The Society for American Soccer History is pleased to announce it is releasing six clips of historical American soccer footage from the 1920s. The footage consists of outtakes from presumably lost Fox Movietone newsreels produced between 1924 and 1928.
The footage was licensed from the University of South Carolina’s Moving Image Research Collections (MIRC). Among the matches portrayed in the footage are the first international played by the US Men’s National Team in the United States, the first ever footage in the world of a soccer match shot with sound, the 1924 US Open Cup final, and American Soccer League and Eastern Soccer League contests.
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- March 30, 1924: St. Louis Vesper Buick 2-4 Fall River Marksmen (1924 US Open Cup final at High School Field in St. Louis)
- November 8, 1925: USA 6-1 Canada (International friendly at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn)
- December 18, 1927: New York Nationals 2-2 Brooklyn Wanderers (American Soccer League match at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn)
- January 15, 1928: Brooklyn Wanderers 4-0 Trenton SC (US Open Cup First Round at Hawthorne Field in Brooklyn)
- December 2, 1928: New York Giants 3-0 Newark Skeeters (Game One of an Eastern Soccer League doubleheader at Starlight Park, Bronx, NYC)
- December 2, 1928: New York Hakoah 4-2 Philadelphia Centennials (Game Two of an Eastern Soccer League doubleheader at Starlight Park, Bronx, NYC)
Available on the SASH site is an essay about the first soccer footage filmed with sound written by Brian D. Bunk, professor of history at University of Massachusetts Amherst and former SASH treasurer and board member.
The first of the footage will be released on the SASH YouTube channel on July 14, with new footage appearing over the rest of the week at noon ET.
The footage is part of the Society’s ongoing efforts to enrich the visual history of soccer in America.
In June, SASH released what is presently the earliest footage of soccer played in the US. That footage shows a friendly match in 1921 between San Francisco’s Italia Virtus against a team from the Italian Navy cruiser RM Libia, then in port as part of a worldwide cruise. The footage, licensed from Cineteca di Bologna, comes from the first publicly released film directed by legendary American filmmaker Frank Capra.
Later in June, SASH released six clips of international club friendlies and indoor matches played in New York City in the 1940s and 1950s. The clips were identified in the Universal Newsreel Collection at the National Archive and digitized for SASH by Colorlab in Maryland. Along with the Universal Newsreel footage, SASH also released five additional international club friendly match clips from the same period donated to the Society by George and Peggy Brown. The footage was filmed at Yankees Stadium, Ebetts Field, and Randalls Island. The two indoor clips, filmed at Madison Square Garden in 1941, are currently the earliest known footage of indoor soccer in the US. One further clip from the first International Soccer League final in 1960, played at the Polo Grounds in 1960, was also released.
In the beginning of July, SASH released five clips of footage from the 1950s consisting of home movies featuring German American League play at legendary New York Metro Area soccer venues Metropolitan Oval, Eintracht Oval, and Zerega Oval. Donated to SASH by George and Peggy Brown, the footage offers a rare in-color look at the game in the 1950s.
In 2020, SASH released footage identified in the archives of the Swedish Film Institute. That footage included the first US Men’s National Team match, played at the start of the team’s 1916 Scandinavian tour, and two clips of footage from Bethlehem Steel FC’s 1919 tour of Scandinavia, the first visit by a US professional club team to Europe (clip one, clip two). SASH has also released footage of US troops playing soccer in France and Germany from 1918 and 1919 following the end of the First World War. All of the footage can be viewed on the SASH YouTube channel.
SASH has also catalogued links to nearly sixty newsreel clips in US and European commercial film archives related to soccer in the US between 1924 and 1984. Those links are organized by archive under the Video tab of the main menu on the SASH website homepage.