Saw an article yesterday about Matthew Olusunde making the bench for Manchester United, saying that if he got on the field he would be the 5th American to play for the club after Howard, Spector, Eddie McIlvenney, and James Brown. Who the hell was James Brown? Dude was born in Scotland, moved to the US as a teenager, starred in the various American pro leagues of the time and was on the 1930 World Cup team where he scored our lone goal in the 6-1 semifinal loss to Argentina. 2 years later he decides to take his shot in England--not going over there hoping to get a trial, but he actually had teams competing for his signature, to the point that United's manager of the time took a boat out to meet his ocean liner and sign him on board before any other teams had a crack at him. He excelled for United but ended up getting basically blackballed for his attempts to unionize the players and bounced around a number of other times, putting up insane goal tallies for reserve teams but rarely getting first-team games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Brown_(soccer,_born_1908) Cool piece of American soccer history I had never heard about.
There's some interesting history about Americans in England that we don't touch on very often. Folks tend to act like US soccer history started in 1994. First American to score a goal at Wembley in a cup competition wasn't John Harkes, for instance. Any guesses? I'll give a hint that won't help. He played for Colchester United.
how dare he try to unionize against innocent club owners. Thanks for posting this. I love stories like this.
He's just like Kirovski, except he short, from New Jersey and actually played for the 1st team a couple of times...
Mike Masters, who went on to form a high-scoring partnership with Gio Savarese on the Long Island Rough Riders.
And I don't care what you think. He's a Jersey kid and he played and scored for ManU. That's just a plain-old fact.
BTW, OT but Eddy Hamel of Ajax is also a great "unknown American" story for those who didn't catch it when Simon Kuper put it out a few years ago. http://ajaxusa.blogspot.com/2002/09/warm-back-of-eddy-hamel.html