visitors were able to convert the rebound and the game ended as a 1–1 draw.

Bethlehem battles West Hudson at Tacony Ballpark

A replay was scheduled for January 4 at the Harrison Oval in what the January 5 match report in the Inquirer described as “a storm of sleet, wind and rain and on a field heavy with mud and water.” Nevertheless, some 500 spectators were present. Bethlehem scored first six minutes into the first half but West Hudson equalized before the break. Twenty minutes into the second half, the referee called the game as the already unplayable conditions became even worse to force another replay. The two teams met again on the same grounds a week later and this time the weather was ideal. In front of 2,500 spectators, Bethlehem opened the scoring after 30 minutes of play only to concede the equalizer soon after. At the conclusion of regulation time the scoreline stood at 1–1 and remained so after extra time.

The fourth and final game of the series was held on neutral ground at Tacony Ballpark on February 1, 1914. The match was practically decided before the opening whistle when two West Hudson players missed the train to Philadelphia. With only one substitute on hand, the West Hudson goalkeeper was moved up front into the forward line, and the substitute placed between the posts, and the visitors played the entire match with ten men. The game started an hour late in a heavy downpour and the February 1 match report in the Inquirer reported, “As was to be expected, there was a great deal of roughness infused into the game and in consequence fouls were very frequent.” Before the end of the game, a Bethlehem player “received marching orders from the referee” after he kicked a West Hudson player “in a delicate place.” Bethlehem opened the scoring 12 minutes into the first half but West Hudson managed an equalizer 28 minutes later to send the teams into halftime level. In the second half, Bethlehem soon asserted themselves to finish the game 4–1 winners, 7–4 on aggregate, to advance to the semifinals.

The Semifinals

In the semifinals, Tacony drew Philadelphia Hibernian and Bethlehem drew Jersey AC.

Tacony hosted the Hibs at the Tacony Ballpark on March 21, 1914 in front of some 3,000 spectators. Hibs opened the scoring after a series of corner kicks finally resulted in a goal from eventual Hall of Famer Tommy Swords. Tacony equalized 18 minutes later and the score was tied at the half. In the second half, the Tacony offense proceeded to demolish the Hibs defense, taking the lead eight minutes after the resumption of play. Tacony soon added another goal from a penalty kick after a Hibs player handled the ball in the box. Not long after, Tacony made it 4–1. The Inquirer reported on March 22, “Never before in the history of the Hibernians have they been so completely outclassed as what took place in the second half of yesterday’s match,” adding “it is a question if any defense in the country could have successfully withstood the onslaught of the Tacony frontliners in the second half.”

Following the game, a report in the March 23 edition noted of Tacony’s honorable history in the American Cup tournament since winning the Cup in 1910, “those who are not well versed with their record during the five years will be surprised to know that every team which has eliminated the Taconys has won the Cup.” Bethlehem would have to get past Jersey AC in order to have the chance of keeping that particular record intact.

Bethlehem traveled to Jersey City to face Jersey AC on March 29 in their semifinal match and after going down two goals in the first half, Bethlehem battled back to to draw even at 2–2 before the final whistle for yet another a draw. By now, Philadelphia soccer fans were pulling for Bethlehem to emerge the winners “so that they will see them get a chance to tackle Tacony” and the Inquirer reported on April 2 “there is not the least doubt but that a large crowd from this city will journey to Bethlehem to witness the Bethlehemites in action.” Temporary stands were installed at Bethlehem’s grounds for the expected large crowd.

Jersey AC in 1914

In the replay on April 4, Jersey took the lead after 27 minutes to take a 1–0 into the half. Bethlehem came out kicking in the second half and eventual Hall of Famer Whitey Fleming equalized in the 58th minute. Some 17 minutes later, Fleming put Bethlehem ahead with a long distance effort the Inquirer match report of April 5 described as “a magnificent goal with a long, hard shot.” Jersey kept battling, however and in the closing seconds of the game delivered a stinging effort that beat Bethlehem’s keeper “and only the post saved the game from going into extra periods in case of another tie.”

It would be Tacony against Bethlehem in the final of the 1913-14 American Cup.

The Final

The much anticipated final commenced on April 19 at Olympic Park in Patterson, NJ. It wasn’t much of a battle and ended in a 0–0 draw after regulation and extra time. The Inquirer match report on April 20 was scathing in its assessment of the game, describing “exceptionally weak” shooting,

The contest, which lasted exactly two hours, did not produce the class of football that one expected with such noted exponents of the game participating, and those who made the journey especially to witness the game were disappointed, for there was hardly five minutes’ good football during the whole game, Tacony being the team that showed the best combination, what little there was.

In a match with “too much fouling by both teams,” The Inquirer went on to criticize the referee, who “did not help matters any by pulling up for accidental fouls and allowing the ones that should have come under his optics to go by unnoticed,” including when the Bethlehem captain punched a Tacony player “on the jaw because the later had charged him with greater force than what suited the Bethlehem captain.” While noting that “a couple of schoolboy teams could have displayed better football,” the report continues,

Despite the fact that Bethlehem had made special preparations for this match by sojourning up in the Pocono Mountains since last Wednesday, they did not last as long as their opponents, though almost any untrained bunch of athletes could have gone today’s pace without in the least showing any signs of wear. The ground was lumpy nearly all over the field, which would have handicapped teamwork if either team had been guilty in that respect, while the seating facilities were inadequate for an important game…If time had been taken out every occasion that the ball went out of bounds, the referee would had to have taken off about one hour and a half of actual time for the ball was outside of the line more than it was in the field.

The need for yet another replay led to further grumblings on the Inquirer sports pages about the intrusion of the soccer season into the baseball season. On April 20, the Inquirer wrote, “as another game must be played the soccermen will still further invade upon the season belonging to the knights of the diamond.” Ahead of the replay on May 3, the Inquirer wrote on April 27, “If Tacony and Bethlehem repeat the same kind of football as was witnessed at Patterson when they battle again for the A.F.A. Cup next Sunday, it will be the death knell of soccer football for a while.” Not that Bethlehem was paying attention to such concerns; on April 25 they clinched the Allied American League title by defeating Smith FC 6-0.

The win seemed to concentrate the efforts of Bethlehem, which included securing a special train so that some 500 supporters could travel to the replay in Newark. After 15 minutes of play, Bethlehem scored the game’s solitary goal to win their first American Cup championship. The Inquirer match report on May 4 concluded that Bethlehem deserved the win “for they infused more ‘pep’ into their game and made the most of their opportunities while the Taconyites did not take their chances,” but it was another ugly game. After 22 minutes of play, one Tacony player was deliberately kicked after winning the ball, falling heavily onto his left arm, “which hung limp at his side all through the game, though he was absent for about ten minutes after the injury,” this in the days before substitutions were allowed. The Inquirer match report continues, “While the game was better played then when the teams met two weeks ago, still it was such a rank exhibition of soccer on that occasion that it could have easily been improved, today’s game not being anything above the ordinary, as the players, at least some of them on both teams generally tried to get the man instead of the ball.”

The league and American Cup championship now theirs, a headline in the May 4 edition of the Inquirer read, “Bethlehem Fans Going Dippy Over Winning Championships.” May 3 had also been the day that the Allied Amateur Cup final was to have been played between Bethlehem and West Philadelphia FC. When the game was rescheduled because of the American Cup final replay, West Philadelphia refused to play, claiming the match should have been held on the originally scheduled date, giving Bethlehem their third championship of the 1913-14 season. Bethlehem finished the season with only one loss out of 31 games played, that coming in the third round of the National Challenge Cup in a 1–0 loss to eventual Cup winners Brooklyn Field Club. With cup replays and poor weather causing postponements throughout the season, Bethlehem was at one point required to play three games in two days, winning all of them. Thirteen of the the games Bethlehem played in 1913-14 were shutouts and they outscored their opponents by the almost ridiculous total of 125 to 19.

The next season, Tacony would be taken over by the Disston Saw Company and would then play as the Disston FC. Bethlehem would leave the Allied American League to join the Philadelphia’s new American League where it would play the likes of Disston, Philadelphia Hibernian, Victor and West Philadelphia. While they would be knocked out of the American Cup with a semifinal loss to Brooklyn Celtic in 1915, Bethlehem would have their revenge a month-and-a-half later when they defeated Celtic in the 1914-15 National Challenge Cup final. Following that victory, Bethlehem would become officially backed by the Bethlehem Steel Company and would play as Bethlehem Steel.

The news that PPL Park will be host the 2012 MLS All-Star Game means that Philadelphia will be the host of a major pro sport All-Star event for the first time since the NBA came to town in 2002. The last time the city was host to a pro soccer all-star game was in 1976 when the North American Soccer League’s Team America faced England at JFK Stadium as part of the Bicentennial Cup.

A brief look at past all-star games in Philly

Philadelphia soccer history contains many examples of local all-star teams facing international teams. As early as 1909, a picked team of players from the city’s Associated Cricket Club’s League played the touring Pilgrims club from England, as did an All-Philadelphia team a few days later. While the two teams lost by a collective score of 12–0, in between those two matches Philadelphia Hibernian redeemed the city’s sporting honor by handing the Pilgrims their first loss of the tour. Before the Second World War, picked teams would play—and lose—to Corinthian FC in 1924, Maccabi FC in 1927, a team of Italian all-stars called Palestra Italia FC in 1928, Celtic in 1931, Charlton Athletic in 1937.

Visits after the war from the likes of Liverpool (1946), Inter Milan and the Scottish national team (1949), Hamburg and Besiktas (1950), Celtic (1951), Manchester United (1952), Nuernberg (1955), and Manchester City (1958) saw the familiar pattern of all-star teams made up of players from local American Soccer League clubs being thrown together with little preparation to be slaughtered by foreign visitors.

Team America

Things were looking up for the NASL in 1976 which, after early struggles to expand the league, now stood at 20 teams. Pele had joined the league in 1975 and international stars such as George Best, Giorgio Chinaglia, Rodney Marsh, and Bobby Moore had followed. To honor the country’s bicentennial—and also grow soccer’s expanding profile in the US—the US Soccer Federation organized the Bicentennial Cup. Three-time World Cup winner Brazil, two-time World Cup winner Italy, and one-time World Cup winner England were invited to participate in a round-robin six-city coast-to-coast tournament that would include an “American” team. But it would not be the US national team. Rather, they would be playing against Team America, made up of NASL all-stars. Coached by the English manager of the New York Cosmos, the roster seems to have been weighted with players from that team. More importantly, of the 13 Americans invited to tryout for the team, only six made the 20-player roster.

The New York Times would write on May 17, 1976, “Imagine a trio of Georgie Best, Giorgio Chinaglia and Pele. No country in the world has three guys like that to play forward.” The strange spectacle of seeing World Cup greats like England’s Bobby Moore and Brazil’s Pele wearing shirts with “USA” on their chests aside, while US Soccer saw Team America and the tournament as as an opportunity promote soccer in America, others saw the makeup of the team as a lost opportunity.

Hubert Vogelsinger, the German-born manager of the Boston Minutemen, told the St. Petersburg Times on May 22, “We’re making this series an ethnic affair, putting in these foreign players. Now we’re gonna lose 2–1 or 3–2 instead of 5–1 or 4–0. What are we going to prove? That Pele and George Best and Rodney Marsh know how to play soccer? We already know that.”  He added, “This was unbelievable shortsightedness. Here we could have gained international recognition by exposing our American team to these others. Even if we lose 10–0, so what? We are an arriving nation in this sport and we can only get better. The experience would have been invaluable.”

Bob Rigby looks on during the loss to Italy. (Photo: Courtesy of Sports Illustrated)

Rodney Marsh agreed. “Naw, I’m not going to go. This should be for the Americans. We (foreign stars) shouldn’t be on the team. Let the Americans play.” George Best joined him in withdrawing from the team and Pele made it clear that he would not play against Brazil.

Against Italy and Brazil

On May 23, the day of Team America’s first match of the tournament against Italy, the New York Times wrote, “Team America has been called Team Imports, Melting Pot, and a bunch of foreigners playing for America.” In front of 33,455 spectators at RFK Stadium, Italy trounced Team America 4—0. The match report in the May 24 edition of the New York Times concluded, “the Americans proved that a group of international superstars has trouble playing together as a team with so little preparation. The picture presented by America was not a pretty one.” Bobby Moore said after the game, “Very inexperienced. You cannot put a team together like that in two days.”

Five days later, Team America faced Brazil in front of 20,253 spectators at Seattle’s Kingdome. Bob Rigby, the Ridley Park-born goalkeeper who had led the Philadelphia Atoms to the 1973 NASL championship and had recently joined the New York Cosmos along with former Philadelphia Atom and Trenton-born Bobby Smith, had had a nightmare game against Italy. His frustration was evident when he spoke to Sports Illustrated after learning he would be benched for the match against Brazil.

“We never have any time together. They never give us any preparation. And we’ve had less background than anybody. I’ve played five months a year for the last three years. Didn’t even play professional ball until I came out of college. What we need is as much exposure to good players and coaching as we can get. Our game really needs it…As long as people come over here they’re going to be dictating to us. We have this rule that there’s six American citizens on a side and that’s the only protection we have. Push the number up? They say so, they say so. Every team has six American players—on the bench.”

While the Pele-less Team America played better than they had against Italy, they still fell short, losing to Brazil 2–0.

