The Many Versions of the Soccer Wars

Readers may have noticed that a recent lawsuit brought by the USL against the UPSL for breach of trademark brought many soccer commentators to bemoan the return of new “soccer wars”. Why would a beef between leagues result in such an immediate and specific response? The simple answer is that a turf battle between soccer organizations helped doom the Golden Age of U.S. soccer. And, it is not hyperbole to say that the implications of that original “soccer war” continues to resonate until today. Sadly, top-level soccer in the U.S. seems unable to break a regular cycle of internecine wars. In order to give some background, in this article of Kicking Back we present a survey-style history course on American “soccer wars”.

1924-25: An Opening Skirmish

Following the 1923-24 season, the American Soccer League was on the ascendent. The league was stable and pulling in a good deal of fans. The league’s owners decided it was time to grow the eight-team league. They added three new clubs in New England (Boston, New Bedford and Providence) and brought in Fleisher Yarn, a top-notch Philadelphia amateur club.

The added clubs meant more games and the league pushed the schedule from 28 to 44 games. League owners began negotiations with the U.S. Football Association concerning their clubs’ ability to play in the National Challenge Cup (now called the U.S. Open Cup). ASL owners claimed that the additional league games would make it difficult for the clubs to schedule National Challenge Cup games during the season. But, a more practical reason for the disagreement was that the USFA made most of its annual income from the cup by taking a relatively high percentage of the gate receipts. And, after the association took its cut, the pro clubs found it not worth the loss of money when playing in front of smaller audiences when they had to play smaller clubs in the early rounds.

A month before the league season started the ASL voted to withdraw from the NCC. The country’s other major pro league, the four-team St. Louis Soccer League, also voted to withdraw. These moves led to Bethlehem’s local newspaper, The Globe, to announce “Looks Like A Soccer War” in its August 11, 1924 edition.

The leagues hoped to hold a replacement tournament but their different schedules made the idea impractical. Instead, the ASL held a league cup in the spring with the winner, Boston S.C., playing the American Pro Soccer Championship against the winners of the St. Louis league, the Ben Millers. Boston took the three-game series two games to one.

The USFA blinked first and, at their May 1925 annual meeting, they decided to lower their percentage of the NCC gate receipts by over half. This made the competition more palatable for the pro clubs and both pro leagues re-joined the cup in the next year.

1928-29: The Soccer War

Even though a truce was called after the 1924-25 season, the ASL and USFA continued sniping at each other as each regularly threatened to sever relations with the other. In the summer of 1928, the ASL voted Nat Agar as its delegate to the USFA’s annual meeting. Agar was empowered by the league to get the USFA to agree to keep the National Challenge Cup from disrupting the ASL schedule or the league would again withdraw its clubs. Agar, manager-owner of the Brooklyn Wanderers and long-time major domo of New York soccer, was a prime mover in pushing the ASL to flex its muscles. Another such owner was Charles Stoneham who owned baseball’s New York Giants as well as the ASL’s New York Nationals. Stoneham wanted the ASL to become the preeminent U.S. soccer organization. Stoneham’s Nationals won the 1928 NCC. After that victory, he pledged that his club would never play in another USFA tournament, and he called for other major league pro baseball owners to form or acquire ASL clubs to grow the league.

Stoneham’s biggest idea was a push to have the ASL’s champions to be named the champions of the East. In addition, he recommended that a new western league of baseball-owned clubs be created, whose champions would be named champions of the West. Under this plan, the eastern and western ASL champions would meet for the national soccer championship. At this point, the NCC was the preeminent soccer competition in the US and, via that tournament, the two finalists were considered the champions of the east and west with the winner considered the national champions. Stoneham’s proposal would shake up the power structure of U.S. soccer in a major way including greatly weakening the position of the USFA.

Agar came back from the July USFA meeting without a compromise and, in mid-September 1928, two weeks into the ASL season, the league voted to withdraw from the NCC. While the league owners voted to withdraw from the cup, three clubs decided to reject the boycott. Bethlehem Steel F.C., New York Giants S.C. and Newark F.C. ignored the league edict and registered for the tournament. These clubs saw financial benefits from playing in the cup and also rejected the Stoneham plan, in part because the league he wanted to create was a closed franchise model that would cap the number of clubs allowed to take part in his proposed national championship.

On September 27, the ASL suspended the three clubs from the league and fined each $1,000 for entering the NCC. On October 2, the USFA suspended the league. The grandfather of all soccer wars had begun in earnest.

On October 8, the three former-ASL clubs and five other eastern clubs quickly formed a new professional soccer league, the Eastern Soccer League, with the sanction of the USFA. The ASL felt the effects almost immediately. Due to the suspension, the ASL was operating as an “outlaw league” outside the sanctioning of the USFA and FIFA. Any player who played in such a league could also find themselves banned from signing contracts with sanctioned leagues domestic as well as international. As such, many foreign players decided to leave their ASL clubs rather than risk such a ban.

