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When Pele signed with the New York Cosmos in 1975, some may have thought that, like other European and South America soccer stars playing or living in the United States, he had escaped to a place where no one would know him and he would no longer have to worry …
The United States’ famous victory over England in the 1950 World Cup might not have been possible if it weren’t for the efforts of Peter Matevich. Who? Nobody by that name played that day in Belo Horizonte. In fact, there was no Peter Matevich on the United States roster at …
When the New York Cosmos signed Pele in 1975, it was the finish of a pursuit that had been going on for more than four years. This was no overnight inspiration. It was a campaign waged carefully and determinedly by Cosmos general manager Clive Toye. Three factors seem to have …
The cup-hoisting Bill McPherson
Until just five years ago, Bill McPherson was the all-time leader in games played in first-division American soccer, with the 370 games that he played in the original American Soccer League of the 1920s. In the 2008 MLS season, Steve Ralston passed him. Since then, McPherson has dropped to fifth …
A lot of what I’ve written about the U.S. men’s national team in this series of posts on historical matters has had to do with high points, like events in 1991 and 1995. It’s time to give a little attention to low points. The United States had a 40-year drought …
Among the unexpected things to be found in the Spalding soccer guides from the early part of the 20th century is a high school soccer league. That’s right. A public high school soccer league in the United States more than 100 years ago. The 1907 edition of the Spalding guide …
When Pele arrived in New York to play for the Cosmos in June 1975, his entourage (nothing like the massive crowds that some superstar athletes drag around today) included a 44-year-old man named Julio Mazzei, usually dubbed Professor Julio Mazzei because of his background as a fitness and physical-education instructor. …
—In 1921, the U.S. Soccer Federation (then called the U.S. Football Association) was thrown into turmoil when its secretary, James Scholefield, absconded with $1,200 of the organizations’ money, an amount that might not keep it supplied with paper clips for a year today. Scholefield’s predecessor, Thomas W. Cahill, was quickly …
When I started looking at soccer stories on microfilm of American newspapers years ago, I was briefly fooled into thinking that I had stumbled onto quite a startling discovery. There it was in the New York Times in 1919: England vs. Scotland in New York. Wow! But that was before …
About a year ago, I wrote about some American soccer stadiums of decades ago. Here are some more of those. The first group was concentrated in the northeast. With some of these, I’ve moved farther west, and included some that are larger than those in that first group. Thanks to …
