Captain of the United States team in the first World Cup, and a leading American professional player in the 1920s, 1930s and early 1940s.
Florie, an outside left who was born and grew up in the Kearny-Harrison-Newark soccer hotbed area of northern New Jersey, signed with the Providence Clamdiggers of the American Soccer League in 1924 and played with that team for five years, including scoring 22 goals in 38 games in the 1925-26 season, an impressive total for a winger. He then was traded to the New Bedford Whalers, for whom he played until the original ASL was dissolved. He won his first U.S. Open Cup title in 1932 with New Bedford, and scored 126 goals in hs 317 ASL games.
After the end of the original ASL, Florie played the rest of his long career with Pawtucket Rangers and was a U.S. Open Cup finalist three more times, playing on the losing side in 1934 and 1935 but winning his second U.S. Open Cup title in 1941, when he was well into his 40s.
Florie made his debut in the U.S. national team against Canada in 1925. In days when full internationals were few and far between, he won eight full international caps. Florie played in all of the United States’ five games in the 1930 and 1934 World Cups. He was captain for all three of the United States’ games in the 1930 World Cup.
Inducted in 1986.
