A midfielder and winger who was a star of the great Philadelphia German-Americans team of the 1930s, and also played for the United States in both the Olympic Games and the World Cup.
Ryan was one of the many products of the Lighthouse Boys Club, and was still playing for that Philadelphia institution when he was picked for the United States team for the 1928 Olympics. By the time he played in his second Olympics, eight years later, he was with German-Americans, for whom he played from 1931 to 1937, and had led them to their great run of major titles. They won the National Amateur Cup in 1933 and 1934, the American Soccer League in 1935 and the U.S. Open Cup in 1936. In those 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Ryan was one of nine German-Americans players on the U.S. squad.
In between, he played for the full U.S. national team in the 1934 World Cup in Italy. He also played on the ASL squad that faced Scotland in a pair of games in 1935.
Inducted in 1958.
