American Sports History
2 total works
It was the " American Menace" according to the Scottish and English newspapers of the 1920s. The best players in the Scottish leagues were being drawn to American companies that offered good jobs in return for playing on the company soccer team. The resulting squads, many of them ethnic, beat the best teams in the world at that time. This period from 1921 to 1931 were the "Golden Years of American Soccer." With the skyrocketing economic prosperity of the United States and its corollary flood of new immigrants to America's shores, came interest in soccer as a new form of sports entertainment. It grew rapidly around Northeastern industrial towns like Fall River, Massachusetts, and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. As with the popular North American Soccer League of the 1970s and 80s and its imported stars like Pele, the American Soccer League of the 1920s bid for the best soccer players in the world, creating a competitive, fertile environment for the growth of soccer. Unfortunately, few detailed records remain about these great teams and players. League records were lost after W.W. II and newspaper coverage was concentrated in smaller cities. Many of the League's heretofore unknown players possess no first name in print, and the unfortunate losers of matches and league championship games often went unreported altogether. During the later, tougher years of the Depression, many of the foreign players hunkered down in jobs or returned to their native countries. The disbanded American Soccer League was revived under the same name but very different circumstances in 1933, but never reached the same level of skill as during the 1920s. American Soccer League 1921-1931 is the result of Colin Jose's tireless determination to provide accurate history of soccer's evolution in the United States. Soccer was one of the most popular sports in the United States during the 1920s, often drawing huge crowds in relatively small towns to see the world's best players compete. Documented through thousands of newspaper clipp
The United States was one of just 13 nations taking part in the first World Cup of soccer played in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1930. The first World Cup attracted very limited interest around the world, but since that time it has grown into the world's number one sporting event. This book details the history of the World Cup from 1930 to 1990 and includes the record of the United States national soccer team in the qualifying and final rounds of the competition. It also includes a detailed record of every game played by U.S. men's and women's national teams in international competition between 1885 and July 1993, at the senior level of play. Additionally, this book contains the details of the qualifying rounds of the 1994 competition, the finals of which will be staged in the United States in June and July of this year (1994). Also featured is a never before published account of U.S. participation in the 1930 competition, written in 1931 by team manager Wilfred Cummings. In his account, Cummings claims that American Bert Patanaude was the first player to score a hat trick in a World Cup game, a claim disputed in other published histories.