Stoneham’s New York Nationals were the hardest hit. On October 12, ten Nationals players quit the team before a match against the Wanderers due to the USFA’s suspension of the ASL. Most of these were former SC Hakoah Vienna players who joined the league after that club’s 1926 tour of the U.S. The Nationals played an impromptu exhibition with the Wanderers but had to cancel their next two games while they signed new players. In addition, a month later, the club moved from the Polo Grounds to the much smaller Innisfail Park in the Bronx.

While most of the non-ASL clubs were semi-pro outfits, one, the Hakoah All-Stars, was a new club made up primarily of the former ASL Hakoah Vienna players. The first game of the new ESL was held on October 13 between the New York Giants and Bethlehem Steel.

The ESL included several teams from the Southern New York State Football Association. The SNYSFA saw the ESL as an encroachment on its territory and the Association’s president, Dr. G.R. Manning, resigned in protest. Nat Agar ascended to the SNYSFA’s presidency and withdrew the organization from the USFA.

The two pro leagues battled for fans during the fall. On December 23, the clubs from the ASL and the SNYSFA formed the American Soccer Association with the intention to challenge the authority of the USFA. In the spring, following the ASL regular season, the ASA held a cup for all the clubs in the ASL and the SNYSFA. As a counter, the USFA formed a new New York State Football Association and all the ESL teams entered a cup competition of the newly organized NYSFA.

Both pro leagues completed their 1928-29 seasons and moved forward with 1929-30 seasons. The ASL launched relatively early in mid-August in hopes of getting ahead of their rival. But the soccer war and the late-summer recession severely strained the finances of all clubs involved. As the soccer season began, it became glaringly obvious something needed to be done and the parties began formal negotiations.

On October 22, most of the ASL clubs were reinstated by the USFA. While the ESL continued play, the ASL suspended operations as the parties worked toward forming a new league. Two days later, in the middle of these negotiations, the “Black Thursday” stock market crash signaled the beginning of the Great Depression. “Black Monday” struck on October 29 and the Atlantic Coast Soccer League officially formed in the immediate aftermath. The first games of the merged league were played on November 9.

1932: Everyone for Themselves

The 1931 American Soccer League (the ACSL was reorganized and renamed in the summer of 1930) season was the last one that it could be recognized as a true, stable major professional league. At the end of the ASL spring 1931 season, Nat Agar’s Brooklyn Wanderers’ sat in second place behind the New York Giants. Agar protested the championship results due to the Giants having one more game scheduled than Brooklyn. The protest was disallowed. Agar hosted a friendly at Ebbets Field against Glasgow Celtic for the next weekend. The USFA suspended Agar due to some issue with this game and he was forced to sell his interests in the Wanderers.

Numerous franchise moves and foldings over a short amount ended with most of the old guard of owners out of the league by late 1932. The loss of stable finances and leadership led to a chaotic situation for professional soccer. As touched on in an earlier Kicking Back, the remaining New York contingent of ASL clubs withdrew from the league before the spring season began in an attempt to form a new, but ultimately doomed, competitor to the league.

And there were even more battles during that year. After the tumultuous spring season, the USFA began plans to take control of pro soccer in the U.S. by directly promoting and organizing regional leagues. The governing body relied on the National Challenge Cup for income but the funds received were not enough and it was looking to the pro game for new funding sources. The state associations balked at the notion of the USFA circumventing their jurisdictions with rumblings that clubs could leave the USFA and operate as independents. The ASL responded to the USFA’s plan by electing the still-suspended Nat Agar as their new president.

Rather than embark on another protracted battle, the two sides decided on peace. The USFA reinstated Agar and the ASL agreed to allow its teams to enter the NCC. A few weeks later, Agar settled with the newly-formed National Soccer League by reinstating the New York Americans and entering a second New York club into the ASL.

1933: The End of the Golden Age

While the USFA and the ASL had an agreement, this understanding was not welcome at the state level. ASL secretary Sam Fletcher, former Providence F.C. player and owner, moved to organize a separate New England Division of the ASL. He was unable to field enough New England teams, and the ASL moved forward with only its four-team Metropolitan Division for the spring 1933 season.

During that summer, Fletcher met with strong opposition from the New England state associations who disapproved of the ASL’s move to form a separate pro league that would not allow its clubs to take part in non-USFA cup competitions. With the fall season still not settled and hoping to stave off the ASL’s influence, the state associations attempted to form their own professional league but were not able to come to an agreement. Included reorganized ASL franchises in Boston, Fall River and Pawtucket, Fletcher managed to form a nine-team New England Division in time to start the 1933 fall season.

With the New England Division finally a reality, the USFA and ASL had aggregated control of the professional game on the East Coast. One more step solidified that control. On October 16, 1933 Nat Agar retired as president of the ASL and the organization reorganized. The two divisions, Metropolitan and New England, would operate as separate leagues under the umbrella ASL organization which was controlled by a three-man board. Even though the two divisions were the competitive leagues, it was American Soccer League, Inc. that formally held the affiliation with the USFA and given the sole right of interstate professional competition.