Against England at JFK

While Team America was being trounced by Italy, England lost a close 1–0 game to Brazil at LA Memorial Coliseum. Down 2–0 to Italy in the first half in front of 40,650 spectators at Yankee Stadium, England fought back to win 3–2. This left them behind Brazil and tied with Italy in the tournament standings going into their final game against Team America on May 31 at JFK Stadium. While second half substitute and Scottish winger Stewart Scullion scored a late goal for Team America for their lone goal of the tournament, it was not enough. England won 3–1 with Kevin Keegan netting two of the goals. Only 16,231 spectators showed up for the game.

At the Yale Bowl later that day, Brazil topped Italy 4–1 to take the Bicentennial Cup championship and England finished in second.

Legacy

NASL commissioner Phil Woosnam said in the May 23 edition of the New York Times lead-up to the tournament, “The sport has reached the point now where we can realistically think in terms of becoming a major power. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen in the next decade. I will say right now that in ten years soccer will be bigger than football. And in rare moments, I say five years.” Eight years after those comments, the NASL folded.

Team America, 1983

In 1983, the NASL fielded another Team America, and this team was a professionalized version of the USMNT. The league was already struggling and the new Team America was intended to both bolster the league as well as strengthen the fan base for the national team and feed players into the national team system. Two players from the original Team America—Juli Veee (a naturalized US citizen born in Hungary) and Arnie Mausser—featured on the team, but several high profile players refused to leave their current clubs. In the end, the team finished last in the league and folded after the 1983 season.

While the NASL may have failed to fulfill its promise, US Soccer was beginning the slow process of getting its act together, a process that included the professionalization of the federation’s organizational structure, providing salaries for national players who were not contracted to professional clubs abroad in the absence of a professional league in the US, hosting the 1994 World Cup, and an unbroken string of World Cup appearances by the USMNT team beginning in 1990. While it would be foolish to say that US Soccer will be a major power on the world stage in ten years, let alone five, that reality is closer now than when the Bicentennial Cup was played 36 years ago.

MLS has learned the lessons of the collapse of the NASL well and the Philadelphia Union, and its home at PPL Park, are but one example of this. Whether the MLS All-Star team, no doubt with short preparation, this July follows in the footstep of losses that mark the history of such games in Philadelphia is beside the point. Now, the All-Star game is about celebrating the continued success of the league, while simultaneously marketing that success to an already crowded American sport landscape. A radically different media landscape exists now compared to that which existed in the days of the NASL and the sophisticated American soccer fan cares less about the game being “bigger than football” than that efforts to develop the talent pool of American players and grow the American soccer fan-base continue in a positive direction. Ultimately, the success of both MLS—and US Soccer—will go hand in in.

Footage of Team America vs. England at JFK

Click here to view the embedded video.

Against the expectation of many in the US, the United States Football Association’s first international tour in Scandinavia in the summer of 1916 had been a great success. The cash-strapped USFA had come out of the trip in the black—the Swedish FA had paid for the tour thanks to the backing of a leading Swedish newspaper—and the team had performed well to garner a 3–1–2 record despite having been put together only days before departure to Europe without the benefit of tryouts. Plans for more Scandinavian tours—notably of the St. Louis club the Ben Millers—had to be cancelled, however, when the US entered the First World War in April of 1917.

With the Armistice of November, 1918, plans to return to Scandinavia were renewed. In the summer of 1919, Bethlehem Steel, holders of the National Challenge Cup and the American Cup for the second year in a row, became the first US club team to embark on an overseas tour.

Prelude

When the USFA agreed to the 1916 Scandinavian tour, Bethlehem Steel was the logical choice to represent the association, having become in the spring of 1916 the first team to win both the National Challenge Cup and the American Cup. At least this was true in terms of representing the association as the best club team in America. As a US national team, Bethlehem would not work—the majority of its players were British citizens. If this presented a conflict for the USFA it was rendered moot when, despite the offer of a handsome guarantee to offset the costs of the tour, the club’s owners reasoned that the danger of submarine attack during the Atlantic crossing was too great, even with the protection afforded by making the passage on the neutral ships of the Swedish-American Line. Nevertheless, two Bethlehem Steel players, right halfback Thomas Murray and center halfback Neil G. Clarke, were included on the US roster, as were three players from Philadelphia teams: C.H. “Dick” Spalding, a left fullback with Tacony’s Disston AA team, co-champions with Bethlehem of the city’s American League; left halfback Albert Blakey of the city’s Allied American League champions, Putnam FC; and Walter Bergin, inside left for Philadelphia Wanderers, also in the Allied League.

Bethlehem’s first international trip

Bethlehem did make an international trip during the war. After defeating an All-Canada team 4–1 on November 17, 1918 in Harrison, New Jersey in an exhibition match to benefit the United War Work Fund, the team traveled to Toronto for a rematch at the University of Toronto’s “Varsity Stadium,” whose pitch was described in the November 25 edition of the Bethlehem Globe as being “as level as a billiard table and the grass like a bowling green.” When Bethlehem played the All-Canada eleven on a snowy December 1, “the splendid field of the Toronto University was covered to the depth of several inches, and the footing was rendered very treacherous and unadapted to a good display of football.” Nevertheless, Bethlehem emerged the 2–0 winners in front of some ten thousand spectators in a game that the December 2 match report in the Globe describes as “fraught with excitement from the start.” At the end of December, Bethlehem traveled to St. Louis for a series of three games, winning the first game before suffering their first draw and loss of the 1918-19 season.

Possibilities of tours in England, Scandinavia and Brazil

From the Philadelphia Inquirer, April 27, 1919 after winning the American Cup for the fourth year in a row.

Bethlehem had clinched the National Association Football League championship by the first weekend of March, 1919. On March 17, the Globe reported rumors that, should Bethlehem win the National Challenge Cup and the American Cup, “negotiations would be opened for a series of exhibition games in London.”

On April 10, the Globe reported that the winner of of the National Challenge Cup would be chosen to tour Scandinavia. Bethlehem defeated Patterson FC  2–0 in the National Challenge Cup final at Fall River, Massachusetts on April 19. The Globe reported on April 22, “Thomas W. Cahill, secretary of the United States Football Association, announced immediately after the game that in recognition of the remarkable record complied during the season by the team it was definitely arranged that the Steel Workers tour Norway, Sweden and Denmark for a series of exhibition games.” Lest there was any doubt that Bethlehem was the best team in the United States, on April 26 they again defeated Patterson 2–0, this time in the American Cup final, played at Tacony’s Disston Baseball Park.

On April 28, the Inquirer wrote of the team’s accomplishments, “Speaking of Bethlehem, you certainly have got to hand it to the players for the manner in which they keep in the game. What is more, they have more soccer in their think tanks than the average player, while they are also there with the combination stuff.”

On May 10, the Globe reported that the trip to Scandinavia was now in doubt, “While it is believed that Swedish promoters are keen for the exhibition contests and that the champions would be a big drawing card, it is hinted that the guarantees offered do not quite suit or warrant making the trip.”

Meanwhile, the team prepared for another trip to Canada. An update on the Scandinavian tour on May 14 noted that “at the same time the American aggregation is touring Sweden, the Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur teams of England will also be there… and negotiations at present are on with the English team for a game each to be played either at Stockholm or Christiana [present day Oslo].” On May 17, the Globe reported that the USFA had voted to authorize the Scandinavian tour. After defeating all-star teams in Toronto, Niagara Falls and Hamilton, the Globe reported on May 29 that Cahill had completed all arrangements for the team to travel to Scandinavia.

On June 2 the Globe reported that Bethlehem manager William “Billy” Sheridan had accepted an offer from the Brazilian FA for the team to play a series of exhibition games in that country if the games could be scheduled for after the Scandinavian tour. The Globe wrote, “When challenges are received from different parts of the world for international soccer clashes with the United States champions it fully indicates the widespread fame established by the team. The fact that the Bethlehem team has won the national honors for the past four years and that the last season has been the “greatest ever” since the club was established, has placed the team in great demand.”

In a report on July 17 providing details of the team’s Scandinavian dates, the Globe provided an update on the Brazil tour plans, saying “the team will play a six-game series in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Santos, Brazil, under the auspices of the Brazilian Federation of Sports. The terms of the Brazilian organization have been accepted, but no dates have been announced. The United States champions may meet in Brazil the famous Flumenese Club, which recently won the championship of South America in a series in which Argentina and Chile were strong competitors.”

The team en route to Scandinavia. (Photo: Courtesy of Dan Morrison.)

The tour roster

Cahill, who would be acting as the general manager of the tour with Sheridan as “the trainer,” announced the roster for the tour on July 15, 1919. Six of the 17 players on the roster were guest players, including four players who had been part of the 1916 All-American tour of Scandinavia. Among them was Philadelphia’s Albert Blakey, who had just returned from army service. Bethlehem’s Thomas Murray, himself just returned from military service and a member of the 1916 tour, was also on the roster. Roger Allaway writes that the inclusion of Archie Stark and Davey Brown from the Patterson team “enabled Bethlehem Steel to field a forward line twice in the 14-game tour that included four future Hall of Famers, Stark, Brown, Harry Ratican and Whitey Fleming. That may have been the most powerful group of forwards ever to play for the same club team in American soccer history.”

Ratican, the St. Louis native who had joined the club in 1916, had announced before the tour that he would be leaving the club. Nevertheless, the Globe reported on July 21 that he would be the captain of the team. (Later reports suggest that James Campbell and Fred Pepper variously served as captain.) The report noted, “It is hoped that during the trip the influences of being in personal contact with the players throughout the trip will induce him to change his plans in seeking quarters other than Bethlehem in plying his soccer ability next season. ”

That night a banquet was held in the team’s honor before their departure from Bethlehem on July 22 for New York. The Globe reported on July 22 that two Bethlehem players who had been left off of the roster, Jimmy Easton and Bobby Morrison, had been told they could join the tour.

The contract for the games called for so many men, and for this reason, it was explained that Easton, whose playing on the Bethlehem team has always been appreciated, was omitted. During the banquet one of the men fostering the sport spirited Easton and Morrison to a quite corner and from there, after a brief confab, both players emerged smiling and joining in the celebration with a heartier enthusiasm. It was then learned that these two men will probably sail as soon as their passports are secured. The teammates of both and followers of the game will be glad to hear that they are to be included on the trip.

The team training on board ship. (Photo courtesy of Dan Morrison.)

Just before boarding the train to New York, one of the “optimistic soccerites” among the “crowd of happy athletes” remarked, “I am not going to tear loose until that old boat sets sail and then I know nothing can happen to cancel the trip.” Sheridan told the Globe, “They are not going to a good time going over. But after we leave South America, homeward bound, it will be different; the serious work will be over by that time.”

Training on board the Swedish-American liner Stockholm would be rigorous. Sheridan said at the banquet, “You know there has been little playing since our last invasion into Canada and it is only natural that the players are somewhat out of condition. The boat is big enough to carry on training en route and there are sure to be some strenuous sessions of rope jumping, bouncing around the medicine ball, lengthy sprints and many other forms of training.” But, the players would be traveling in style. In addition to first class accommodations, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported on July 22,

Steamer and equipment trunks of the tourists, who will be 21 in number, will be labeled with a unique poster in five colors, lettered at the top “Scandinavia Tour.” On one side of the space reserved for the name of the owner of the baggage appears a likeness of a Bethlehem player, correctly attired in the Steelmakers’ light blue and white, interlaid with the national colors of Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the United States. Beneath, in inline lettering, appears the Bethlehem club record: “Bethlehem Steel Co. Soccer Football Club: Champions, United States; 1914-15, 1915-16; 1915-16; 1917-18; 1918-19.”

If expectations had been low before the All-American tour of Scandinavia in 1916, the opposite was true for Bethlehem Steel. On July 25, the Inquirer wrote, “If America’s championship socker football club, Bethlehem’s Steel Company’s great team, fails in its conquest on foreign fields in the next three months, it will have no excuses to offer.”

In Scandinavia

Departing US shores on July 23, the team landed in Gothenburg on August 4. After a week of training, Bethlehem faced its first opponent, AIK, on August 10. An AP report printed in the August 11 edition of the Inquirer read, “A large crowd of spectators witnessed the game, which aroused much enthusiasm.” On September 9, the Globe printed a translation of a Swedish newspaper account of the match, which noted that Stockholm’s Olympic Stadium was filled to its 20,000 seat capacity “with several thousand outside,” some of whom “bid as high as 100 Kr. for a ticket [about $190 in current dollars if my calculations are correct], but could not get a seller, which shows that there is still money in old Sweden, and it also shows that the interest in football is still higher, and also that the Stadium is sometimes too small.” The Swedish account continues,

The Bethlehem players could not find themselves in this first match…Bethlehem Steel Company, America’s best team, played an undecided game, 2 to 2, against AIK It might as well be said that the team from Stockholm played a better game than was expected. Such a game—to use the players own words—the AIK has not played since the day when the Liverpool team visited Stockholm. Now to the game. Some people say that they were disappointed in the American team. Why? Because they did not beat the AIK. It is true that they, in this their first match in Stockholm did not play the Scotch play that was expected from them. The forward line did not hold together very well, and the halfbacks did not follow properly when they were pressed the hardest by the AIK. These combinations did sometimes not succeed and especially Ratican, the center, was for the day, indisposed. The speed was just the same, greater than what had been seen in [Stockholm] Stadium for many a day. Add to this that the Americans played their first match in a foreign country on a practically strange field and before a foreign crowd and for their own local team, partisan public. They were during the first half period nervous and this nervousness did not disappear during the second.

