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.
Associations
Old parks
Roger Allaway looks at some historic soccer grounds, some still here, others long gone.
The confrontational Joe Barriskill
Joe Barriskill was a complicated figure in American soccer of decades ago, playing an important part in shepherding American soccer through some dark times.
The Bicentennial Cup
The what cup? Roger Allaway explains.
The American Football Association
The American Football Association was only the second “national” football association to be formed outside the British Isles, following one in Canada.
Guides to American soccer’s past
Roger Allaway looks at the importance of the Spalding Guides and Graham Guides to American soccer historians.
The “pocket-book size masterpiece”: A publishing history of the Graham Guides
First self-published in 1948 before being backed by the USSFA beginning in 1960, over the span of three decades Bill Graham’s annual compilation of soccer activities in the US followed in the footsteps of the Spalding Guides Ed Farnsworth examines the publishing history of what are now colloquially known as the Graham Guides.
The Archives Room: What was the Soccer War?
Roger Allaway looks at the American Soccer War, the 1928-29 struggle between the U.S. Football Association and the American Soccer League over control of the sport in the US.
Sailor lads, jolly tars, and rovers of the briny deep: International ship-crew soccer matches in the US, 1890-1905, part 1
Ed Farnsworth’s review of matches between US clubs and British ship crew teams between 1890 and 1905 begins with a look at matches played in New York and Northern New Jersey.
“The Noxious Scottish Weed”: Early North American soccer and the Laws of the Game
Ed Farnsworth, Tom McCabe, and Kurt Rausch consider why the first soccer associations in North America favored the Scottish FA over the English FA as the source for their Laws of the Game.
The origin of the National Soccer Hall of Fame
Ed Farnsworth looks at how a reunion of old teammates in Philadelphia led to the formation of the National Soccer Hall of Fame.
Gentlemen of Color: Oliver and Fred Watson, the earliest known African American soccer players in the United States
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 life — and murder — of the first American-born president of U.S. Soccer
Elmer Schroeder was elected as the first native-born president of US Soccer in 1932. Two decades later he was murdered.
After the collapse: ALPF vs. ALPF in Baltimore and Fall River, 1894-96
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.
Dennis Shay: Patriarch of American Goalkeepers
The lineage of exceptional American goalkeepers may begin in the 1880s with Dennis Shay.
Turkey Bowl
American football is a Thanksgiving tradition, but so is soccer. In fact, Thanksgiving Soccer is nearly as old as the holiday itself. A day of national thanksgiving goes back to the colonial period, but it took President Abraham Lincoln to institute it as a late-November holiday. Modern soccer, codified […]
The forgotten Thomas W. Cahill
Roger Allaway on Thomas Chaill, one of the major figures in the early years of American soccer.
Loose threads
Tom McCabe on ONT Football Club, American soccer’s first dynasty, the American Football Association, the sports first governing body in the US.
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