The original Soccer War badly destabilized US soccer governance at the national and league level. In addition, the Great Depression massively impeded the financial capacity of soccer owners. These two factors led to the scope of the American Soccer League eroding through the early 1930s. And, as the reach of the ASL narrowed, any hopes of a national soccer system forming during the mid-20th century also expired in part due to the continuing power struggle and lack of cohesion between the USFA and the state associations.

1966-67: The Silver Age

While the rest of the world embraced the modern game, the lack of direction in the U.S. doomed the sport to decline and obscurity in all but a few pockets of the country. Two major factors changed that. First, the 1960s was a period of change and expansion in the North American major sports league landscape. During the decade the American Football League and American Basketball Association were formed as competitors to the established National Football League and National Basketball Association. Also, the National Hockey League began a rapid period of expansion. Second, within that context, the 1966 FIFA World Cup held in England ratcheted up interest in the game to a new level in large part because the event was broadcast live on color television for the first time.

In the spring before that World Cup, FIFA met in New York City. Three North American groups were represented with an interest in forming a major league. The World Cup, held in July, was a massive success.

That summer one group named themselves the North American Soccer League and planned to begin play in 1968. The other two groups merged to become the National Professional Soccer League. For the most part, the ownership of these new teams were made up primarily of groups who already owned teams in the other major league sports.

In August, the NASL received sanctioning from the U.S. Soccer Football Association. Merger talks occurred over the next month with the NASL planning to have all-star and European teams playing in each city in 1967 and a full league to start in 1968. The NPSL ruled out the merger, moved forward with plans for a 1967 season as a 12-team “outlaw league”, and landed a $1 million television deal with CBS.

Later in 1966, FIFA attempted to mediate a merger between the newly-organized leagues but failed to come to an agreement. In late December, FIFA officially sanctioned the NASL as the only U.S. major soccer league. Football associations in various countries warned that their players would be suspended if they signed with the non-sanctioned NPSL.

Wanting to avoid a failure, in February 1967, FIFA stated that players who signed with the NPSL would not be banned for life. In addition the organization urged the USSFA to immediately sanction the NPSL. While most domestic clubs, FIFA and other European clubs wanted the merger, the major stumbling blocks were the NPSL’s low television contract and the NASL’s exclusive 10-year sanctioning.

Because of a lack of a true professional game in the U.S., both leagues needed to look abroad for players. The NPSL opened their season on April 16 with 10 teams made up of mostly foreign players. A month and a half later, the 12-team United Soccer Association (renamed from the NASL that March) opened their “mini-league” with full imported foreign teams playing under contract to the domestic clubs. Merger talks continued to be held during the season.

The USA ended their “mini-league” on July 14 when the Los Angeles Wolves (represented by the Wolverhampton Wanderers) defeated the Washington Whips (represented by Aberdeen F.C.) 6-5 on an own-goal in sudden death overtime to win the 1967 Final before 17,842 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The NPSL completed their season on September 9 when the Oakland Clippers won the second-leg of the final against the Baltimore Bays 4-1 before 9,037 at Oakland-Alameda Coliseum taking the championship with a 4-2 aggregate.

A merger between the leagues was reported to be announced the day before the NPSL final. But, it never materialized when, the day after the final, the NPSL filed an $18 million trust suit in federal court against the USA, USSFA, FIFA and the Canadian Soccer Football Association alleging a conspiracy to drive it out of existence. The suit alleged the groups blacklisted foreign players who signed with the NPSL and that USSFA officials who approved the sanction were given jobs in the USA. The suit also sought to enjoin the USA from fielding teams until the NPSL was recognized.

Merger talks continued between the leagues while the case moved forward. In mid-November a federal judge ordered organized soccer to show cause why it should not be ordered to end its boycott of the NPSL. With the lawsuit pending, the two leagues formally agreed to a merger on December 7 with the new league taking the USA’s old North American Soccer League moniker. The NPSL dropped its suit soon after.

The battle was a costly one for all involved. It was reported that none of the teams in either league made money. The Baltimore Bays, owned by the Baltimore Orioles, lost $400,000 and the NPSL’s Philadelphia Spartans, owned by the Rooney family, lost $500,000 and folded after the merger. The PIttsburgh Phantoms of the NPSL had the worst of it losing $900,000 and also folded.

The 1968 season was similar to the prior one. The league was popular enough to continue but attendance wasn’t large enough to offset the costs and clubs continued to lose money. The league imploded, dropping from 17 teams to five for the 1969 season. But a more conservative approach allowed it to survive through the early 1970s until renewed interest led to a period of rapid expansion in the latter part of that decade.

2009-11: The Soccer Warz

In August 2009, Nike sold its interest in the United Soccer Leagues to NuRock Soccer Holdings instead of a conglomerate of USL First Division owners. These clubs plus a few others broke away from the USL, formed a new North American Soccer League and applied to the USSF for Division II sanctioning.

The USL issued press releases claiming the breakaway clubs may have been in breach of contract and the league could seek litigation to protect its interest. The USSF found that three of the breakaway NASL teams had binding contracts with the USL for 2010, but that left neither league with the minimum number of teams to be sanctioned for that season. In December the USSF stripped sanctioning from the USL First Division and refused to sanction the NASL for 2010. After weeks of negotiation, the USSF announced it would run an interim Division II league for the 2010 season made up of the 12 NASL and USL clubs.