The report noted that Fleming, Bethlehem’s left forward, “made the best impression on the public,” and that “The Bethlehem players were distinguished for their good headplay.”

In action at an unidentified stadium. (Photo: courtesy of Dan Morrison.)

On August 14, Bethlehem defeated Stockholm Tigers 1–0. A report the next day in the Globe said, “With one victory and one tie game to their credit, the champions will no doubt enter the following contests chuck full of confidence which should prove a big asset in their playing. Forestalling defeat in the opening two contests is a wonderful achievement.” The same day, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Albert Blakey, the Philadelphia player in Sweden with the Bethlehem team who got his first start of the Scandinavian tour in the win, would be joining the new Hardwick & Magee factory team in the city’s Industrial League.

A translation of a Swedish newspaper account of Bethlehem’s win appeared in the September 10 edition of the Globe. The account noted that the first match had set an attendance record for the Stockholm Stadium and that the second match, taking place on a Wednesday, set an “audience record for an every-day evening” with more than 15,000 on hand. The report said of the play, “Characteristic for Wednesday’s game was speed and force. And what else could it be when Americans appear on the field?” The report said of the play of Blakey and Thomas Murray, teammates on the 1916 tour, “Murray and Blakey in outer halfback played the entire match with furious speed…One enjoyed the hard and quick way to go ahead, which these gentlemen displayed. Not a moment was left for the Tiger chain to consider the situation.”

On August 17, the team faced an All-Star Swedish team in Stockholm, winning 2–1. The Globe triumphantly reported on August 18,

Bethlehem now has a good sized edge on the foreigners and it would appear from the showing of the Steel Workers to date that they will return with the greatest honors ever garnered by an American soccer eleven in the history of the game in this country. Also that a victory in this international series in a sport that is really still in its infancy in this country is another high tribute to the standard of athletics developed in America. The Bethlehem Steel team has won all the honors possible in the United States and to add to its glowing record was forced to invade foreign shores for still more glory. Prophets, who from time to time last season could not fully reconcile themselves to the fact that the team sporting the Bethlehem colors was the peer of all other soccer aggregations in the country and contributed many of the victories to games played on home grounds or some other ridiculous reason, are awakening to the fact that their contentions were all wrong and that the champions possess the ability to carry on their victorious stride on foreign soil as well as at home.

On September 15, the Globe printed an assessment of the team’s performance based on an eyewitness to the first three games. “Whatever the outcome is of the remaining games in the Scandinavian tour of the Bethlehem Steel Workers, they will return home with the laurels of ranking with the greatest soccer elevens in Scotland and England. This is foreseen in the opinion of Harry McGregor, of the Scottish League, who witnessed three of the games abroad, and says the home teams are on a par with the leading clubs of Scotland and England.”

In action in an unidentified match. (Photo: Courtesy of Dan Morrison.)

The team followed their second victory with a 1–1 draw with Djurgardens on August 19. Bethlehem played their first match out of Stockholm, a draw 1–1 with Norrkoping on August 24. On August 26, the team chalked up another win with a dominating 4–0 performance over an All-Skane team at Helsinburg. Allaway writes that the win in Helsinburg was perhaps their best performance on the tour and “was one of the two in which Bethlehem fielded its most star-studded set of forwards.”

Bethlehem next traveled to Copenhagen in Denmark where they drew 1–1 with Boldklubben af 1893 on August 29. On September 4, the team suffered its first loss of the tour, falling 3–2 to an All-Malmo team. The Globe reported on September 5, “A cablegram received at the offices of the Bethlehem Steel Company states that the players were tired after a long trip from Copenhagen.” The report also said,

The defeat by no means lowers the colors of the American aggregation, who in the games played thus far have a strong hold on the international honors and rather than disgraced by their defeat, adds even greater laurels by virtue of their previous victories. The score, as in all previous games, would indicate that the Americans went down to defeat only after a brilliant fight and forced the opponents to their utmost to gain the one-goal advantage.

Three days later, Bethlehem experienced its second and final loss of the tour, falling to Goteborg Kamraterna in Gothenburg. The Globe reported on September 8 that a cable received at the offices of the Bethlehem Steel Company read “Gottenberg 3, Bethlehem 1. Good game. Unlucky.”

Team photo before an unidentified match. (Photo: Courtesy of Dan Morrison.)

The team never looked back after that second loss, going on a four-game winning streak. On September 10, they defeated Goteborg Orgryte 1–0, the team with which an All-American victory in 1916 had been followed by local supporters attacking US players and officials. On September 14, Bethlehem redressed their earlier 1–1 draw with Norrkoping by defeating them 2–0. On September 18 they returned to Stockholm to defeat an All-Stockholm team 1–0. On September 21 they defeated an All-Sweden side 3–2 in Stockholm. For the last game of the tour, Bethlehem played Hammarby to a scoreless draw.

Bethlehem finished the Scandinavian tour with a 7–2–5 record, outscoring their opponents 22–14. The two highest goal scorers, John “Rabbit” Hemingsley (8), a veteran of the 1916 All-American team and with Philadelphia Merchant Ship in the 1918-19 seaason, and William Forrest (5), were guest players.

The return

The team left Bergen for the US aboard the steamer Stavansgerfjord of the Norwegian-American Line on September 27. They were preceded by Jimmy Easton and James Wilson, who arrived back in the States aboard the Caramania of the Cunard Line on October 3. The two players had included a three week stop in England and Scotland to visit relatives. (Given that the passage from Britain to the US would have taken at least ten days combined with the length of their visit to relatives in England and Scotland suggest that Easton and Wilson could not have been available to play many of the Scandinavian fixtures.)

On October 4, the Globe reported that half a dozen of the returning players, as well as Bethlehem Steel team manager William Sheridan, would be doing the same and were expected to arrive back in the States on October 28. On October 7, the main party of players arrived back in Bethlehem, “Looking fit as a fiddle and ready to assume responsibilities in the American soccer campaign this year.”

The team’s commencement of National League play for the 1919-20 season was delayed while it awaited the return of the players were visiting with relatives in Britain. On October 14, the Globe confirmed that Ratican had signed with Robins Dry Dock in Brooklyn, where he would join Bob Millar and Neil Clarke, who had also left the team following the end of the 1918-19 season before the start of the tour. The Globe reported, “Ratican refused to comment on the reason for his desiring a change of scene but it is believed that his action was prompted by friction with some of the players. It is understood that for some time he has not been getting along any too well with certain members of the team and toward the close of last season had already announced his intention of leaving.” The Globe had reported throughout the tour that there was hope that several of the guest players would join the Bethlehem roster on a permanent basis after the tour but none did. Archie Stark did join Bethlehem in 1924, playing with the team until 1930.

Pressure from other teams over Bethlehem’s delayed start of league play continued to grow. On October 23, the Globe published a report that described how league officials had “severely criticized” dissension from other teams.

Rumors had it that Bethlehem Steel F. C. has received a greater amount of leeway than any other club would have received had it gone abroad as Bethlehem did during the latter part of the summer. The officials of the National League at their meeting made it pretty clear that Bethlehem had permission to make the trip and was advised as far back as June that their scheduled would be delayed until they arrived home. With this perfect understanding before the final arrangements were made for the tour, there is no cause for the attitude apparent among other clubs.

In the meanwhile, the club organized exhibition matches and began American Cup and National Challenge Cup play. Bethlehem would not play its first National League match until December 6, by which time other teams in the league had already played as many as seven games, losing two of their first three games. The team turned things around as the season went on, however, and won their last eight games to finish as league champions by one point.

Things did not go so well in Cup play. After a 10–0 fourth round win over Philadelphia Wanderers in the National Challenge Cup, Bethlehem was knocked out of the semifinals with a 1–0 loss to Robins Dry Dock, the team to which former Bethlehem players Rattican, Millar and Clarke had decamped. On May 9, 1920, the Ben Millers, the St. Louis team which Bethlehem had played in 1916 and 1917, became the first non-East Coast team to win the National Challenge Cup. By then, Bethlehem had already tasted defeat in the American Cup. While victorious from the Round of 16 through to the semifinals by an aggregate score of  14–1, on May 2, 1920, they lost 1–0 on an own-goal in the final to Robins Dry Dock.

What happened to the Brazil tour?

Newspaper paper accounts of the day are filled with mentions of planned tours that more often than not did not come into being for reasons that are equally often not reported. Early mention by the Bethlehem Globe of possible games in England or with English teams in Scandinavia came to naught. Similarly, plans for games in Norway and Finland during the Scandinavian tour did not materialize.

In a report on July 7, 1920 announcing plans for a new Brazilian tour in the summer of 1920, the Globe explained that the original 1919 tour had not so much been cancelled so much as postponed.

In fact, the players left Bethlehem [in 1919] assured that they would tour South America and were somewhat disappointed when a cablegram reached them on board ship while en route to the Scandinavian countries calling it off. With an extensive schedule to be played in Sweden and Denmark, it was deemed unwise to make the final leg of the trip until this year. The decision was a wise one for it is remembered that the season in this country was well started before the Bethlehem players returned and in the opening games the men did not display their usual form. It is understood that several new men are expected to join the squad and that they will be included among the players on the trip.

On July 21, 1920, the Globe reported that the offer for another Brazilian tour had been accepted. “While it was known definitely that the trip was to be made,” the Globe reported, “the details attending the tour were unknown pending the receipt of the cablegram announcing more definitely when first game is to be played and the number of games scheduled.” On July 29, the Globe reported that William Sheridan had traveled to New York to discuss the details of the tour with Thomas Cahill. The Globe wrote, “Gathered from the conversation handed out by Sheridan before his departure the more important details have already been attended to and it is merely to check up on the data that he is paying a visit to Gotham.” The Globe announced on August 3 that Bethlehem’s players had been ordered to report for training on August 5 in preparation trials to decide the roster for the tour.

On August 13, the Globe reported that “Sixteen players in charge of manager William Sheridan will board the Vistris of the Munson Line tomorrow and set sail for Brazil.” The report continued,

According to reports received from Brazil, soccer enthusiasts in that country are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Americans. The sport to Brazilians is what baseball is to Americans so that local fans can about imagine what a furor the impending international games has created among the sporting public. Their visit, in comparison, is looked up to as similar to what it would be in this country if England sent a baseball team over here to compete with the World’s champions. Then again the Bethlehem Steel Corp. have vast interests in South America so that the team will not be entirely unknown or without a fair quota of rooters.

But it was not to be. On Monday, August 16, the Globe reported that the players had returned to Bethlehem, the tour canceled. “According to one of the players the announcement canceling the trip came like a bolt out of the clear sky and keen disappointment was felt by all the men. The word from the local plant reached the players shortly before they were about to board the steamship Viatria to carry them to their destination.”

Edgar Lewis, the former Bethlehem Steel player and now company officer who also oversaw the team, explained the reason for the cancellation. “We were invited to play the series of games by the Brazilian government” he said, “but last Friday received a cablegram announcing that they decided to withdraw the invitation. We were given to understand that the reason for this action was in order to limit the competition to native clubs only. There is a possibility that they may change their decision and renew the invitation.” Allaway speculates, “The fact that Bethlehem was no longer the champion of either cup may have influenced the Brazilian government’s thinking” in cancelling the tour.

Whatever the case, 1919, with league, National Challenge Cup and American Cup titles, as well as two successful trips abroad, one of which was the first by a US club team overseas, would prove to be the pinnacle of Bethlehem Steel FC’s success.

US soccer was about to embark on its first international tour, right in the middle of the First World War.

How the tour came to be

On May 29, 1916, the third annual meeting of the United States Football Association, today known as the US Soccer Federation, was held at the Hotel Walton in Philadelphia, then located at the southeast corner of Broad and Locust Streets before it was demolished in 1966. Among the minutes of the meeting in the 1916-17 edition of the Spalding Guide are reports and recommendations from various committees. The assembled delegates approved the recommendation “that the Association take up and foster development of soccer football in the schools.” The report from the National Challenge Cup Competition Committee, known today as the US Open Cup and won only a few weeks earlier on May 6 of that year by Bethlehem Steel FC, noted that the total income to the USFA from the Cup competition that year was $1,955.21, about $40,600 in current dollars. From the Emergency Committee was this:

Sunday, March 12—Meeting of the Committee held in New Bedford, Mass. Communication from Cuba regarding international game was considered and a reply sent calling their attention to the fact that they were not affiliated with the F.I.F.A; also a letter from Sweden was given consideration. Secretary Cahill was ordered to reply to the latter communication.

The “letter from Sweden”—a neutral in the World War, as was the US at the time—contained an invitation for a US team to travel to Scandinavia for a tour and it did not come from out of the blue; Thomas Cahill had visited Sweden in 1912 to lobby for USFA’s recognition by FIFA, which was meeting there in conjunction with the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. Later, Cahill had sent Kornerup, secretary of the Swedish Football Association, a copy of the 1915-16 Spalding Guide, of which he was the editor. Hence the “letter from Sweden.”

