AAPF, ALPF, ASL, Boston, Brooklyn, Fall River, Massachusetts, Newark, Philadelphia:
Who scored the first goals in the earliest US professional leagues? Brian Bunk looks at the available evidence.
Billy Gonsalves is considered by many to be the best US player before the Second World War but Archie Stark remains the greatest goalscorer the US has ever produced.
USWNT, Women's Soccer, Women's World Cup:
For more than 25 years, USWNT players have demonstrated that having a baby doesn’t necessarily end a professional soccer career. Jen Cooper presents an unofficial power ranking of all USWNT players who earned a cap after having a child.
Roger Allaway looks at the parallels between the 1960 US Open Cup final and the 2022 MLS Cup final.
Roger Allaway looks back at the long tradition of teenage players breaking into U.S. league and national team ranks.
Matthew Evans will discuss the impact of the US-hosted 1994 World Cup.
Tom McCabe on the recent unveiling of a statue in Harrison, New Jersey, commemorating the history of soccer in the West Hudson.
Roger looks back to the 1931 ASL championship to show how second-leg games can result in surprises.
On the eve of the 2022 U-17 Women’s World Cup, women’s soccer historian Jen Cooper will look back at the first FIFA women’s youth championship held in Canada in 2002 and the growth of FIFA women’s youth tournaments since then.
Roger Allaway looks at the International Soccer League, an important step that helped to pave the way toward the start of the original NASL and thus the American soccer scene of today.
Craig Tower will discuss soccer’s development in the Great Lakes area from its beginnings in the 1880s to the formation of the Intercity League, which included teams from Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland.
Archives Room, Men's World Cup, USMNT:
In the first installment of The Archives Room, Roger Allaway looks at the 1950 World Cup. Everyone knows about the 1-0 US win over England in Brazil. But four days before that game, the US held a 1-0 lead against Spain for 62 minutes before losing 3-1.
Ed Farnsworth and Brian Bunk on Oliver “Allie” Watson and Fred Watson, two brothers from Rhode Island who between them from 1894 to 1901 were the first African Americans to play in a senior soccer league, to play and score in an American Cup match, win a league championship, and play for a professional team.
The footage is from two matches during the 1919 tour and is the earliest known footage of a professional US soccer team.
Elmer Schroeder was elected as the first native-born president of US Soccer in 1932. Two decades later he was murdered.
The footage is from the 1-1 draw at Stockholm Olympic Stadium with Stockholm Tigrarna on August 15, 1916, the first match of the first-ever overseas tour by the US Men’s National Team.
Kurt Rausch’s examination of the career of Samuel Bustard — who was widely, and wrongly, reported dead during the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic — illuminates soccer in the New York Metro Area in the 1910s and 1920s.
Following the collapse of the ALPF after only 16 games over two weeks, four former ALPF sides met in seven additional matches, including a series of three games in Fall River for the “championship of America.” Former Boston and Brooklyn ALPF professionals continued in Fall River after that.