Following that 2010 season, the NASL formally admitted all the breakaway teams and, with enough members, was given provisional Division II sanctioning in November for the 2011 season. The USL ceded the Division II tier to the NASL and reorganized the remaining USL First and Second Division teams into the Division III USL Pro league for the 2011 season.

2015-18: The End of the Modern Era

A new order had been established but one that none involved appeared happy with. The truce between the parties always seemed temporary and the status quo quickly disintegrated.

In September 2015 the NASL accused US soccer of antitrust violations if the USSF went ahead with the adoption of a new set of criteria for professional league sanctioning. The league accused the federation of colluding with Major League Soccer to protect the Division I league’s monopoly. The USSF ignored the NASL and adopted its new Professional League Standards.

During the 2015 and 2016 seasons, the Division III USL (rebranded from USL Pro) doubled in size in large part due to a multi-year agreement with the MLS where the MLS Reserve League was integrated into the league. By the 2016 season, the USL had ballooned to 29 teams of which 21 were affiliates or partners of MLS clubs.

In January 2017, the USSF granted USL provisional Division II status for the 2017 season and only granted the NASL provisional sanctioning due to its membership dropping below the newer 12-team minimum. In September, the USSF revoked the NASL’s sanctioning completely for the 2018 season leaving the USL as the only remaining Division II league.

The NASL responded by filing an antitrust suit in federal court seeking to prevent the USSF from revoking the leagues Division II status and to strike down the federation’s Professional League Standards and other divisional rules. The court ruled against the league’s motion and, in February 2018, the appeal court denied an appeal. In the wake of those rulings, the NASL announced a cancellation of their 2018 season with clubs moving to other leagues.

With the demise of the NASL, Major League Soccer and it’s partner, the USL, gained complete control of the U.S. professional league system. As of the publication of this article, there are 74 teams in the three professional divisions with 44 of them owned or affiliated with MLS.

- Dan Creel

Brooklyn Wanderers: What's in a Name

In this article of Kicking Back we dig into one of the classic club names of U.S. soccer, the Brooklyn Wanderers.

The original version of the club was formed in early fall of 1894. The club played two preliminary matches: on September 23 against the Red Stars of Harlem; and on October 7 against Centerville A.C. of Bayonne. By the beginning of October, the club had fully organized by electing officers and a board of directors and had both first and second teams. The club also had its initial grounds in South Brooklyn (now just a block of rowhouses in lower Sunset Park near the Belt Parkway) with plans to soon have enclosed grounds.

At the time, that term “wanderers” was often used for itinerant people, vagrant or the homeless. In the sporting vernacular, teams that were playing on the road were sometimes informally called wanderers in the same vein as they might be called the visitors.

If they had grounds, why did they call themselves the Wanderers? It is likely because in late 19th century, the Wanderers’ nickname was in fashion related to the official name for sports clubs. A seminal example is Wanderers F.C. of London who won the first F.A. Cup in 1872 and four more over the next six years.

The club began playing a semi-regular schedule of games against other non-league clubs in the New York metro area with a new home grounds a couple of blocks away. During this period they played teams such as Sylvia A.C. of Jersey City Heights, the Bayonne Rangers, and Americus A.A. of West Hoboken.

On December 15, the New York soccer world evolved when the most prominent association football clubs from New York and New Jersey joined to organize the National Association Foot Ball League. Over the next month and a half, the league drew up bylaws and elected officers, with the Wanderers’ manager, W. Southern, elected president. The league was in discussion with over a dozen clubs about joining. By January 30 had settled on five clubs (Americus A.A., Scottish-Americans of Newark, Centerville A.C., New Rochelle F.C. and the Wanderers) and arranged an eight-game spring schedule that ran from March 3 to May 5.

Sunset Park (58th and 1st Ave) is now a mostly industrial area of Brooklyn.

The Wanderers moved to their permanent home grounds of the Varuna Boat Club at 58th Street and 1st Avenue and finished third out of four teams (New Rochelle decided ultimately to not take part in the league) in that first NAFBL season. The club spent the next three seasons in the league but never managed to win the championship.

The club lost its first two matches of the 1898-99 NAFBL season. On December 4, 1898, the Wanderers failed to play their third league match scheduled at home against the Arlingtons of New Jersey. The December 5th edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted that the club had abruptly disbanded and withdrawn from the league “[o]wing to dissensions in the ranks…” The league followed quickly behind, suspending operations in 1899 partially due to the post-Spanish-American War economic recession.

Starts and Restarts

The National Association Football League reorganized as a fully-professional league and resumed operations starting with a 1906-07 season. Until the 1912-13 season, Brooklyn was represented in the league by the Brooklyn Football Club. For that season, Brooklyn F.C. entered two teams into the league which would alternate home dates at Suburban Oval (which is now a block of rowhouses a block east from the Ditmas Avenue station). On October 6, 1912, the newly-formed Brooklyn Wanderers opened their NAFBL season with a 0-5 loss at Jersey City. The club lost again the next week 1-3 to the True Blues in Paterson, New Jersey. In the first round of the American Football Association Cup they managed to draw the Scottish-American F.C. of Newark 1-1 in their first home game, but lost the replay 1-3 at Harrison Oval the next week.

