Decades ago, when England and Scotland felt far more certain of their status as masters of the sport than they do today, the English FA and the Scottish FA occasionally sent non-representative touring teams abroad under their banners to entertain the fans.
The United States team’s bronze-medal performance at the 1959 Pan-American Games in Chicago stands out as an unexpected surprise.
At the conclusion of the United States team’s trip to the 1930 World Cup in Uruguay, the manager of the team, Wilfred Cummings, wrote a report to the USFA on the trip.
The main cause of the NASL’s demise was its over-expansion in 1978, but pinpointing when the decline began is difficult.
A third batch of odd facts in American soccer history
The founding of the original American Soccer League more than 100 years ago is one of the landmark events in American soccer history, even though the league lasted only 10 years.
Historical inaccuracies are common in movies. Those inaccuracies are piled pretty deep in in the USMNT’s lead-up to the 1950 World Cup in The Game of Their Lives/The Miracle Match.
Brown earned the reputation of a mediator between disputing factions.
Some particularly memorable NASL games in which the Cosmos didn’t play.
The U.S. men’s national team has scored a few famous upsets against major teams over the years, and also a few significant victories that are not as well remembered.
The U.S. Soccer Federation doesn’t recognize the 1885 and 1886 games against Canada as having been full internationals, and with good reason.
When the U.S. Soccer Federation used clubs to take the field in place of the U.S. men’s national team.
The 1924 Olympic Games in Paris were a landmark event for the U.S. national soccer team.
Everyone knows about Paul Caligiuri’s gamewinner against Trinidad and Tobago in 1989. So what else did the U.S. men’s national team do that year?
About a man who can be called legendary, if it is possible for a person to be legendary when their legend is known only to a small and shrinking group of people.
How the league lost sight of the long-term goal of steady growth and was seduced by the short-term income offered by expansion fees.
In 1930, a Fall River team built around the Fall River Marksmen played some of the best teams of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Austria in Europe.
A few months after the 1971 NASL season, the New York Cosmos announced that they would be moving to Hofstra Stadium on Long Island for the 1972 season.
The USMNT has been involved in eligibility controversies over the years. Here are some of the issues.
In 1916 in the midst of the First World War, the US played its first official internationals in Sweden and Norway.
The night when the U.S. women announced to the world that this nation that was a traditional doormat in men’s soccer was going to be a power in the women’s game.
The Uruguayan team that toured the United States in 1927 wasn’t really the world champion it was touted as it may have been the greatest team ever to make an American tour.
The New York Cosmos had an up-and-down record over the years in friendlies against European and South American teams. Two of those home friendlies that do stand out impressively.
It was no coincidence that the Bethlehem Steel soccer team, one of the greatest in American soccer history, was at its peak at the same time that World War I was raging in Europe.
Smoke bombs thrown onto the field? Ho-hum. Hooligans in the streets? Yawn. There are American soccer players who have seen far worse, like tear gas in the stadium.
Some odd facts, footnotes in American soccer history.
A very important factor in reviving American interest in soccer at the beginning of the 20th century was the visits of an English amateur all-star team called the Pilgrims, who made American tours in 1905 and 1909.
Fricker’s legacy remains not just as the man who brought the World Cup to the United States for the first time, but as an important bridge between eras in American soccer.
American soccer has had varied experience with playoffs over the years, some good, some bad.
The events of 1991 included some important steps in the right direction for the US national team.
American soccer’s contribution to the American war effort of 1941-45 is not as well known as that of baseball or football, but it definitely did exist.
Roger Allaway looks at some historic soccer grounds, some still here, others long gone.
So who brought the United States back? Paul Krumpe and Jim Gabarra did.
Joe Barriskill was a complicated figure in American soccer of decades ago, playing an important part in shepherding American soccer through some dark times.
A high-water mark for American success in international soccer was the 1995 Copa America in Uruguay.
Fall River Rovers played in a jersey that displayed a shirt sponsor in 1887.
Bethlehem Steel vs. Fall River was the first great intersectional rivalry in American soccer, and more than 100 years after its last game, it may still be the greatest.
The decline and fall of the original NASL Cosmos was not a heroic story. It really began in 1982, but its last stages, in 1984 and 1985, were the particularly grim ones.
Not too many teams have played shorthanded for the full 90 minutes and not only won but collected a trophy, too.
During the years when the East Coast-based American Soccer League was the best in American soccer, a common theme was that a way to expand the sport in the United States would be to establish a midwestern equivalent of the ASL.
The Oneidas weren’t really the first American soccer team. Even so, they were an important stepping stone in the direction of the American soccer that we know today.
While not a dedicated champion of the game like Tom Cahill or Edgar Lewis, Sam Mark built one of the great American soccer teams, the Fall River Marksmen.
The Concacaf World Cup qualifying format has thrown the USMNT up against small island nations from the Caribbean in early rounds.
In 1999 the United States advanced through the first round from a group that included Brazil and Germany.
The idea that the United States team at the 1930 World Cup included a group of British ringers is one of the longest-standing pieces of fiction in American soccer.
The what cup? Roger Allaway explains.
In its day, which lasted from 1925 to 1963, the Lewis Cup was one of the biggest events in American soccer.
The U.S. Open Cup once did a great deal to widen the horizons of American soccer.
The United States’ 2-0 upset of Mexico in the semifinals of the 1991 CONCACAF Gold Cup seems to have been largely forgotten.
The American Football Association was only the second “national” football association to be formed outside the British Isles, following one in Canada.
The Quarterfinal match against Germany may have been the best match on the USWNT’s path to the championship at the 1999 Women’s World Cup.
It is often said that the United States doesn’t have a distinct national style of playing soccer.
On the sudden departure of Dettmar Cramer as head coach of the USMNT in 1975.
Baker holds the title of the first European first-division player ever to play for the United States men’s national team.
Roger Allaway looks at how the New York Cosmos became “The Cosmos!” in 1977.
Three replays and lots of mud in the 1914 American Cup quarterfinal between Bethlehem Steel and West Hudson.
Roger Allaway looks at when the USMNT defeated Costa Rica 3-0 at the 1984 Olympics in front of a crowd of 78,265 at Stanford Stadium.
Overseas tours by American soccer teams have become, while not commonplace, at least not as unusual as they once were. The grand-daddy of them all was Bethlehem Steel’s tour of Sweden and Denmark in 1919.
Paul Caligiuri’s biggest goal wasn’t the first game winner that he’d scored against Trinidad and Maurice. He’d also had one four years earlier, on May 19, 1985, Roger Allaway explains.
Nearly every professional sports event in the United States was canceled or postponed on June 6, 1944. Roger Allaway looks at one of the few that wasn’t, a benefit soccer tournament at the Polo Grounds featuring ASL teams.
