Last Friday, a 103-year-old championship medal won by a Scottish goalkeeper in Philadelphia returned to the city to the Southeastern Pennsylvania Soccer Hall of Fame. Here’s the story of the goalkeeper who won that medal and how it came back from Scotland to Philly.
Our series on the origins of soccer in Philadelphia concludes.
After the quick demise of the Philadelphia Phillies pro soccer team in 1894, Philadelphia’s other pro team would return to the amateur ranks before going on to win Philadelphia’s first national soccer championship in 1897.
The decline of Philadelphia’s first organized league is followed by the appearance of the first professional soccer teams in the city.
Philadelphia’s first organized soccer league continued to grow in its second and third seasons with more teams, rising attendance, and intercity games.
In 1891, some 79 years before the founding of the NASL’s New York Cosmos, an All-Philadelphia team played the New York Cosmopolitans in the first of a series of games for the Philadelphia-New York intercity championship.