Béla Guttmann (1925) was a Hungarian national team player who would go on to play for several ASL clubs including the Wanderers.

For a handful of games, the new club continued to struggle on the field. In late December, the team reorganized and many players moved back to Brooklyn F.C. A final game, scheduled for December 22, may have been played by the Wanderers against Brooklyn F.C. But, following that, the club disbanded for good.

A decade later, Bay Ridge F.C. of Brooklyn decided to field two teams in the fall of 1922. One team continued under the Bay Ridge F.C. name in the First Division of the amateur New York State Association Football League. The other team was a reorganized Brooklyn Wanderers F.C. created to play in the semi-professional New Jersey State Soccer League. The NJSL was newly-organized for the 1922-23 season as a replacement for the NAFBL that had shut down at the end of the 1920-21 season. The home pitch for both teams was Hawthorne Field.

During that fall the Wanderers played a handful of NJSL matches and won their First Round National Challenge Cup replay match against Yonkers Thistle F.C. But, on November 5, 1922, the club lost their Second Round match 1-2 against Brooklyn F.C. The next week, the club’s fortunes changed dramatically. The Wanderers were admitted into the American Soccer League at a special meeting of the league.

The ASL had played their first month with only seven teams as, until the Wanderers joined, the league had failed to replace Todd Shipyards F.C. that had disbanded in the off-season. The club’s owner-manager was Nat Agar, a long-time mainstay of the Brooklyn soccer world. Their home grounds for that first year was Hawthorne Field and they ended that first season in sixth place. But, that summer, the club did manage to bring home the Southern New York State Football Association Cup by defeating league rival and current cup-holder, New York F.C, in the final.

The club moved into the brand-new Wanderers’ Stadium located at Nostrand Avenue and Sterling Street for most of the 1923-24 ASL season. But, by the end of the season they had returned to Hawthorne Field for good. The club finished the league in fifth place and would remain a mid-table fixture for the rest of their history.

Brooklyn Wanderers beat the Giants 3-1 on New Year’s Day 1927. (Image courtesy of Covehurst.net)

Agar reorganized and reinvested in the team during the offseason before the 1926-27 season. He brought in six internationals, including four from Vienna’s Hakoah S.C. which had a highly-successful 1926 tour of the U.S., and Mick O’Brien, English League veteran and captain of the Ireland national football team. But even with that influx of talent and a regular schedule of games at Ebbets Field to capitalize on the interest in the former Hakoah players, the club again finished mid-table at seventh out of the 12 teams.

The Soccer Wars Era

At the beginning of the 1928-29 season, the “Soccer Wars” broke out as the American Soccer League boycotted the National Challenge Cup. The U.S. Football Association suspended the organization making it an “outlaw” league and launched the Eastern Soccer League, its own major professional soccer league. The Wanderers stayed loyal to the ASL which formed a new American Soccer Association to be a direct competitor to the USFA. With the ASL schedule now split into two halves, the club managed to come in second in the first half just one point behind Fall River. In the second half, even with a dilution of talent caused by the creation of a second major pro league, the club reverted to their old form and finished fifth out of the nine teams in the league.

It was obvious that the soccer landscape could not support two rival east coast professional leagues. As the 1929-30 season got under way the USFA and ASA began negotiations to end the war. The negotiations culminated, just before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, in the reinstatement of the outlaw clubs and the creation of the Atlantic Coast Soccer League, a new, merged league formed from the ASL and the few former ASL clubs who had joined the ESL

One interesting fallout of the merger was that, there were two rival Hakoah clubs operating at the time both formed from former Hakoah S.C. players. The Eastern Soccer League’s Hakoah All-Stars were based at Starlight Park in the Bronx and the American Soccer League’s Hakoah F.C. was based in Brooklyn. This latter club’s formation was the biggest hurdle as it was created by Nat Agar as a second team under his control. While a struggling ASL in the middle of a turf war was okay with an owner controlling two teams, the more stable single ACSL wasn’t going to allow that in their league. Agar merged his two clubs and the ESL Hakoahs joined the ASL a week into the ACSL’s season.

In that 1929-30 season, the Wanderers struggled in the stronger ACSL finishing ninth out of eleven teams. In addition, they only managed to fare better than the two teams who had withdrawn from the league during the season.

That fall the league reorganized and renamed itself the American Soccer League. The Wanderers had yet another middling season finishing seventh out of the nine-team league. At the beginning of 1931, the effects of the Great Depression affected the club and the league as both seemed to be languishing.

1931 match report. Image from newspapers.com.

The Wanderers began the year in a round-robin with other New York teams for a spot in the National Challenge Cup quarterfinals. But the club came bottom of the four teams and failed to advance. In fact, over its history, the Wanderers never had much success in the competition  only making the Eastern Semifinals twice.

