YA History: Looking up some first, notables, and more for posterity's sake

To assuage my own curiosity I recently dug through old files to try to figure out what some notable authoritative YA "firsts," among other things, I might be able to find, particularly from before the "modern era" of 1990/1994 and MLS.

To that end, I've started a spreadsheet that I'll keep updating as I get stuff. I consider the work pretty preliminary at this point, and VERY far from authoritative. I would love your help, corrections, additions and suggestions!

Meanwhile, to get you started:

• The "first of firsts" might be American-born Julian Sturgis, who won the FA Cup in ... 1873. That's before many of us were even born.
  
  
• American-born Billy Andrews could be the first such player to be capped by another country -- Ireland, in his case, in the aughts of the last century.
  
  
• American-born Eddy Hamel, whose sad and interesting story is widely told online, seems to be the first known Yank at Ajax and, for that matter, in the Dutch top division.
  
  
• James Brown naturalized, but he played for Manchester United after doing so, making him the first known Yank at that club.
  
  
• American-born Alfonso Negro may or may not be the first such player to play in Italy (he appears to have preceded several other guys of the same era but not by much) but it looks like he's the first to play in the top division there and, for that matter, to play for Italy.
  
  
• I'm guessing American-born Lloyd Monsen won't turn out to be the first such player to play in Germany, which he did in the early 1950s, but I haven't found anything earlier. Manfred Seissler played in a Bundesliga precursor some years later but wasn't a citizen at the time. Hungarian-born Andy Mate WAS a citizen when he played in the Bundesliga after that.
  
  
• The France info seems a bit confusing to me. Joe Gaetjens is said to have never become a citizen, and I'll let you decide how pedantic you want to be about that, but he played in the top division there after playing for the U.S. Ilija Mitic was not yet a citizen when he played in that league. After that, I'm not sure would be next -- David Regis?

• I haven't found much info at all on early Americans playing in Spain. Seems hard to believe Peter Vermes would be first.

There's more stuff. I'll be putting it here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iH3YGQiBm2fvMq6tCjqFdzBfYH_O_uLBCmTqILZUklo/edit?usp=sharing

 

Here's an interesting one that has been noted before -- American-born Dale Mulholland, who spent a season in the Soviet Union. He is generally considered the first player to do so; no idea if he's the only one.

The NYT wrote in 1990:

Dale Mulholland, a 25-year old American Soccer League player who spent last season with the Orlando Lions, said he had signed a contract to become the first American to play with Locomotiv Moscow, one of 22 professional teams in the Soviet Union. Mulholland, who played for the University of Puget Sound before turning pro, said he had spent four years prodding American and Soviet officials to make his dream come true.
​

An AP story from 1991 called him the first foreigner to play in that league and included this remarkable tale:

"Every time we go abroad on tour, the players turn into businessmen," says Mulholland, 26. "They spend all their time trading with teams to accumulate Western goods."

His favorite story is about one enterprising goalkeeper who bought three photocopiers while touring Singapore.

When he got back to Moscow, he swapped them for a small house in the country.​

From the Tampa Tribune, in 1991:

""I was fortunate because the Soviet railway minister was the minister of Lokomotiv, and he found an apartment for me on the Moscow River,'' Mulholland said.

""I got an apartment that was small by American standards but great by their standards. We had a special food shop around the corner and Lokomotiv would send a box of food home with me - orange juice, coffee, sugar, milk - all the things people couldn't get in the food stores.

""Everything you see and read about people starving in Russia is true. There is a great hunger. I couldn't tell them what I really felt sometimes.''

Mulholland and his Russian-born wife, Katya, shared a kitchen with 30 other people in that Moscow apartment.
​

His current whereabouts:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dale-mulholland-3a763a25/

 

Actually -- maybe it's not so confusing. American-born John Donoghue, who played mostly in the 1920s and 30s, seems likely to be the first American in the French top flight. He might also be the first American at Celtic.

 

Not that I've spent a lot of time looking into American players in Ukraine, but I've only recently learned about American-born Bohdan Nedilsky, who apparently played for a club there in 1991 just before the country's independence. There's a lot of interesting stuff linked from his Wiki page.