Cahill wasted no time in replying to Kornerup’s invitation. The report on the Scandinavian tour in the 1916-17 Spalding Guide says, “He likewise took up the subject with Chairman Douglas Stewart of the National and International Games Committee of the United States Football Association and other men prominent in the affairs of that body.” At the May 29 annual meeting—during which Stewart, long a fixture in the Philadelphia soccer scene as a player, coach and administrator, would be confirmed as the Second Vice President of the association—the proposition of a Scandinavian tour was put before the USFA representatives to “ask formal approval and consent for the enterprise, which were readily obtained.”

The main obstacle in making the trip happen had been how to pay for it: the USFA simply did not have the money. Cables from both parties had crisscrossed the Atlantic since March to rectify the problem. Finally, when the USFA met in Philadelphia, “the Swedish proposition to guarantee $4,000 for such a tour” could be read to the delegates. In the end, the tour wouldn’t cost the USFA a cent—the Swedes picked up the entire tab.

Now the problem was this: which team should represent the US?

Bethlehem FC says “no” to the tour

The obvious answer seems to have been that the champions of the country. In the spring of 1916, the champions of the Country were none other than Bethlehem Steel FC, recent winners of both the USFA’s National Challenge Cup and the American Football Association’s American Cup tournaments. An article headlined “Soccer Champs Will Not Tour Sweden” in the June 11 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer seems to support the notion that this was certainly what the Swedish FA had in mind. Citing events on June 10, the article reports,

The Bethlehem Steel Company decided today that it would not take the chance of sending its champion soccer team across the ocean to Norway and Sweden in these war time [sic] to play a series of games with elevens in those countries. Therefore, the Sweden Football Association was cabled that its invitation would not be accepted, although that organization had posted $4000 in this country to defray expenses.

The All-American team in Scandinavia in 1916

The company’s concern was understandable. Little more than a year before, the Lusitania had been sunk off of the Irish coast by a German U-Boat. Some 1,200 passengers perished in the sinking.

Selecting the All-American team

The 1916-17 Spalding Guide says that, with no time to arrange for tryouts, team selection was thus left to “the knowledge and experience of the members of the National and International Games Committee,” which included people like Philadelphia’s Douglas Stewart. In the end, five area players would be selected for the team. On July 23, the Inquirer reported, “Three local soccer players are included in the All-American lineup which sails for Sweden next Wednesday.” They were C.H. “Dick” Spalding, left fullback with Tacony’s Disston AA team, co-champions with Bethlehem of the city’s American League; left halfback Albert Blakey of the city’s Allied American League champions, Putnam FC; and Walter Bergin, inside left for Philadelphia Wanderers, also in the Allied League. The Inquirer report notes,

All the three players were taught their soccer in this city. Spaulding [sic] graduating from the [Lighthouse] Boys’ Club and who is considered by experts the best full-back in the country. Blakey and Bergin, although not having yet the opportunity of playing in fast company, are players above the average ability, and if supported properly they should uphold the fair name of this city even when pitted against the best that Sweden can produce.

The local connections continued with Thomas Murray and Neil G. Clarke, right halfback and center halfback for Bethlehem Steel, and the only two players of the 14 selected who had not been born in the US. Also with the team was Thomas Swords, a Fall River native who had played for Philadelphia Hibernian between 1910 and 1912 and who would be elected captain of the team on the voyage to Scandinavia, and James Ford of Ryerson FC in Kearny, NJ, who had scored the winning goal for Bethlehem Steel in their 3–1 win over Brooklyn Celtic in the 1914-15 National Challenge Cup final. Both would play in every game. Cahill joined the team as manager.

An Associated Press article that appeared in newspapers around the country at the time of the team’s departure from Hoboken on July 26 aboard the Frederick VIII of the Scandinavia-America line provided a glimpse of the American game plan. “The Scandinavian footballers are noted for their brawn,” it said.”To offset this, the national and international games committee of the U.S.F.A. has constructed a picked team whose strong point is speed.”

Despite the wide distribution of the AP article—it appeared in newspapers as dispersed as Ohio, South Dakota, California, Florida and Colorado—David Wangerin writes in Soccer in a Football World that the tour was met with “profound apathy and skepticism from the sporting public.” The account of the tour in the 1916-17 Spalding Guide says, “So dubious were American followers of soccer generally as to the outcome of the enterprise, that hardly a handful of enthusiasts gathered at the pier to bid the team good-bye and wish it luck. Many telegrams of Godspeed, however, were received by the departing tourists.” When facing touring English teams such as the Pilgrims and the Corinthians in the past decade, American teams had, with rare exception, been soundly trounced. The All-American’s prospects against Swedish and Norwegian sides that had had the benefit of regular international matches with before the start of the First World War gave few American soccer observers cause for optimism.

By coincidence, J.S. Edstrom, Vice-President of the Swedish Olympic Committee, was on board ship. In addition to “advising them of the standard of soccer in Sweden,” Edstrom informed the players “of the frame of mind of the people of Scandinavia with reference to the Great War and urged them to observe the strictest neutrality in their conduct and speech.”

In Scandinavia

Training with the medicine ball on the voyage over

After a 12-day voyage, the All-Americans arrived in Christiana (present day Oslo) on August 7. The voyage had gone without incident, the trip filled with a daily routine of exercise and sport that included “deck walking…calisthenics, body exercises, rope skipping, boxing and hand tennis.” The team arrived in Stockholm on August 8 to be greeted with much interest, helped no doubt by the fact that the Dagens Nyheter newspaper had under-written the tour.

After a week filled with series of receptions and banquets, the All-Americans faced their first opponent on August 15 at Stockholm’s Olympic Stadium. In front of nearly 20,000 spectators, the All-Americans played and All-Stockholm side (referred to as Stockholm Tigrama, or Stockholm “Tigers,” in some accounts) to a 1–1 tie with Spalding, Murray, Clarke and Blakey all starting. John “Rabbit” Hemingsley of the Newark Scottish-Americans scored the All-American goal.

A report in the Inquirer on August 17 (which is prefaced with the phrase “Delayed by Censor”) says, “Spalding, of Philadelphia, playing at left back, served the American team with conspicuous effectiveness, repeatedly earning the aplause [sic] of the crowd, which was well versed in the fine points of the game…Murray and Clarke, of the Bethlehems, were of valuable assistance in the half back division.”

At halftime, Sweden’s King Gustav V “sent for Mr. Cahill and in a brief address thanked the U.S.F.A., through him, for sending the team over, complimented the association on its enterprise and daring in sending abroad an athletic team during war time.”

The team next faced the Swedish Federation All-Sweden team on August 20, again at Stockholm’s Olympic Stadium. The Spalding Guide describes the game as being “considered the biggest and most important of the entire series”— it was the first international match against another national team in the three-year-old USFA’s short history. Playing in “a light mist” in front of 17,000 spectators, the All-American’s won 3–2. Spalding, Murray and Clark all started (Clarence Smith of North Jersey team Babcock & Wilcox started in place of Blakey). The Spalding Guide, which listed Burgin as being a linesman for the game, concluded, “It was the match of the competition and the victory was a great triumph for American soccer.”

Wangerin writes of the victory, “None of Sweden’s 37 previous matches seem to have prepared them for the Americans’ all-consuming desire for victory, manifested in such unsporting tactics as stalling to take a throw-in, playing defensively to protect a lead and even shouting for the ball…The US’s high-tempo, ball-chasing style seemed outmoded to a country which had grown accustomed to a less frenzied passing game.”

“Local Soccermen in the Limelight”

The good showing by the All-Americans in their first two games surprised many American soccer fans back in the States, and the Inquirer was no exception. An article from August 27 describes, “Even the most enthusiastic were somewhat leary at the time when the team was announced that it would not be able to hold its own in any of the matches, but now that the tourists have proved their worth, it would not be surprising if they get an even break of the five-game series that was arranged prior to the team leaving this country.”

The article shows obvious pride in the good play of the players with local connections:

One of the most pleasing features about the opening contest with Stockholm was the splendid playing of the Philadelphia lads…When one takes into consideration that such players as Spalding, Swords and Blakey have not had the opportunity in receiving any expert schooling in the rudiments of the game, the same as quite a number of players that have come here from England and Scotland, their prowess is all the more noteworthy, for all of the soccer they have gotten into their think tanks has been picked up on the various city lots either by participating in a practice match or else in witnessing some of the players who came from England a few years ago who were considered clever exponents of the game.

Singling out great names from Philadelphia’s soccer past such as Tommy Greene, Horace Pike, Albert Hickling, Pete Wilson, James Dawes, David Gould and Andrew Brown, the article concludes, “These players…paved the way for the present-day standard of soccer, for practically the rising element who are now regulars on the various teams received valuable aid from witnessing the former cracks play at Sixth and Clearfield streets, Third street and Lehigh avenue, Cliggett’s Park and other historic grounds in the days of the zenith of the Pennsylvania League, which has since gone out of existence.”

Who scored the first US goal in a full international?

Various sources—an account of the game in the August 21 edition of the Inquirer, Wangerin, Tony Cirino’s U.S. Soccer vs the World, the account in the online American Soccer History Archives (which very closely follows Cirino’s account)—indicate that Swords scored the first US goal in a full international. Interestingly, however, Swords is not listed as a goalscorer in that game in the 1916-17 Spalding Guide. Philadelphia’s Spalding is listed as a goalscorer for that game and that game alone.

The Wangerin account of the game does not list the scorers of the second and third US goals but the Inquirer article, Cirino and ASHA agree that Charles Ellis (Brooklyn Celtic) and Harry Cooper (New York Continentals) scored the second and third goal. The goalscorers for the win over the All-Sweden team are listed alphabetically in the Spalding Guide, which suggests the possibility that Spalding may have scored the first US goal in a full international. Cirino, who does not link Spalding’s goal to a specific match in his account of the tour, nevertheless writes, “The most spectacular goal [of the tour] was the one by Spalding, a fullback from Disston A.A. of Philadelphia, who scored after dribbling down the entire length of the field.”

Keeper George Tintle makes a save in the All-American's only loss of the tour

So, did former Philadelphia Hibernian player Thomas Swords score the first US goal in a full international or did Philadelphia born and Disston star Dick Spalding? I have no idea, but Spalding’s goal seems to have been spectacular. If anyone out there knows Swedish and has access to an archive of Swedish newspapers or the archive of the Swedish FA, please get in touch.

First loss and crowd violence

The All-Americans suffered their first loss of the tour in their next game on August 24, going down 3–0 to a team composed of all-stars from the AIK and Djurgardens teams. Spalding, Murray, Clarke and Blakey all started. In a speech at a banquet after the game, “Mr. Cahill frankly admitted that for the first time during their visit the All-Americas had been outplayed.” Cahill went on to say that the team “had grown stale,” that by now the All-American’s faced three fresh teams in less the ten days. In the spirit of good sportsmanship, the AIK/Djurgardens combination team offered the visitors a return match, to be played as the final game of the tour. But first, the Americans would travel to Gothenburg to face Orgryte Idrottssallskopf on August 27.

Spalding was rested for this game with Murray, Clarke and Blakey starting in a 2–1 victory for the All-Americans. The winning goal came in the closing moments of the match and the Gothenburg spectators were not pleased with the loss. As they left the pitch, the American players were attacked—the Spalding Guide notes that this had previously happened in Gothenburg to the visiting Manchester City and Glasgow Rangers teams—and their vehicles were stoned as the team tried to make its way back to its hotel. Wangerin quotes a newspaper account about what happened when one assailant tried to make off with Cahill’s “prized American flag.”

Calling to the chauffeur to stop, Cahill leaped out and, pursuing the vandal, delivered some well-aimed blows with his cane, He was making good headway toward the complete annihilation of his opponent when policemen with drawn swords interfered and drove Cahill back. The crowd gathered again and the Americans were lucky in making their escape.

Upon learning of the incident, the Spalding Guide reports that King Gustav was “vexed…and ordered a special commission to investigate and punish the offenders.” After a week off, the American team returned to Gothenburg en route to their second full international against the All-Norway team in Christiania, present day Oslo. During a luncheon in their honor, “The visiting players were given medals, and in speeches made by the mayor of the city and other prominent men, regrets for the unpleasantness of the day were expressed feelingly.”

View of Stockholm Olympic Stadium during the first game

Wangerin suggests that some of the anger directed at the Americans could have been connected to their style of play. “In defeating Orgryte 2–1 the All-Americans were roundly criticized for playing in the style of beginners, or belonging to a more primitive era.” But Wangerin also points to Gothenburg sports writer Carl Linde to illustrate that some Swedish observers saw something to praise—albeit with condescension— in the Americans style of play. Linde witnessed a “new way of playing” in which the All-Americans “form a very dangerous team, mainly through their primitive brutality, through their speed and through their will to win at all costs.” Another writer quoted by Wangerin says the the Americans’ work rate made the Swedish side look like they were engaged in “exercise for older gents.”

Finishing on the ascendent

In Oslo, the All-Americans played to a 1–1 draw against the All-Norway team, with Spalding, Murray, and Clarke starting. The draw was actually something of an accomplishment, despite coming against a team that had failed to record a win in 19 international matches. In the age of no substitutions, the Americans lost inside left Matt Diedrichsen (Innisfalls FC) to injury in the 35th minute. In the second half, Smith left the game and the Americans finished with nine men.