The first half of the 1931 American Soccer League season was a reversal of fortune as the Wanderers battled the New York Giants for the league lead. At the end of the half, the Wanderers finished second one game down to the Giants. But, the club lodged a protest with the ASL because the Giants had been scheduled to play one more game than the Wanderers.

The league did nothing. That disrespect seemed to be the last straw for Nat Agar and he disbanded the Brooklyn Wanderers before the beginning of the fall ASL season. Agar soon became president of the league. But a tradition had been created and the Brooklyn Wanderers name didn’t disappear for long.

Rebirth

The American Soccer League began to disintegrate in earnest at the beginning of the 1932 season. The seven-team league lost three New York teams on its opening weekend due to the financial difficulty of scheduling one New England game per road trip. The Hakoah club also wanted to withdraw but was prevented by the league. The four remaining teams played a truncated six-game round robin in the first half.

Before the fall season, the ASL attempted to plug their increasingly leaky dike by adding a few new clubs. To keep a foothold in the New York area, at the beginning of September, just a few short weeks before the season opener, the league granted P.J. Flannery a franchise for the Brooklyn territory. The new club named themselves the Brooklyn Wanderers and, as tradition would have it, shared Hawthorne Field as their home grounds with Hakoah F.C. Also, as tradition would have it, the club ended the fall yet again mid-table finishing fifth out of nine teams.

The first half of the 1933 American Soccer League season saw a complete separation between the New York and New England clubs. The Wanderers finished third out of four teams in a six game round robin season. Any pretense that the ASL was a major league had now disappeared.

Before the second half of the 1933 ASL season, the league went through a major reorganization. Nat Agar was removed as president and the league formally split into two separate organizations: the Metropolitan and New England Divisions. While still a professional league, this restructured ASL ran on a lower level in terms of both scope and finances.

Only three clubs remained in the New York-based Metropolitan Division: Brookhattan; New York Americans; and Brooklyn Wanderers. The Metropolitan Division returned to a more traditional late fall to late spring soccer schedule and, during the fall, began adding clubs to bolster their ranks ending up with a full complement of eight clubs by late December 1933.

The borough of Brooklyn had two teams in the league that fall: the Wanderers and the Celtics. Brooklyn Celtic F.C. was a newly organized club that, confusingly, had the same name as an older club that was competing in the amateur Metropolitan Soccer League. The ASL Celtics’ home ground was Commercial Field (now Hamilton Metz Field in the Wingate neighborhood) while the Wanderers continued to call Hawthorne Field home.

The league’s winter break started after matches scheduled for December 25. The Wanderers lost their game to the New York Americans 1-2 at Starlight Park and had compiled a record of four wins, two draws and six losses. Over the break, most ASL teams played their first round National Challenge Cup matches but the Wanderers were absent from the tournament.

Josef “Pepi” Schneider scored 11 goals in 27 matches for Brooklyn in 1931.

At some point before the American Soccer League resumed its schedule on January 21, 1934, the Wanderers merged with the Queens-based Hispano F.C. (once a member of the “Soccer War”-era Eastern Soccer League). The merged club was renamed Brooklyn Hispano F.C. and took on Hispano F.C.’s dismal 0-0-7 league record rather than the Wanderers’ much more middling record. The new aggregation shared a home grounds at Commercial Field alternating dates with Brooklyn Celtic.

Brooklyn Hispano played much better in the second half but, burdened with Hispano’s seven losses, ended their first ASL season next to last in the standings. The club remained a stalwart of the league through the post-war years. Hispano won a few league championships and two National Challenge Cup championships during this time, including a “double” in 1943.

A bit of background is helpful to understand the history of the next version of the Brooklyn Wanderers. Brooklyn Celtic played three seasons in the American Soccer League but was expelled after the 1935-36 season for failure to pay fees assessed by the league. That August, Brooklyn’s St. Mary’s Celtic Soccer Club joined the ASL to fill the gap left by the withdrawal of Brooklyn Celtic F.C. For a couple of years, Brooklyn Celtic attempted to be reinstated to the league through legal means but ultimately failed.

St. Mary’s Celtic had a fairly successful run during its time in the league. While it never won the ASL championship it did lift the National Challenge Cup in 1939. But, the club struggled financially during the 1941-42 season and the franchise was sold that summer to former referee, Bob Graham.

Graham quickly named the club Brooklyn Wanderers and invested in renovating Celtic Park, St. Mary’s home grounds, which was renamed Brooklyn Oval for opening day. The Wanderers were a good team during these post-war years but never managed to take home any hardware.

The End of the Wanderers

Near the end of the 1947-48 season, Bob Graham died suddenly. The club found itself needing to find new ownership before 1948-49 season. Two games into that season, the Graham family sold the Wanderers franchise to Brooklyn’s Hakoah A.C. A member of the amateur National Soccer League of New York, Hakoah quickly withdrew from that league, dispersed all the club’s current players to other teams, and restocked the club with their own players. The club dropped the Brooklyn Wanderers name in favor of their own Hakoah A.C. name.

