Review of Soccer in a Football World

To many Americans, even hard-core soccer fans, knowledge of this country’s soccer history is decidedly limited. Not that it has been entirely their fault: a comprehensive history of American soccer has never existed. That is, until David Wangerin’s authoritative, engaging, and enlightening book Soccer in a Football World.

Telling the history of American soccer is no simple task. As Wangerin points out, record-keeping was not a strong suit of soccer officials throughout the years. For a long time, a record of all international matches the national team had played did not even exist. Nor did details of many American professional soccer leagues that came and went throughout the twentieth century.The light Wangerin sheds on these leagues is the highlight of his book. He seeks to correct, for example, the lack of information about the American Soccer League (ASL) of the early twentieth century. The league was quite successful and, Wangerin writes, “by the middle of the [1920s] the fledgling [ASL] had become popular and powerful enough to deprive European teams of genuine talent and produce a standard of play which many claim was among the highest in the world at the time” (45).

The ASL achieved its success in large part in a distinctly American way: money. The European talent brought across the Atlantic was tempted by higher salaries at a time when pay for footballers in England was capped at a meager 8 pounds a week. Though British and other teams complained about their players being poached, the practice led to an American league of considerable quality.

Many ASL stars, however, had grown up in the United States. Archie Stark, for example, scored 67 goals in 44 matches during his debut season with the Bethlehem (Pennsylvania) Steel team (he later rejected a move to Newcastle and chose instead to open a car repair garage). Later, Billy Gonsalves would show his quality and impress visiting European players, who told a reporter that the American could be a star in any team in the world (92).

Archie Stark (L) and Billy Gonsalves (photos: National Soccer Hall of Fame)

The ASL existed at a time when the professional sporting scene was just beginning to be defined. Before American football, baseball, and basketball became dominant, Wangerin writes that “some have even argued that … soccer was the more viable prospect.”

Just as money brought hope to the ASL, so too did it bring about the league’s demise. Most ASL owners decided to pull their teams out of the Challenge Cup (America’s equivalent to the FA Cup, known now as the Open Cup), claiming the travel was hurting them financially. When the United States Football Association (today’s USSF) revoked the league’s membership, the so-called soccer war was on.

The dispute was eventually resolved, but the resolution came right before the Great Depression. At a time when money was scarce, few people were willing to pay for luxuries such as attending soccer matches. The ASL could not overcome this considerable obstacle, and went out of existence.

This pattern of boom and bust would repeat itself with the NASL. At one point in the 1970s soccer in America seemed on the edge of finding a permanent place. Top players such as Franz Beckenbauer, Giorgio Chignalia, Johann Cruyff, George Best, and of course Pelé had all come to the US (even if they were a bit past their primes) and attendance at NASL matches were high. Nearly 80,000 saw a Cosmos match at Giants Stadium in 1977.

Pelé plays for the Cosmos before a packed Giants Stadium (photo: Entertainment Weekly)

Reaching such heights proved easier than staying there. The NASL had not built the foundation necessary to maintain its success. Few teams, even the Cosmos, were making money and owners, though often possessing an evangelical zeal for soccer, also wanted to make a profit. When future hopes of moving into the black never materialized, support for the league fell away. By 1985 the NASL was dead.Both the NASL and the ASL suffered, Wangerin writes, because of the ineptitude of those in charge. Irrational exuberance, to use Alan Greenspan’s phrase, seems to have taken over in the minds of Phil Woosnam, who brought the NASL to prominence, just as it had with the ASL’s head honcho Thomas Cahill. Initial success led Cahill to envision huge crowds and huge profits that never materialized. Woosnam’s boast that the NASL would match NFL and that soccer would overtake American football in popularity (181) proved disastrously incorrect when his league collapsed completely.

The administrators of the national federation (today known as USSF, though previously known by a variety of acronyms) have often been as inept as those in charge of professional leagues. For a long time, the federation stuck with the European practice of playing soccer in the winter, despite the fact that American weather was much less hospitable. Wangerin also points out that the national team received little support until the past 25 years or so, making its current relative success even more astonishing.

The US National Team takes on Colombia at the 1994 World Cup (photo: ESPN)

The American sporting landscape is most definitely unique, complete with several major professional sports and a public whose attitudes seem to differ from many around the world. Officials have often made concessions to these different attitudes in claiming that Americanizing the game is the only way for soccer to succeed. The NASL’s tie-breaking shootout, modifications in the offside law, and indoor soccer are all examples of such changes. These modifications have been designed to reach casual American sports fans, but winning them over to soccer has proven difficult.It is with this realization in mind that MLS has removed some of these Americanizations from its game. MLS has also learned from past over-exuberance and taken a much slower and steadier approach.

The last few chapters of David Wangerin’s book are like looking through a family picture album: all of these people you’ve forgotten (Rick Davis, anyone?), but that come back so quickly when reminded of them. The 1994 World Cup, the rise of MLS, the 1999 Women’s World Cup; it’s incredible to think that these all happened long enough ago to be put into a history book. Wangerin writes entire chapters without breaks, which is tiresome in the early chapters when the content is unfamiliar, but propels the reader through the most recent, and more familiar, years.

Soccer in a Football World was published before David Beckham signed with MLS. This monumental event, however, shows how important David Wangerin’s book is. At a time when platitudes are spoken about the importance of Beckham’s arrival, it is worth remembering that American soccer itself has a long and proud history.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 21st, 2007 at 10:55 am and is filed under History, North America, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.