U.S. soccer’s good old days

If you’re looking for the greatest era of American professional soccer, it’s tempting to simply look around. I mean, in terms of quantity and stability, 2025 makes a pretty good case.

The domestic professional soccer landscape includes 30 Major League Soccer franchises, 24 United Soccer League Championship clubs, 14 National Women’s Soccer League teams, 29 MLS Next Pro sides and 14 USL League One squads. MLS boasts 22 soccer-specific stadiums with two more on the way.

Throw in the fact that USL is planning to  create a First Division circuit to compete with MLS – and introduce promotion/relegation – and it’s a heady time to be an association football supporter in the United States.

However, American soccer was also a pretty big deal 100 years ago. And on May 18, 1925, it reached an early milestone.

On that day the American Soccer League, which had been formed in 1921, became a member of the United States Football Association (now the United States Soccer Association). Although the ASL sought only associate membership, delegates decided to extend full privileges.

Placing the league under the USFA umbrella meant the league and governing body would finally be partners. They had been at odds in the past, mainly over participation in the annual National Challenge Cup (now the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup). That event meant clubs had to break from their regular season schedule and travel long distances to compete in Cup competitions.

“Calm came out of chaos at the opening meeting of the twelfth annual session of the United Football Association, governing body of soccer in this country, at the Hotel Astor yesterday,” hailed the Passaic Daily News in a May 19, 1925, article. “For more than a year there has been a civil war between the American Soccer League, one of the most powerful, richest and largest organizations of its kind in the country, and the United States Football Association, controlling body of the sport. Yesterday all the differences were ironed out and the American Soccer League, headed by President Fred Smith, was welcomed into the United States Football Association as a full member. The sudden and undramatic ending to the strife between the two organizations was hailed as the greatest step that ever has been taken toward putting the game on a firm foundation in the United States”

In 1925, the ASL was made up of Bethlehem Steel, Boston Soccer Club, Brooklyn Wanderers, Fall River (Massachusetts) Football Club Marksmen, Fleisher Yarn (Philadelphia), Indiana Flooring (New York City), J&P Coats (Pawtucket, Rhode Island), Newark Skeeters, New Bedford Whalers, New York Giants, Philadelphia Field Club, Providence Football Club and Shawsheen Indians (Andover, Massachusetts).

The league paid its players well, and many European stars crossed the pond to suit up in the ASL. The quality of play was excellent, and some clubs even outdrew NFL teams.

In fact, USFA executive secretary Thomas Cahill thought association football had a chance to become the most popular sport in America.

“I hope within 25 years that soccer football will have almost as great strides as has baseball,” Cahill told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in the summer of 1925. “For I am sure that fundamentally it is even a more interesting game to play and much more exciting to watch.”

Yet, while international players helped elevate the ASL, Cahill felt it was time to “Americanize” the game.

“I think the time has come when American-born officials should control the national and all subsidiary organizations in this country,” he said. “The teams should be made up of as large a percent of American-born material as is possible, and the propaganda of soccer should be undertaken with a view to more thorough Americanizing some of its phases.

“The country owes a great deal to the Old Country pioneers who brought the came across and kept it alive in its early days. We need their good players, and their presence in a minor proportion on all clubs is highly desirable.”

Fall River went on to win the ASL championship with a 27-12-5 record, and Scottish born, American raised forward Archie Stark of Bethlehem Steel led the league in scoring with an astonishing 67 goals – 34 more than second-leading scorer Andy Stevens.

Alas, the shine of elite American soccer soon faded.

The ASL and USFA never got on the same page, especially when it came to the National Challenge Cup. By 1928 ASL officials opted to boycott the Cup, but when three teams (Bethlehem, Newark and New York Giants) opted in and the ASL suspended them, things began to fall apart.

First FIFA ( which was already angry at the ASL for poaching top European players) and USFA declared the circuit an “outlaw league,” and later the Eastern Professional Soccer League was formed by the USFA to dilute the ASL.

By 1933 the original ASL was out of business, and soccer in the United States had become an afterthought.

A century later, U.S. Soccer and MLS have a cozy relationship (perhaps a bit too cozy for those of us who want the USL to challenge MLS). And the U.S. Open Cup? Sixteen Major League Soccer teams gain entry, entering in the Round of 32.

Cahill’s dream of “soccer football” becoming the new national pastime didn’t happen. But 100 years after the ASL and USFA joined forces, the game has made an indelible mark on the domestic sports landscape.