Hakoah lasted in the American Soccer League through the 1955-56 season but, like the Wanderers, never won anything. Before the 1956-57 season, Hakoah merged with the New York Americans. The new Hakoah of New York aggregation was a juggernaut and took the league championship in their first three years of existence. The club disbanded after the 1963-64 season.

While the clubs carrying the Brooklyn Wanderers name were never highly successful on the field, the important soccer tradition that the name carries shouldn’t be denied. The Wanderers were a vital part of the early U.S. soccer landscape and should remind us that the connection between a club and the community that supports it is just as important as wins, losses and draws.

- Dan Creel

The National Soccer League of 1932

The one-two punch often offered as the main cause of the demise of the original American Soccer League are the organizational and structural instabilities spinning out of the U.S. “Soccer Wars” and the Great Depression. Because the battles between the ASL and the U.S. Football Association tend to be more dramatic, most of the historical focus of that time tends to be on the “Soccer Wars” rather than the more consequential ongoing and long-term financial impacts of the Great Depression. One often-forgotten footnote of those impacts was the creation of the National Soccer League. And “creation” may be a strong term for the nascent league as it only existed for a few weeks in October of 1932.

Let’s differentiate this NSL with the other, better-known leagues with the same name. Currently a recreation league, the semi-pro National Soccer League of Chicago was formed in 1938 from a merger between the Chicago Soccer League and the International Soccer Football League. The National Soccer League of New York was also formed in 1938 as a new amateur league. That league joined the New York metro area soccer landscape alongside the ASL (at that point fully reorganized as a semi-pro league), the Metropolitan Soccer League, and the German-American Soccer League. That NSL eventually merged into the GASL in 1974 and that league was renamed as the Cosmopolitan Soccer League in 1977.

So, what the hell was the National Soccer League of 1932?

A bit more background will be helpful. In the fall of 1929, the “Soccer Wars” ended with the creation of the Atlantic Coast Soccer League, a new, merged league created from the top professional teams from the ASL and the Eastern Soccer League. In the fall of 1930, the ACSL was reorganized and resumed the title of the American Soccer League. Separate from the organizational and franchise changes, the professional soccer circuit itself was relatively stable between late 1929 through the end of 1931. The cracks were beginning to show, to be sure, but in 1932, the wheels really began to fall off.

Image courtesy of Boston Globe Archives.

Per usual, at the beginning of the year, the ASL clubs took part in the opening stages of the National Challenge Cup (now the U.S. Open Cup). In February, the league clubs met to settle pending issues for the 1932 season including a schedule opening on the first weekend of March. A few days before the season started, the four New York clubs (the Americans, Giants, Hakoah All-Stars and Newark Americans) announced that were refusing to take part in the opening weekend schedule and were in talks to create a new eight-team Metropolitan League. That weekend the New York teams don’t play their scheduled games and offer to withdraw from the ASL due to the financial inability to continue the schedule of playing one New England team per road trip (the clubs preferred to play two games on those road trips).

A couple of days later, three of the teams officially withdrew from the ASL Hakoah’s offer to withdraw was refused and the ASL continued as a four-team league along with the Boston, New Bedford and Pawtucket team. The reduced six-game home and away spring schedule ran through April.

The New York clubs were unable to get their new league off the ground and filled their spring dates playing a variety of exhibition games. These included a Newark City club that either replaced the Newark Americans or was a reorganized version of the Newark Americans. Hakoah joined the exhibition schedule in May after requesting that the ASL not schedule any more games for them.

The fall season of the ASL began the weekend of September 17 with six total teams, the five teams from the spring season plus new clubs in Brooklyn and Fall River. As a side note, the New Bedford club at this point was Sam Mark’s franchise that was previously the Fall River club by way of the New York Yankees.

At the same time, the New York Americans and the New York Giants, along with the Queens-based Bohemian Americans, began playing exhibitions as warm-ups for the opening of the National Soccer League on October 2. The league was announced to have eight total members. Two games took place on the opening day of the NSL: the New York Americans and New York Nationals played to a 4:4 draw at Starlight Park; and the Bohemian Americans defeated the Newark Rangers at Clark’s Field in Newark.

Who were these two new teams? And what happened to the Giants and Newark City clubs? To answer the first, on October 1, Charles Stoneham sold the Giants to D.W. Bremmer of the Indiana Flooring Company and the team was renamed the New York Nationals. Perhaps already the most confusing sports club naming history somehow got even more confusing! The Indiana Flooring F.C. joined the ASL in 1924 and was bought by Stoneham in 1927. Stoneham was the owner of the New York Giants baseball team but, because there was already a team with that name in the ASL, he renamed them the New York Nationals. In 1930, the Giants renamed themselves the New York S.C. so Stoneham renamed the Nationals the New York Giants. And, became the Nationals again the day before the NSL debuted.

The Newark Rangers are more of a mystery. It’s not know if they are a continuation of the Newark City club noted above that took part in exhibitions against the New York Americans and Hakoah clubs or a completely new club formed for the NSL.

Other than those two games, no other NSL games were played on the opening day but news reports noted that four other teams from Brooklyn, Westchester and Astoria were supposed to enter the competition next when when the eight-team schedule was completed. But, the next Sunday, only one NSL game is reported to have been played: the Bohemian Americans and the New York Americans played to a 2:2 draw at Starlight Park.