The team returned to Stockholm for the final game of the tour, the grudge match against the AIK/Djurgardens combination team on September 6. Spalding and Clarke started, with Burgin getting his first start of the tour. The All-Americans finished the game as 2–1 winners.

Legacy

Departing from Oslo on September 8, the All-American’s arrived in Hoboken aboard the steamship Oscar II on September 19 with a 3–1–2 record, 1–0–1 in full internationals. It was an admirable conclusion for a team that so many American soccer observers had given little chance for success. Ellis and team trainer Harry Davenport had been offered contracts and stayed behind.

The 1916-17 Spalding guide contains a letter written by Kornerup to the USFA after the tour in which he wrote, “We have seen the fresh, breezy rushes of your men and learned to admire them and their tactics on the football field, and to regard them as our friends, before and after the fray.” Cahill was honest in his appraisal of the Americans’ performance. “We were outclassed by the Swedish players on straight football. It was American grit, pluck and endurance that won. No great football stars were members of our team, but we had the pluckiest aggregation ever banded together.”

Scewnes of the All-Americans playing baseball in Scandinavia

When Bethlehem Steel became the first US club to tour abroad in 1916, also in Scandinavia, four players from the 1916 All-American team were on the roster: goalkeeper George Tintle, center forward John Heminsley, fullback James Robertson and Albert Blakey.

Among the equipment the All-Americans had brought with them for the tour was baseball gear. The team played two games agaisnt the Vasteras Baseball Club during the tour, winning by the combined score of 29–22. At the end of the third inning in the the first game, the contest was so one sided that “the players were redistributed so as to give Vasteras several of the Americans.” King Gustav was apparently quite taken with the game. Spalding would go on to play for Bethlehem Steel, ending his soccer career in 1925 with Philadelphia’s Fleischer Yarn. In 1927, Spalding signed with the Philadelphia Phillies as a outfielder before finishing his MLB playing career with the Washington Senators in 1928. In 1934, he returned to the Phillies as first base coach.

A US national team would not play a full international again until the 1924 Olympics in Paris. The US wouldn’t play in Sweden again until 1995.

The day’s event was actually a double header, with both games being played over shortened halves. That the games were played at all was something of a miracle. The Inquirer reported on Dec. 24 that the Saturday game scheduled to take place at the Phillies grounds the previous day had been postponed because “one end of the ground was covered with a layer of ice.”

The first game featured the John R. Foster team against Martex Towel Company, both members of the recently formed Industrial League. It was a dreary 1–0 match of “kick and rush style of play with little judgement used by the players.” The match report in the Dec. 26, 1916 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer noted, “Attempts at passing the ball were spasmodical and quite a few of the spectators seemed relieved when Referee Ward tooted the whistle ending the agony, with the Foster team being entitled to the spoils, what little there was in it.”

The main event proved much more entertaining and featured Standard Rollers, also of the Industrial League, against long-standing local powerhouse, Philadelphia Hibernians of the American League. The Inquirer’s match report said, “With the grounds in fast condition, considering the recent elements, play in consequence was of a thrilling character at times, with the Hibs having the measure of their inexperienced opponents right from the start.” Hibernian finished the game 4–1 winners.

But the big game for area soccer fans that day was taking place 900 miles away in St. Louis. There, Bethlehem Steel FC were playing the Ben Millers for the bragging rights of unofficial champion of the United States.

National champions

That Bethlehem Steel were already the official champions of the US was not in doubt. In May of 1916, the team had won their second consecutive United States Football Association’s National Challenge Cup (now known as the US Open Cup) and in June they won their second American Football Association’s American Cup. In doing so they became the first team to win both competitions in the same year, a feat they would go on to repeat two more times.

Still, the claim that these tournaments represented national championships was, with justification, in dispute by some. While the American Cup tournament had been founded in 1885, the entrants for the 1915-16 season all hailed from Southern New England, Eastern New York, Northern New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania. The National Challenge Cup, founded in the 1913-14 season, featured teams from as far west as Detroit and Chicago in 1916 but most of the competing teams came from the same areas as those in the American Cup.

And the St. Louis soccer community knew it.

The St. Louis scene

St. Louis had its first organized league in 1886 and, as was also the case in Philadelphia, many of its early teams were neighborhood or parish-based. Two of the three teams that participated in the exhibition soccer games 1904 Olympics in St. Louis were local teams. The tours of the Pilgrims team from England in 1905 and 1909, so important to the development of soccer in the US, had been organized by two St. Louis soccer enthusiasts, Thomas Cahill and Winton Barker. In 1907 the city was the location of the only fully professional league in the US.

By 1910, St. Louis had grown to be the country’s fourth-largest city. Thomas Cahill moved that year to Newark, New Jersey, where the headquarters of the American Football Association was located, and began the work that led to the founding of the United States Football Association, known today as the US Soccer Federation. St. Louis soccer had by now gained a national reputation and in 1911, Philadelphia’s Tacony FC, winners of the 1910 American Cup, traveled there to play the city’s St. Leo’s team to a 4–4 draw.

By 1915, the wages of professional players in England had been capped at £4 per week, or $337 in 2011 dollars. David Lange writes in his excellent Soccer Made in St. Louis that players in the professional St. Louis League, which would be the best league outside of the Northeastern US for the next 20 years, were earning as much as $7 apiece per game (or $154 in 2011 dollars) in 1915. Not too bad for a professional league based in a single city. Bethlehem Steel was, at this time, an amateur club. The 1916-17 Spalding Guide noted, “The players receive no remuneration for playing, however; they all occupy good positions in the steel plant and are given time to practice and make the long trips which are necessary in the various cup competitions.”

Negotiations for Bethlehem Steel to travel to St. Louis during the 1915-16 season had failed over disagreements about financial guarantees. Following Bethlehem’s Cup winning double in the spring of 1916, the necessary guarantees were made: Bethlehem Steel would play two exhibition games over the Christmas holiday in St. Louis.

First stop: Chicago

On Thursday, December 21, 1916, 18 Bethlehem Steel team players, a trainer, and business manager Harry W. Trend left South Bethlehem by train for Chicago. They arrived in a snow covered Windy City the next day for light training at Comiskey Park before a night of rest at the Great Northern Hotel. On December 23, they faced a Chicago All-Star team in what the match report in the Philadelphia Inquirer the next day called “one of the hardest fought soccer football games seen in Chicago in years.” Five of the players on the Chicago team were members of the Pullman FC team, the December 23 edition of the Inquirer had noted, and would have “had the benefit of two games against the national champions” in National Challenge Cup play earlier in the year. In the semifinals of the Cup that April, Pullman and Bethlehem had first played to a scoreless draw before Bethlehem prevailed in the second game, 2–1. The Inquirer reported that “The Chicago dopesters figure that on the snow surface the speed of the Chicago players will offset the combination play of the visitors.”

Harry Ratican

The Chicago team did come out fast against the visitors with both sides playing the standard 2–3–5 formation of the day. The home team scored in the first half before Bethlehem’s “superior conditioning favored them in the second half, when they fairly ran over the locals and scored the points that gave them the victory.” Final score: Chicago 1–2 Bethlehem. The South Bethlehem newspaper The Globe had reported on December 20 that Bethlehem would leave Chicago immediately after the game. They had to—the next day they would face the St. Louis All-Stars.

In St. Louis

Bethlehem arrived in St. Louis with a 19-game unbeaten record. There they would first play a picked team on Christmas Eve comprised of all-stars from the St. Leo’s, Innisfalls and Naval Reserves teams before then playing the Ben Millers, the other team in the professional St. Louis league on Christmas. Where as Charles Schwab, the owner of the Bethlehem Steel Company, searched as far as as England and Scotland for players for the Bethlehem Steel team, the St. Louis teams featured native-born players. Lange writes, “The experts back East believed Bethlehem Steel and the other top teams from that region, all of them relying heavily on foreign players, were the class of US soccer. Many St. Louisans felt otherwise.”

In front of some 7,000 spectators, “the largest crowd that has seen a soccer exhibition here since the invasion of the Pilgrims,” Bethlehem got off to a quick start, scoring after the first minute of play to finish the half leading the game, 1–0. The goalscorer was Harry Ratican, a player from St. Louis that the Bethlehem team had signed after learning about him during negotiations for the aborted 1915 visit. The Inquirer reported on December 25, “In front, Bethlehem played a wonderful game. Their passing was excellent, favoring the short shots instead of the long boots. St. Louis was dazed and stunned with that first goal. They were timid and shy.”

Not so in the second half.

Re-arranging their front five, and displaying a new aggressiveness, The Globe reported on December 26 that St. Louis now “played whirlwind but systematic football and the visitors were swept off their feet by the fierce attack.” The Inquirer said of the All-Stars in the second half, “They bunched around in groups and turned their attack around completely.” A series of scrimmages in front of the Bethlehem goal soon resulted in two goals for the home team, the second goal being loudly protested by the visitors. Lest there be any doubt, St. Louis would record a third goal before the final whistle. The Inquirer concluded that “the local athletes simply wore down their opponents.”

The result could have been very different. At one point in the first half a St. Louis player player had to leave the game with a knee injury. “An exhibition of sportsmanship was displayed by the Bethlehems,” wrote the Inquirer. “Soccer rules prevent the allowance of a substitute, but Bethlehem permitted another player” to enter the game.

Against the Ben Millers

Bethlehem Steel v Ben Millers, Dec. 25, 1916

The next day in front of some 6,000 spectators on Christmas, Bethlehem faced the Ben Millers, a team sponsored by a local hat company. The Inquirer described the match in their match report on December 26 as “A slam-bang battle in which skinned shins, bruised knees and black eyes predominated…The two teams played toe to toe: they roughed it up and they mixed it. Fouls were numerous…”

Ratican again opened the scoring for Bethlehem, heading a goal in the middle of the first half. Then, a minute before the end of the half, a penalty was committed against a Ben Millers player in the box. They made no mistake with the penalty kick to draw level, 1–1.

The second half opened up with the home team controlling play in front of the Bethlehem goal. Soon, shot was stopped by the Bethlehem keeper but he bobbled the ball while trying to carry it out for a clearance. The Ben Millers pounced on the error and scored to take the lead. Holding the lead almost to the final whistle, the Ben Millers keeper slipped in the closing minutes of the match while attempting to cover a shot, thus allowing a Bethlehem goal. Final score: Ben Millers 2–2 Bethlehem Steel.

As had been the case in the previous game, the result could have been very different. During the scoring of the second Ben Millers goal, the Bethlehem keeper was kicked in the stomach and had to leave the game. While Bethlehem manager Harry W. Trend had agreed before the start of the game that no substitutes would be allowed, the Ben Millers insisted that one come on to replace the injured keeper.

The South Bethlehem newspaper The Globe concluded in their December 26 match report, “St. Louis now has a legitimate claim to premier ranking in soccer having taken the series with the champion. You might even go so far as to credit six of the seven goals to St. Louis, for Harry Ratican, a local product, counted two of the Bethlehem markers. Take it any way you wish, you must award the crown to St. Louis.” The Inquirer reported, “Manager Trend, eager to strengthen the Bethlehem Eleven, expects to sign three local players within a week.”

Revenge

On March 26, 1917, the Globe reported that negotiations were underway for the Ben Millers to play in Bethlehem in the first game of a three-city tour that would be followed by games in New York and in Philadelphia. “The local management has been after the St. Louis Soccer league for quite a while,” the Globe reported, “and it will be interesting to see how the Western Champions will size up when playing under the rules of the United States Football Association with neutral referee and linesmen.”

When the Ben Millers faced Bethlehem on April 7 on a cold and windy day in front of some 2,500 spectators at Bethlehem Steel Athletic Field, they were easily outclassed. “A gale sweeping over the field made long shots impossible,” the April 8 edition of the Inquirer reported. “Due to the wind Bethlehem resorted to a short passing game in which they displayed vast superiority over the Missourians. The later are used to a long passing game and this style proved entirely ineffective.”

Playing with the wind and the sun at their back after winning the toss, Bethlehem opened the scoring 12 minutes after the start “on a long high kick…the ball was lost in the sun and no attempt was made to stop it.” Soon after, Bethlehem was fouled in the box on another attack and converted to make it 2–0. The match was a chippy affair with the Ben Millers committing 22 fouls to Bethlehem’s 15. Bethlehem recorded nine corner kicks to the visitor’s one and the Ben Millers single decent chance on goal from open play wouldn’t come until the second half.

Any thoughts that may have lingered in the Ben Millers minds about the superiority of St. Louis soccer were further diminished when they were defeated 3–2 by New York FC the next day. On April 9, the Ben Millers traveled to Philadelphia to play Tacony’s Disston team, champions of the city’s American League. The Inquirer reported on April 10, “There was no doubting the superiority of the Taconyites, who gave one of their best displays, notwithstanding that the ground was slow and heavy from the snow.” Disston scored first in the 38th minute and from there they never gave up the lead, winning 3–1. While the previous matches between Bethlehem and St. Louis teams had been characterized by rough play,the match in Philadelphia was different. The Inquirer match report noted, “Too much credit cannot be given to both teams for the clean sporting instinct in which they played the game.”

Aftermath

Six days after Bethlehem’s win over the Ben Millers, Harry W. Trend died from pneumonia, contracted at the exhibition game. He was 35-years-old and left behind a widow and two young sons. In his eulogy for Trend in the 1917-18 Spalding Guide, Thomas Cahill wrote, “Not in years has the great winter game lost so widely popular and so valuable a friend…Mr. Trend died a martyr to soccer, the game to which he gave unselfishly the major part of his time and effort.”