 

I've continued to work on this list. One thing I came across is the possibility that the first Black players to appear for both Switzerland and Austria had American fathers. They may also have been the first players of American descent to play in those countries' top divisions, though that's less certain.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iH3YGQiBm2fvMq6tCjqFdzBfYH_O_uLBCmTqILZUklo/edit?usp=sharing

 

This is a somewhat older piece, but it gets into some of the stories of Alfonso Negro and Armando Frigo, with which some here might not be familiar.

https://the18.com/soccer-entertainment/how-many-americans-have-played-in-serie-a-armando-frigo-story

 

Thanks for that, @keller4president.

I hadn't spent a lot of time looking into Scotland stuff, but I believe American-born (and former USMNT) GK David Brcic played in the top division for Greenock Morton in the late '70s, well before Reyna. Was he the "first" in the modern era? I dunno for sure... (Was Gil Heron a U.S. citizen? I don't know, but it seems at least possible.)

Generally, when I see a really long gap in the data, I assume it's wrong and I just haven't found the right answer yet. You may be right about Denmark, I don't have anything better in my records right now though I haven't looked into Scandinavia much at all.

I suspect there is more to the story in Germany for sure -- just seems hard to believe there wasn't more going on there post-WW2. Of course, Kostedde and Magath are still important figures. Banach's story is very sad.

 

Super interesting, and the son clearly was alive when the scenes were filmed. But "played a first-team game" could mean a lot of things, as we YAers know well. (Early season cup match? Preseason friendly? We may never know...)

 

I was surprised to find that I couldn't easily track down discussion of Aaron Biagioli, an American '65 (that's correct) who had a longish career in Germany the specifics regarding I know comparatively little, but here's some data:

??/???? – ??/???? KSG Nordheim
07/1983 – 06/1984 FV Biblis
07/1984 – 06/1986 KSG Nordheim
07/1986 – 06/1987 VfR Bürstadt
07/1987 – 06/1988 Wormatia Worms
07/1988 – 06/1990 Rot-Weiß Essen
07/1990 – 06/1992 FSV Mainz 05
07/1992 – 06/1994 VfR Mannheim
07/1994 – 06/1996 TSG Pfeddersheim
07/1996 – 06/2003 Ostova Osthofen
07/2003 – 06/2005 FSV 03 Osthofen
07/2005 Karriereende
​

That same page (link below) said he won an Oberliga goalscoring title in the 1980s. It seems he had a decent amount of appearances in the B2 but only a cup of coffee in the B1.

http://www.wormatia.de/archiv/spieler-datenbank/spieler-steckbrief/?spielerid=228

http://www.fsv05.de/spieler/biagioli.html

 

Here's what appears to be a Norwegian archival site saying a Jacob Berner was born in the U.S.:

https://www.digitalarkivet.no/census/person/pf01036392094325

That seems more authoritative than some sites that, I'm guessing, assume he was born in Norway because he moved back there while very young. In any case, Berner appears to be a guy who went by "Jokko" (Oi!) who was active in the 1920s and thereabouts and played club ball in Norway, as well as for that country, captaining them a few times, while also being a standout in hockey and bandy. (His English Wiki page seems to be wrong about his birthplace.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Berner_(footballer)

https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Berner

I have no idea whether he's the first guy with American connections to play in or for Norway but provisionally at least, it's probably OK to say that, pending better info.

https://www.fotball.no/fotballdata/person/profil/?fiksId=2604632

https://www.worldfootball.net/player_summary/jacob-berner/

 

There's also a player named Charles Louis Groth who, it seems, was born in the U.S. in 1891 and later played in and for Sweden, including, in the latter case, against the U.S. in 1916. I haven't found a ton of information confirming his birthplace.

https://eu-football.info/_player.php?id=7313

 

Finally for now, it seems that a player named Arthur Leesch, apparently born in the U.S. in the 1890s, was likely the first such player to represent Luxembourg, and perhaps also to play for a club there.

https://eu-football.info/_player.php?id=11966

He was a 1920 Olympian:

https://www.fifa.com/tournaments/mens/mensolympic/antwerp1920/teams/43958

 

I'd thought the reasonably well-researched Billy Andrews was the first American-born player to represent what is now known as Northern Ireland. It seems possible that a player named John "Jack" Lytle, who got one cap for them in 1898, might have beaten him to the punch.

https://www.national-football-teams.com/player/38346/Jack_Lytle.html

I haven't been able to find much about Lytle, thought I haven't done a ton of research, but if the facts are correct he'd be right near the top of the earliest known (to me, at least) American-born players to represent another country, as well as among the earliest known YAs generally, having played mainly in the 19th century. If you know anything about Lytle, please say so!