And, after only three games, the NSL was over. On October 12, the New York Americans and a new club, the New York Field Club, joined the ASL and the NSL folded. New York F.C. was made up of many of the players from the Giants/Nationals team. But the club was unable to play its first scheduled game that weekend because the owner was unable to sign the players in time for the match. The club began its season in earnest the following weekend. It is unknown what happened to the Newark Rangers club.

The addition of the two New York teams made the ASL an eight-team league. But, after only one game, Sam Mark’s New Bedford club folded. Two weeks later, the club was replaced by the Bohemian Queens franchise. The new Fall River club took the fall season championship.

In 1933, the ASL reorganized yet again by creating formal Metropolitan and New England Divisions with the New England teams seemingly not taking part in the league at all during the spring half. And with that, the fracturing of the first major U.S. soccer league into lesser regional semi-pro leagues was basically complete.

- Dan Creel

Cover photo of Brookhattan FC, courtesy of the club.

The Importance of Memory

You know what scares me? Spiders, sharks, snakes, and bears, obviously. But more from an existential angst angle - being forgotten. Regardless of your belief about what happens when you die, we can look around this world and see what death will bring for all of us. At first, your family and friends will mourn your passing and feel the absence you have left, but over time you will fade from their thoughts. Soon, you will be a name on a family tree, grandchildren will scratch their head when they spot you in pictures, not sure who you are. Eventually, those pictures will fade, of course. And in 100 years, you will be gone. Very few of us make a mark large enough to outlive the darkening that comes with passing time.

And this is not to say that this process is bad. It is what it is.

But that thought, of eventually being nothing more than a lost memory, terrifies me. In my own life, I have see this process. I had a younger brother, David. He was my best friend throughout my early life, particularly during my teens. I did nothing that David was not a part of. Then, when I was 21, in college, my brother, 19, died suddenly. It was a gut-wrenching experience. But after the shock of his exit, a numbing occurred - life had to go on. Classes and girlfriends, work and friends, each item took a bit of focus and blurred the absence of my brother. Now, some 20 years later, I often say that he is as dead as George Washington - meaning that he is a name and a face, but not much more than that. The years have layered memories that obscure his passing. It was inevitable.

Every person reading this article has gone through this experience or will someday. People die. Other people live.

I’ve written before about the Fall River Marksmen and the old American Soccer League several times, but, for those unfamiliar, here’s the elevator pitch. The ASL was the dominant soccer league in the northeast United States from 1921 to the early 30’s. Clubs like Bethlehem Steel and Fall River dominated the league and the National Challenge Cup (eventually renamed the US Open Cup). The best players in the country played in this league. It outdrew baseball teams at the time. And then, it all ended.

In preparation for this column, I’ve been researching a player from that era. While I am not going to be talking too much about that process (there will be an article eventually), I do want to scrape the surface to make a point. Because Fall River Marksmen is such an interesting story to me, I decided to pick a player to research. As I dug into this player’s life, I realized how little is known about these players. They came and went from the soccer world. Like all professional players, they eventually retired and went on to live their lives, had families, got day jobs - they moved on.

And the country moved on as well. Other sports began to dominate the conversation. The rise of the NFL, MLB, and the NBA relegated soccer to a marginalized space. Sure, people played the sport but it no longer dominated headlines. The names of players from the ASL era were almost completely forgotten. And sadly, USSF seems completely unconcerned about preserving this history. MLS has become the dominate brand of the sport and the only focus of those in power. Leagues that came before are almost entirely ignored, as if soccer began in this country in the mid 90s. In fact, American soccer might be the only major sport that refuses to celebrate its history in any meaningful way.

This indifference has meant that memorabilia, memories, the players are almost all gone. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to be the dominant player of a generation and then to be forgotten for the rest of your life. We see athletes struggle with adjusting to regular life all the time, but this group of players has been almost entirely erased from soccer consciousness. The old black and white photos cry out for attention, but for many time has erased any memory of the players beyond box scores.

I have been known to question the methods and style of Pro/Rel advocates online, but that group should be celebrated for its focus on the rich soccer history of this country. Focusing on that history is important, even vital, for the long-term success and sustainability of the game in this country. Pretending that MLS is something without precedent ignores the lessons that could be learned from the leagues that came before. The success of the NASL in the late 60s and early 70s dwarfs the crowds that MLS regularly draws now, even 25 years since founding. Go back and watch the videos of the Cosmos from that era, you see a league that captured the imagination of the country. This should be celebrated, not ignored.  And, more importantly, lessons should be drawn to replicate that success.

So this column is a chance to fight the dust of age. If you’re a fan of soccer in this country, it’s time to become a historian as well. It’s time to celebrate the clubs of the past because they contributed to what we have today. We’ll be doing that here at Protagonist (just wait till you see some of these stories!), but it’s time to for the entire American soccer community to begin preserving the past. If the Federation won’t, then we will. We will not forget.

-Dan Vaughn