Bethlehem would lose 1–0 to Fall River Rovers, the team they had defeated for the championship the year before, in the National Challenge Cup final on May 5, 1917. Fall River advanced to the final after they defeated Disston in a semifinal that went over two legs. On May 7, Bethlehem defeated West Hudson AA 7–0 to win the American Cup championship for the second year in a row. They would win the American Cup, and the National Challenge Cup, again in 1918 and 1919.

Harry Ratican remained with Bethlehem Steel through 1919, and was with the team for their Scandinavian tour of that year, before returning to St. Louis to play with the Ben Millers in 1923. He scored two goals in his debut. He finished his soccer career as a coach in St. Louis.

The season review in the 1917-18 edition of the Spalding Guide said of the Ben Millers tour of the East, “The Ben Millers lost considerable prestige at the close of the season by their tour of the East. To begin with, the club had nothing to gain with the trip and everything to lose.”

An article in the April 9, 1917 edition of the Inquirer described the Ben Millers’ plans to tour Sweden that summer. But those plans were already doomed. On April 6 the US had declared war on Germany to enter World War One and the tour proved impossible. It would not be until after the war in 1920 that the Scandinavian tour would take place, the same year that St. Louis teams entered the National Challenge Cup competition for the first time to make a legitimate claim at being champions of the US, the Ben Millers among them. The opportunity was not squandered: on May 9, 1920 the Ben Millers defeated Fore River in the final 2–1. St. Louis teams would appear in the Cup final five out of the next six years, winning the championship once.

Bethlehem Steel would meet the Ben Millers, playing now as J & P Coats, in the final of the 1925-26 National Challenge Cup. Bethlehem won the Cup for the fifth and final time in their history on March 21 1926, defeating the St. Louis side 3–1.

Photo of Harry Ratican from David Lange’s Soccer Made in St. Louis. All others from the 1917-18 Spalding Guide. Go to http://bethlehemsteelsoccer.org/ for more about Bethlehem Steel FC.

Such a turnover rate is an expensive proposition and would be beyond the financial reach of most clubs from Philadelphia’s storied soccer history. But one team, Bethlehem Steel FC, did have deep pockets. After all, the team was owned by the Bethlehem Steel Company. Looking at photos of the team from between 1915 and 1925, seven different jersey designs can be found.

Bethlehem Steel FC

When it comes to teams in the early days of Philadelphia soccer history, definitive knowledge about the kits the teams wore is difficult to come by. If you can find photographs, which is difficult enough, finding out something as simple as the color of the kits can be even more difficult since the images come from the age of black and white photography. The closing of the largely volunteer run National Soccer Hall of Fame Museum in the fall of 2009 hasn’t made things any easier. If you could find out whether the collection actually contained examples of whatever early kit you were researching—and as far as I have been able to discover, no detailed listing of their holdings is available online—the collection is now in storage in North Carolina with Eurosport, the folks behind those soccer.com commercials you see on FSC. Somehow, I doubt that they have archivists and conservators on staff to handle research questions.

Thankfully, when it comes to Bethlehem Steel FC, images are relatively easy to find. It is also relatively easy to learn that their primary kit color was blue. (You can do this with some inventive Google searching or you can just look at their Wikipedia page.) But what shade of blue was it? Was it navy blue or royal blue?

I mention those colors as possibilities because these were the two shades of blue available from A. G. Spalding & Bros in their catalog for the 1915-16 season (15 colors were available). Bethlehem won the second annual US Open Cup, then known as the National Challenge Cup, on May 3, 1915, defeating Brooklyn Celtic 3–1. Spalding’s “Official Soccer Foot Ball Soccer Guide 1915-16,” which includes a review of that game, also includes an ad which contains a testimonial from Bethlehem manager Horace Edgar Lewis (who also happened to be vice president of the Bethlehem Steel Company). Lewis writes,

“The Bethlehem Steel Co. Football Club, outfitted completely by yourselves for the 1914-1915 Soccer season, in the opinion of spectators and other club members in the different cities where we contested for the national Challenge Cup under the auspices of the United States Foot Ball Association and the American Foot Ball Association Cup Competition, was the best uniformed and equipped soccer foot ball club during the history of that sport in the United States. “

The ad copy notes that “Spalding equips all principal club, school and college soccer teams, including the Bethlehem Steel Co. Foot Ball Club, Soccer Champions of the United States.” Is the ad the first instance of a US soccer team being endorsed by a sporting goods company? Perhaps; such an ad does not appear in any of the Spalding Guides that precede the 1915-16 edition that I have seen nor in any of those that follow it. In the event, we can conclude that Bethlehem’s kit was likely to be one of the two shades of blue offered by Spalding.

Looking at photos of the team (click on each photo to see a larger version), it is possible that both navy blue and royal blue kits were used. (In all of the photos that are referred to in this post, the jerseys are long-sleeved without contrasting color cuffs.) The photo to the left of the team from 1915 shows two kits. The main kit is presumably blue with a white V-neck. On the left breast is a team logo that appears to be a white diamond with a capital “B” that I assume is also blue. Some players are also wearing what may be the team’s second kit, a white, collared jersey that appears to button up at least partially. The team crest on that design is simply a capital “B.” The logo, like all of the others that follow, is presumably sewn on.

We can see from the snow on the ground that the photo was taken in the winter, and the team is assembled around several trophies, one of which is probably the the AFA’s American Cup, won by Bethlehem in the spring of 1914 when they defeated Philadelphia’s Tacony FC in the final. When we look at the photo below and to the right of the team taken only a few months later from the spring of 1915 at the US Open Cup final, we see the team wearing a different kit.

Here, the team is wearing the jersey with which they are most associated, a navy blue jersey with a white trimmed V-neck. The club logo is now simply a serifed capital “B,” also in white. While acknowledging that we’re looking at black and white photographs, here’s where I suggest the possibility that Bethlehem wore both navy blue and royal blue kits. The socks in both pictures appear to be the same dark color, which in the US Open Cup final picture seems to be the same as the jerseys, which are likely navy blue. In the first picture, the jersey is a lighter shade and therefore may be a lighter shade of blue. Since Bethlehem’s kit provider had two shades of blue available, could one jersey be royal blue and the other navy blue?

The photo to the left is from an exhibition game played by Bethlehem in St. Louis against that city’s Ben Millers team on December 25, 1916 (Bethlehem drew 2–2) shows another kit. In this instance, the team’s jersey is what appears to again be a lighter shade of blue. The jersey is again V-necked, but the white trim on the V-neck is now gone.

Also different is a new very stylized (and very cool) team logo, the capital letters “BFC” superimposed over one another. The photo to the right of Bethlehem right half back Thomas Murray gives a better look at the new logo.

After winning the US Open Cup in 1915, Bethlehem Steel would win again 1916, in 1918 and 1919, and finally in 1926. A photo taken after their win in 1918 shows the team back in the navy blue jersey with white-trimmed V-neck (the photo is the featured image for this post). The logo is again a large serifed capital “B” in white located on the left breast.

In the summer of 1919, the club embarked on a tour of Scandinavia, leaving New York at the end of July. The bulk of the players returned to the United States in the first week of October although several players caused something of a stir by extending their stay in Europe to visit family in Scotland and England and did not return until the end of October.

The photo to the left of the team training on board ship en route to Scandinavia shows a mixture of kits. Most of the players are wearing the current navy blue kit with white V-neck and large capital “B” logo. Several players are wearing what appears to be a lighter blue jersey that also has a white-trimmed V-neck and large capital “B” logo. One player is wearing the lighter colored kit from 1916 with the stylized “BFC” logo. This is the only photo I have seen in which the players do not appear to be wearing white shorts.

As we can see in the photo to the right, upon arrival in Scandinavia, the Bethlehem team introduced a new jersey. The jersey again appears to be a lighter shade of blue, with a white-trimmed V-neck. The jersey also has white trim on the bottom.

Two new logos are on the jersey. On the right breast is a US stars and bars shield, possibly of the kind worn on the jerseys of the US team that toured Scandinavia in 1916 (which is pretty crazy when you consider World War One was going on at the time; the team included C.H. Spaulding of Philadelphia Disston as well as Thomas Murray and Neil Clarke of Bethlehem Steel). On the left breast is a differently stylized capital “B” logo, presumably in white.

The photo to the left of the team in 1921 shows another mixture of jerseys. In addition to the generally standard white V-necked navy blue jersey with the capital “B” logo on the left breast, some of the players are wearing a similar jersey in which the difference is that the “B” logo is now underneath the point of the V-neck. 1921 was the year that the club was moved to Philadelphia where it played in the inaugural season of the American Soccer League as the Philadelphia Field Club. The team featured many of the Bethlehem Steel players from the previous season and went on to win the league championship. But the team lacked fan support and was soon in financial trouble. The owners then sold off many of the players and moved the team back to Bethlehem. It is not clear when in 1921 this photo was taken but when the team played as Philadelphia FC, they wore red jerseys with a “P” logo.

The photo of the team from the 1924-25 season to the right shows the team in the familiar white-trimmed V-neck jersey with the “B” logo on the left breast. The jersey again appears to be a lighter shade of blue when compared to the color of the players’ socks and the sweaters worn by the to players in the middle of the back row.

In the undated photo to the left of Bethlehem goalkeeper Dave Carson (he joined the team in 1923 and seems to have played with them through 1925) shows him in what appears to be some kind of light weight training jersey in the summertime. The jersey appears to be white. The capital “B” logo on the left breast is slightly different from the standard serifed “B” on game jerseys in that it appears to be sans serif.

So there you have it, seven jerseys in ten years (plus one training shirt). While the various designs were important in marketing the team—or, in the words of team manager H.E. Lewis, creating the perception of the team as “the best uniformed and equipped soccer foot ball club” in the US—the designs almost certainly weren’t thought of as a source of revenue if only for the simple fact that it would be years before the replica jersey market would be developed. As we have seen, some of the new designs were related to specific events such as the Scandinavian tour in 1919. Given the fact that Bethlehem Steel was active in a variety of league and cup competitions in any given year, the need for different designs was real and the team was fortunate to have the resources to satisfy that need.

Did Bethlehem Steel FC use both navy blue and royal blue jerseys? While it is not possible to say so simply by looking at nearly one hundred-year-old black and white photos, there are some clues to suggest it might be reasonable to conclude that they did. Anyone with color photographs of Bethlehem Steel jerseys, please get in touch.

What were the jersey’s made of?

Modern jerseys are wonders of chemistry, made from synthetic materials to be of light weight with good ventilation and the ability to efficiently wick sweat. What materials were Bethlehem Steel’s jerseys made from?

While I cannot say for certain, I can tell you what kinds of materials were used to make the jerseys on offer in the Spalding catalog. In the catalog for the 1915-16 season, four jersey materials were available. Model “No. V” ($1.50 each, $16.20 a dozen) was made from “good quality medium weight cotton.” Model “No. 602″ was made from “good quality worsted” wool ($2.25 each, $24 a dozen) while model “No. 6FS” was made from “Sanitary cotton” (.75¢ each, $8.10 a dozen). Model “No. 4″ was made from “good quality flannel” ($1.75 each, $18.90 a dozen). In 1915, one dollar had the buying power of about 22.50 current dollars so the Model No. 602 would cost the equivalent of about $50.

The “Spalding Flannel Knickebockers” were available in “fine quality” ($2.25 each) and “good quality” ($2 each) flannel, as was a model made of “Flannel, well made” ($1.50 each). A bargain priced version made of “silesia” was also available at .50¢. “Skull caps” were available for winter play in “Worsted, heavy weight” (.75¢) and “Worsted, light weight” (.50¢). “Spalding ‘Soccer’ Stockings”  made of “Good quality worsted, with mercerized cotton feet, legs heavy ribbed” were available for $1.10 a pair, $12 a dozen.

By the time of the 1922-23 catalog, the No. V jersey would set you back $3 and the price of stockings had risen to $1.75. “Soccer Pants” were now available in “Heavy canvas” for $1.50 a pair while “Flannel pants, navy only” cost $3 a pair. “White jean pants” were also available for .90¢ each.

Editors note: A week after I wrote this article I came across this line in a report on the 1917 National Challenge Cup final on page 55 of the 1917-1918 Spalding Guide: “”The old gold and blue of the Fall River Rovers, the pride of New England, flashed to a well-deserved victory over the far-famed light blue and white of the Bethlehem Steel Company eleven …” (Emphasis added.) So it seems that, at least for the 1916-1917 season, Bethlehem did wear something other than a navy blue jersey. Whether light blue equals royal blue, I still do not know.

Photo credits: Featured image (National Champions 1917-1918), 1915 winter photo, 1919 Scandinavian tour photos, 1924-25 photo and photo of Dave Carson courtesy of Dan Morrison’s bethlehemsteelsoccer.org website. All other photos taken from Spalding’s Official Soccer Foot Ball Soccer Guide, 1914-15, 1916-17, 1917-18, 1922-23.

Episkyros

Before soccer there was football. Lots of different kinds of football, many of which also involved handling the ball: Episkyros in ancient Greece; Harpastum in Rome; Zhu Qiu in China; Sepak Raga on the Malay Peninsula, Kemari in Japan, Calcio in Italy (which was revived by Mussolini), not too mention the various kinds of folk football that could be found throughout the Celtic world, some of which survive as the Shrovetide games of Britain. Combine the fact that humans have always liked to kick things with that yin and yang of humanity—competition and cooperation—and the result is that pretty much anywhere you look in the history of the world you will find some form of football. When English explorers began to search for a passage to Asia in the far north coast of North America and, later, they and other colonists began to settle in areas that would become known as Virginia, Massachusetts and the Delaware Valley, it was no different.

The football encountered by Jamestown and Massachusetts Bay colonists

Before there was American soccer there was Native American football. An account of a voyage from England in 1586 in search of the Northwest Passage contains a sidebar entitled “Our men play at football with the Savages” that may be the first recorded “international friendly.”

Diverse times they did wave us on shore to play with them at the football, and some of our company went on shore to play with them, and our men did cast them down as soon as they did come to strike the ball. And thus much of that which we did see and do in that harbor where we arrived first.

Maybe “friendly” isn’t the right word.

William Strachey observed around Jamestown, founded in 1607, “a kind of exercise” among the Native Americans:

They have the exercise of Football, in which yet they only forcibly encounter with the foot to carry the Ball the one from the other, and spurn it to the goal with a kind of dexterity and swift footmanship, which is the honor of it.

Henry Spelman, a member of the Jamestown settlement, was captured and raised for two years (1609-1610) by the Powhatan tribe. Of the football played by his captors he says, “They use beside football play, which women and young boys do much play at. The men never. They make their goals as ours only they never fight nor pull one another down.”

When the Pilgrims arrived in 1620, the Native Americans they encountered were playing a game called Pasuckquakkohowog or “they gather to play football.” The account of Roger Williams from 1643 says, “They have great meetings of football playing, only in summer, town against town, upon some broad sandy shore, free from stone, or upon some soft heathy plot, because of their naked feet, at which they have great stakings, but seldom quarrel.”

Thomas Hutchinson’s The History of the Colony of Massachusetts-Bay (1764) says of these Native American sports and games:

Football was the chief, and whole cantons would engage one against another. Their goals were upon the hard sands, as even and firm as a board, and a mile or more in length, their ball not much larger than a hand ball, which they would mount in the air with their naked feet, and sometimes would be two days together before either side got a goal.

In New England Prospect (1634), William Wood also noted “the swift footmanship, their strange manipulation of the ball.” Yet, echoing the kind of cultural disdain for other people’s footballing efforts that is all-too-familiar in English football history, he didn’t think much of the Native Americans technique and tactics: “One Englishman could beat ten Indians at football.”

The football of the Lenape people of the Delaware Valley

The original inhabitants of the Philadelphia region were members of the Delaware tribes of the of the Lenni Lenape Nation. Daniel Denton’s account from 1656 says, “Their Recreations are chiefly Foot-ball and Cards.” The Lenape called their game of football Pahsahéman. Details of how the game was played in contemporary accounts are thin. But in 1971, the Lenape Land Association, which was Pennsylvania-based, published a description of the game.

According to that account, Pahsahéman was played with an oblong ball about nine inches in diameter (called Pahsahikén) made of deerskin and stuffed with deer hair. Marking the ends of the field of play, which was of no set size, were goalposts about 15 feet high and 6 feet across, with no cross bar. One team made up of men played another team made up of women. The teams could be of any size.

Men were forbidden from carrying or throwing the ball with their hands and could only move the ball with their feet. If a man caught or intercepted the ball, he had to stand still and then kick the ball towards the goal or to another man. Women could pass or carry the ball, as well as kick the ball if it was on the ground. Men were not allowed to tackle or grab a woman with the ball but could try to prevent her from passing or try to knock the ball from her hands. Women were allowed to grab or tackle men.

While men could only score points by kicking the ball through the goal posts, women could also throw or carry the ball through. Twelve sticks were used to keep score and whichever team had the most sticks after all twelve were used up was declared the winner. If the score was tied, a play-off would take place until one more goal was made.

The football of the colonists

Mob football

We know that the early English colonists along America’s Northeast Atlantic coast played football because the laws their leaders wrote tried to ban the game, just as was the case back in England. As early as 1657, Puritan Boston issued an edict banning football from being played on the streets of the town under the pain of a fine of twenty shillings per offender. (In today’s dollars, about $175.) Pennsylvania’s Conductor Generalis, first published in 1711, says that “Bear-baiting, Cock fighting, Football, Bull-baiting, Coits, Nine-Pins, Bowling, Dice, Tennis, Cards, are unlawful games.” Those caught playing them would also face a twenty shilling fine. (Approximately $160 today.)

Why were attempts made to ban football in England and in the colonies? First, the religious philosophies of Puritan New England and Quaker Philadelphia did not look favorably upon “frivolous pursuits.” Second, while there was great diversity in how football may have been played—each town, school, group, possible each occasion, seems to have had its own rules—what appears universal was that the game was violent. And the game was violent not just to people but to property. After reading contemporary accounts of football from Britain, it would be easy to think one was witnessing a riot rather than a sport. Colonists trying to build a new society out of the wilderness need neither injured workers or damaged buildings.

It wouldn’t be until the Nineteenth Century that private colleges in the United States began to play football games with established rules. By 1817, students at the College of New Jersey, as Princeton was then known, were playing ballown. By the 1840s students at Haverford and Girard College were playing huge football games.

Throughout this time, the original inhabitants of the Delaware Valley were being steadily pushed westward. Although some still remain in their original lands—the Museum of Indian Culture in Allentown works to educate the public about Lenape history and culture—most Lenape people now live in Oklahoma.

So this Thanksgiving, while you take part in that grand American tradition of trying to stay awake at 4 in the afternoon to watch the football on the television because you have a belly full of turkey, give a thought of thanks to the Native Americans. Not only were they the first Americans—and not only did they save the Pilgrim’s asses—they were also the first American footballers. They too have their part in the global history of football. And so, they too have their part in the history of soccer, the world’s game.

A team with a backbone of experienced veterans, but also a team with a commitment to young players, led by a coach who wasn’t afraid to put those young players in key positions to perform in important games.

A team with a tough, hard-nosed style of play backed by a dominating defense and keeper.

A team who—in the front office and in the locker room—recognized the importance of connecting with fans and worked hard to do so. A team that saw that commitment returned with a level of support by those fans that was a revelation to the league.

A team that, against the expectations of most, found itself in the league playoffs.

Sound familiar?

Some 38 years ago, a Philadelphia soccer team took the American soccer scene by storm.

That team was the Philadelphia Atoms.

No stranger to championships

Philadelphia is no stranger to championships in American professional soccer.

In the first incarnation of the American Soccer League, Bethlehem Steel won two championships, first playing as the Philadelphia Field Club in 1921-22  in the league’s inaugural year and then under their original name in 1926-27. Amid an atmosphere of internal squabbling and breakaway leagues that was so rife with conflict and ill-will that it is referred to as the American Soccer Wars, ASL I folded in the spring of 1933.

ASL II was up and running by the fall of 1933 and Philadelphia teams would feature heavily in the roll of champions. Formed from the Philadelphia German Rifle Club in the 1920s and originally known as First German SC, the Philadelphia German Americans won their first ASL championship in 1934-35 before winning again as the Philadelphia Americans in 1941-42, holding the title again from 1944 through 1948, and winning again in the 1951-52 season.

That period of dominance was complemented by the Philadelphia Nationals, who won the title in 1948 through 1951—when they gave it up to Philadelphia Americans—before reclaiming the championship in the 1952-53 season.

Philadelphia would be without an ASL Championship for only one year after the Nats win in 1953. After being bought by the owner of a Philadelphia-area trucking company, the Philadelphia Americans won the ASL championship again as the Uhrik Truckers in 1954-55 and 1955-56. The 1960s saw the rise of Ukrainian Nationals, winners from the 1960-61 season through the 1963-64 season. They won the title again in the 1967-68 season before topping off  nearly a decade of dominance with a championship as the Philadelphia Ukrainians in 1970.

By that time, the ASL was more or less a semi-professional league and the newly-formed North American Soccer League was moving to become the big player on the US professional soccer scene. Neither league would survive later past 1984.

The Philadelphia Experiment

The Philadelphia Atoms joined the NASL in 1973, bringing the league roster up to nine teams divided into three divisions, the Eastern Division, of which Philadelphia was a member along with New York Cosmos, the Northern Division and the Southern Division.

The Atoms were coached by Al Miller, a former two-time All-American at East Stroudsberg State who was coaching at New York’s Hartwick College before agreeing to lead the team. While Miller would pepper his lineup with veteran British players such as Andy “The Flea” Provan, Jim Fryatt, and Chris Dunleavy from lower division club Southport FC as well as future Liverpool boss Roy Evans, what caught people’s attention, and caused many a skeptic to voice doubt, was Miller’s willingness to use young American players. Miller made his intentions clear when he selected Ridley Park-native Bob Rigby, now a commentator on Union game broadcasts, as his first round draft pick. Aided by a defense nicknamed the “No Goal Patrol,” Rigby would set a league goals allowed record of 0.62 in the Atoms’ first year.

The local connections did not stop with Rigby. Trenton-born Bobby Smith, who would go on to a successful carer with the Cosmos, joined the squad. Barry Barto had grown up in Philadelphia and was coached at Philadelphia Textile by former Ukrainian National player and future Hall of Fame member Walt Chyzowych. University of Pennsylvania product Stan Startzell came on board, as did Charles Duccilli, who had graduated from Germantown High School before setting the record for most goals scored at Temple University and becoming the ASL’s Philadelphia Spartans leading scorer in 1971. Casey Bahr, fresh out of a three year stint in the Navy after graduating from the Naval Academy and son of the legendary Walt Bahr, was also signed.

The first Atoms game was on the road against St. Louis Stars. Like Philadelphia, St. Louis was a longtime hotbed of American soccer. And like the Atoms, the Stars roster featured many American players. It was an inauspicious debut for the visitors, who lost 1–0 in front of some 6,782 spectators. Concerns about whether the Atoms would be any good aside, many wondered if teams filled with Americans would be able to draw fans: with the exception of the Stars and Atoms, only 19 Americans were on the rosters of the other seven NASL teams.

The Atoms answered the skeptics in their home debut in front of 21,700 fans at Veteran’s Stadium, setting a league attendance record. The match was against Dallas Tornado, NASL champions in 1971. Though the game ended as a scoreless draw, the Atoms had shown they could play with the league’s best.

The team worked hard off the field to make themselves accessible to the fans. On the field, they worked even harder, playing a tough, hard-nosed style that fit right in with Philadelphia’s sport culture. And the Atoms were good. After that first loss in the opener, the team went on a 13-game unbeaten streak, losing only one more game for a 9–2–8 record.

Ridley Park's own Bob Rigby, the first soccer player featured on a Sports Illustrated cover, September 3, 1973.

The Atoms are in the playoffs

The Atom’s record gave them the Eastern Division ticket in the semifinals, where they would face Northern Division champions Toronto Metros. Dallas claimed the Southern Division title and, because their 11–4–4 record was the league’s best, they would face fourth best record and wild card holders New York in the other semifinal game. On August 15, 1973, Dallas squeaked by New York 1–0 to advance to the final.

Three days later, the Atoms crushed Toronto 3–0 in front of 18,766 fans at the Vet. Steve Holroyd writes, “Veterans Stadium sounded more like Wembley after the match, with fans singing Auld Lang Syne as they bid their team good luck in the final.”

The Final

Having beaten New York to advance to the finals, and with the better overall record, Dallas got to pick the date of the final. With the start of the English football season looming, they chose August 25, knowing that several key Atoms players would by then have to be back with their home teams. While Provan and Fryatt would be gone—between them they had 18 goals and nine assists—Dunleavy, the leader of the Goal Patrol, was suspended for the first two games of the English season and would be available.

Miller was required to make changes to his lineup as a result of the absence of such key players. One change was starting the Philadelphia-born and University of Pennsylvania alumni Bill Straub. Straub, a midseason acquisition from Montreal Olympique and a defender who had yet to play a single minute for the Atoms, was started as a forward.

Sports Illustrated wrote of the game,

From the start Philadelphia was in charge. Most of the first half was played in the Dallas end of the field. The rest of it was in midfield. The shots Dallas got at Rigby, in the Philadelphia goal, came seldom and they were puny. For all his jumping ability and his advantage in size, [NASL Rookie of the Year Kyle Rote Jr.]  found Dunleavy wrapped around him like an overcoat.

The Atoms saw their first breakthrough 20 minutes into the second half. Attempting to clear a dangerous pass, Dallas defender John Best, formerly of the ASL club Philadelphia Spartans, mishit the ball into his own net for an own goal. With less than five minutes to go in the game, Roy Evans crossed the ball in front of the Dallas goal. Straub headed it into the net to make it 2–0 and all that was left was for the final whistle to be blown.

With the win the Philadelphia Atoms became the first expansion team to win a championship in its first year in any American professional sport.

Miller said after the game, “Our people run until they drop. And we played six or seven Americans on our side tonight. This game has got a hell of a future here.”

It just may have taken a little longer than expected for that future to arrive.

Atoms dispersed, Fury rises (sort of)

The Atoms never qualified for the playoffs again and the Philadelphia franchise was placed in receivership by the league after the 1976 season. Rigby said later, “We did so well—you can’t do better than winning your division and then winning the championship—that people expected us to do it again next season. We had a great season, but we couldn’t match it again.”

The franchise reappeared in 1978 as the Philadelphia Fury, back by a group of investors that included Rick Wakeman, Peter Frampton and Paul Simon. Despite having a 12–18 record (by now the league had done away with ties), the Fury made it to first round of the playoffs. They were promptly dispatched by Detroit Express 1–0.

In their second year, the Fury finished with an even worse record of 10–20. Still, they made the playoffs where, against all expectation, they defeated the American Conference Western Division champion Houston Hurricane, winning each game of the tw-game series 2–1. The Fury advanced to the Conference semifinals where they were defeated 2–3 and 0–1 by Tampa Bay Rowdies. Tampa Bay would go on to the Soccer Bowl championship game, losing to Vancouver Whitecaps 1–2.

The next year, the Fury would go on to become the Montreal Manic. Philadelphia would have to wait 30 years for the return of professional soccer to the city.

Philadelphia Atoms v Dallas Tornado, 1973 NASL Championship Final

Click here to view the embedded video.

Check out our two-part history of the Philadelphia Atoms: Part One. Part Two.

For nearly 150 years, eleven men have been stepping onto a soccer field prepared to attack and defend against their opponent as a unit.

It happens every day all across the world. How often do we think of the significance of the number 11?

The friendly that the United States played against Mexico in Philadelphia on August 10 brought back a historical tradition. In his debut as head coach, Jürgen Klinsmann assigned his eleven starters the numbers 1 through 11. The players on the bench received numbers 12 through 18. This practice is one that dates back to the early days of soccer, but is not often seen in the modern era. The numbering system most national and club teams use today is the “squad numbers” system. This system assigns each individual member of the team a number regardless of whether he was playing or not.

In the days when the starters were given numbers 1-11, the numbers were allotted based on position. Traditionally, shirt numbers were assigned like this: the goalkeeper was assigned number 1, the right full back 2, left full back 3, right half back 4, center half back 5, left half back 6, inside right 7, outside right 8, center forward 9, inside left 10, and outside left 11. Beginning with the 1954 World Cup, squad numbers were introduced with each member of the 22-player roster being assigned a number for the duration of the tournament. Beginning in 1993, England’s FA stopped making making it mandatory for starting line-ups to use the numbers 1-11 and the new practice was soon followed around the world.

Growing up, my brother and I always knew that our grandpa, Werner Fricker, wore number 6. So, whenever we were being assigned numbers on our youth teams we hoped that we would by some chance be assigned 6. Grandpa was a left halfback, and the captain of United German Hungarians from 1958-1969, leading them in winning the National Amateur Cup in 1965. From 1984 through 1990, he was president of the US Soccer Federation and helped to bring the 1994 World Cup to the US.

We hoped to be assigned the number six on our youth teams because we wanted to be like our grandfather. For us it was the closest we would be to knowing a national team player. He part of the US pool from 1963 thru 1967. In 1963 he was the first Philadelphian to play on the US Olympic team since 1956, and was believed to be fourth ever, behind Jack Dunn, Walter Bahr, and Ray Wilson.

Klinsmann’s return to the 11-man numbering system for the USMNT brings back the sense of competition to earn a spot as a starter. We have seen already by the players that have been included on his rosters that not every player or position is guaranteed. Many familiar names have been included, but new ones are also being added.

In addition to the system of numbers, the names of the players have been removed from the backs of the uniforms. While Klinsmann said after the friendly against Mexico that this was because there hadn’t been enough time to include the names, according to US Soccer this practice has the goal “to make sure that everyone is focused on the most important thing on the uniform – the crest representing the United States.”

So, it is the number that labels the player as part of a team. A player has to earn that number, and it becomes a more valued prize.

Tuesday night will mark the 98th edition of the US Open Cup. While the Philadelphia Union failed to get past DC United in a Cup play-in match in April—in 2010, the Union was bested by New York in their first play-in match–Philadelphia teams, both amateur and professional, have a long history of appearances in the final of America’s oldest soccer competition, winning the Cup ten times.

Before the US Open Cup

Before the founding of the US Open Cup in the 1913–1914 season, the claim for a national soccer title was held by the American Cup competition, also known as the American Football Association Cup and the American Federation Cup. First organized by the American Football Association in 1885, the competition primarily featured teams from the early American soccer triangle of  Northern New Jersey, Southern New York and lower New England.

In 1896, the John A. Manz team became the first Philadelphia club to win the American Cup. Tacony won in 1910 with Philadelphia Hibernian losing in the final the following year. In 1914, Bethlehem Steel FC won the first of its six American Cup titles by beating Tacony, which had also lost to Northern New Jersey’s Paterson True Blues in the final the year before.

The American Cup competition would eventually be supplanted by the US Open Cup. Limited by both geographic shortsightedness, as evidenced by its reluctance to expand the American Cup competition outside of its home region (no team further West than Eastern Pennsylvania ever won the final), institutional resistance to professional clubs and leagues, and by an Anglo-centric worldview of the game, the AFA would be rendered irrelevant by the United States Football Association, now known as the US Soccer Federation. Founded in 1913 (and Philadelphia-area league administrators and clubs were instrumental in the USFA’s founding), the USFA’s desire to be a truly national governing body would lead to it being officially recognized by FIFA in 1914. The AFA would limp along for another ten years with the last American Cup final being played in 1924. Bethlehem Steel was the winner.

After drawing 1-1 with New Bedford, Peabocy lost 4-1 in the replay before the crowd above. (Photo: University Archives & Special Collections Department, Lovejoy Library, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville)

Early success

The first winner of the US Open Cup, originally known as the National Challenge Cup, was the Brooklyn Field Club. Seven Philadelphia-area clubs participated in the early rounds of the first competition—Bethlehem, Disston FC, Tacony, West Philadelphia, Kensington, Wissinoming and Peabody FC. Only Peabody advanced beyond the third round, being knocked out by New Bedford in the fourth round. Bethlehem was defeated in the third round by eventual winner Brooklyn Field Club 1–0 on January 25, 1914.

It took only one year for Bethlehem to claim its first US Open Cup title, an honor they held four out of next five years (1915, 1916, 1918, 1919), losing to Fall River Rovers in 1917 and the Ben Millers club of St. Louis in 1920, thus twice missing out on becoming the first team to win the competition three years in a row. While the Bethlehem side was heavily stocked with foreign-born players, Ben Millers featured local, native-born players. Bethlehem would have to wait six years to secure their revenge, defeating Ben Millers 7–2 for the Cup at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn on April 11, 1926.

Ten years would pass before Philadelphia would again win the US Open Cup in 1936 when the Philadelphia German Americans defeated St. Louis Shamrocks with an aggregate score of 5–2. In doing so, the German Americans became the first amateur team to win the competition.

1920 US Open Cup winners Ben Millers of St. Louis became the second team to prevent Bethlehem Steel from becoming the first club to win the Cup three times in a row. (Photo: University Archives & Special Collections Department, Lovejoy Library, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville)

The Shamrocks were the continuation of the St. Louis Stix, Baer and Fuller team that had won the Cup in 1933 and 1934, and again in 1935 playing as St. Louis Central Breweries, to become the first team to win the Cup three times in a row. Along with player/coach and eventual US Soccer Hall of Famer Alex McNab, the team also featured World Cup veterans Billy Gonsalves, Werner Nilsen, and Bert Patenaude.

The Philadelphia German Americans were no slouches themselves, having won the American Soccer League title the year before, and boasted World Cup veterans such as Bill Fiedler, Al Harker, Peter Pietras, and Francis Ryan, all of whom, unlike their St. Louis counterparts, were born in or around the city they represented. The German Americans played the Shamrocks to a 2–2 draw in the first leg in St. Louis on April 28, 1936 before beating them 3–1 at the Rifle Club grounds in front of some 8,000 spectators on May 3, 1936. Two of the German American’s goals in Philadelphia were scored by George Nemchik, at the time a student at Temple University. Nemchik would be a US Cup champion again in 1945 with New York’s Brookhattan club.

While the German Americans would eventually be known as the Philadelphia Americans and go on to win the ASL championship six more times before becoming Uhrik Truckers in 1953 and winning the league championship two more times, a Philadelphia team would not appear in a US Open Cup final for another 13 years.

The post-war years

The Philadelphia Nationals were founded as Passon SC in 1936, the same year as the German Americans won the US Open Cup, making it to the Cup quarterfinals in the 1936-1937. Renamed the Philadelphia Nationals in the 1941-1942 season, the team was coached by the legendary Jimmy Mills and would be represented by such talents as Ben McLaughlin and Nick Kropfelder as well as Walter Bahr and Ed McIlvenny, stars of the 1950 US team that defeated England in the World Cup. The Nats would win the American Soccer League title four times before folding in 1954.

In 1949 they faced Morgan Strasser in an all-Pennsylvania US Open Cup final. The Western PA team had lost the 1943 and 1944 US Open Cup finals to Brooklyn Hispano. The Nationals defeated Morgan 1–0 in the first leg in Philadelphia before falling 4–2 in the second leg in Pittsburgh to lose the Cup.

The Nationals again made it to another all-Pennsylvania final in 1952 when they faced the Pittsburgh-area Harmaville Hurricanes. In the first leg, the Nats won 4–3 in Philadelphia only to fall 1–4 in Harmaville. The listing on the US Open Cup website includes the addendum “(AET)” after the second leg score, which suggest that, given the final result, it must have been a furious finish. Harmaville would lose in the 1953 final before winning the Cup again in 1956.

Philadelphia would finally regain the US Open Cup in 1960 when the Ukrainian Nationals defeated the Los Angeles Kickers. The Cup final was decided in a single leg that year, but the Ukrainian Nationals needed two games to top Fall River SC in the semifinals after first battling to a 1–1 draw before defeating the Massachusetts team 2–0 in the deciding game. At Edison Field in Philadelphia on May 29, 1960, the Uke Nats made no mistake, defeating the Kickers 5–3 in another final that had to go to extra time.

Walt Chyzowych played at Temple before joining Ukrainian Nationals. He would go on to a long coaching career that included the top spot at Philadelphia Textile as well as the US National Team from 1976-1980.

The win marked the beginning of something of a dynasty as the Philadelphia team would go on to win the ASL championship in 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964 and again in 1970. They would complete the double when they won the US Open Cup again in 1961, defeating the United Scots of Southern California by an aggregate of 7–4, but were prevented from winning three times in a row by eventual 1962 Cup winners Hungaria SC of New York in the semifinals. Undaunted, the Ukrainian Nationals reclaimed the Cup in 1963, outscoring their opponents 11–0 in the quarter and semifinals before defeating Southern California’s Armenian SC 1–0 after extra time in the single leg final on June 2 in Philadelphia. They gave up the Cup in 1964 to Los Angeles Kickers-Victoria in the finals by an aggregate of 4–2. The first leg had been played to a 2–2 draw after extra time at Cambria Field in Philadelphia on June 1 with Walt Chyzowych scoring both goals for Philadelphia. On June 21, Philadelphia lost the second leg to the Kickers 2–0 in Los Angeles. In 1965, the Uke Nats were defeated by Ukrainian SC of Eastern New York in the semifinals by an aggregate score of 4–3. The Ukrainian Nationals won the Cup for the fourth and final time in 1966, outscoring all opposition by the incredible total of 16–1 from the quarterfinals through the two-leg final against Orange County SC. They made it as far as the quarterfinals in 1967 and the semifinals in 1968. The Ukrainians were knocked out by Greek American SC 3–2 on aggregate in 1968 after a semifinal draw necessitated a replay. Greek American would win their second Cup in a row that year before becoming only the second team in the competition’s history to make it three in a row in 1969.

Philadelphia returned to the US Open final in 1977, when United German Hungarians faced Maccabee of Los Angeles on June 19. Sadly, UGH lost 5–1. UGH would also appear in the National Amateur Cup on July 24 of that year, where they were defeated by Denver Kickers 3–1.

UGH made the last Cup final appearance by a Philadelphia-area club in 1993 when they faced San Francisco’s CD Mexico on July 17 only to be defeated 5–0. In 1994, UGH hosted the Open Cup final. Philadelphia Flames made it as far as the semifinals that year before being defeated 3–0 by Greek American AC.

The MLS era

While in the two years of its existence the Philadelphia Union has not been able to advance out of the MLS play-in bracket of the US Open Cup, Philadelphia-area amateur and professional teams such as Hershey Wildcats, New Jersey Stallions, Reading Rage, South Jersey Barons, Vereinigung Erzgebirge, Ocean City Barons, Harrisburg City Islanders, Reading United and Phoenix SC have all made it at least as far as the first round since the beginning of the MLS-era in 1996. In 2007, the City Islanders knocked out DC United in the third round before losing to eventual Cup winners New England Revolution. 2007 was also the year in which Sebastien Le Toux was the tournament’s leading goal scorer, sending five into the net for Seattle Sounders. In 2009, the City Islanders found their revenge when they defeated New England in the third round before losing to DC United in the quarterfinals. The City Islanders confirmed their giant killer status in 2010 when they defeated New York Red Bulls in the third round only to lose again to DC in the next game.

Here’s hoping we soon see the Union in a US Open Cup final soon (and that Seattle don’t three-peat on Tuesday night).