Relentless (eBook)

CHAPTER I

EARLY HISTORY

Soccer’s First Coaches Lay the Sport’s Foundation

A study of who did what and when in terms of establishing a foundation for the sport of soccer in the United States is revealing in that it points out that while, organizationally, the United States Football Association was entrusted by FIFA with advancing the game in this country, it had neither the resources nor the administrative capability needed to achieve that objective.

Rather, history reveals that much of the credit for sustaining soccer in the early part of the 20th Century can be laid at the feet of a rather small cadre of dedicated coaches, some foreign-born. The latter’s passion for the sport was fueled, in part, by soccer’s prominent place in their former countries. When that energy was coupled with the enthusiasm of an emerging group of American coaches, such commitment cannot be ignored in terms of its impact on the sport’s slow but steady progress through the 1920s and 1930s.

And, as will be described, the collective work of the pre-World War II soccer coaching community was limited principally to the East Coast of the United States.

The author will recount the importance of the publication Soccer Guide during this era, as it was an important conduit for annually promoting the sport as well as serving to connect its leadership. Edited by coach Douglas Stewart, the Guide offered a yearly summary of soccer activity at the intercollegiate and secondary school levels of play along with identifying each year’s mythical national intercollegiate championship team(s). Also included in the periodical was a listing of that year’s All-American team.

Also recorded will be the role coaches played spearheading the formation of leagues that enabled schools to partner with as they began to sponsor the sport. In terms of improvement of coaching education, the era under discussion offered little other than the staging of sporadic clinics whose impact was minimal in terms of their impact on improvement of individual and team play.

With a dearth of officials, it was left to coaches in their locales to identify and assist in referee development. In relation to the application of playing rules, coaches and school administrators began to adapt rules that were in sync with the educational objectives of U.S. colleges and secondary schools. It was here that modifications to restrictive FIFA substitution rules were first introduced.

It was during this era that conflicting viewpoints between individuals representing the educational institutions of the country and those whose attitudes were formed abroad were first emerged. While some coaches were associated with both groupings, in the long run, historic disagreements on a variety of soccer-related issues did not lead to the type of unified problem-solving needed to advance the sport.

With World War II approaching and while soccer progress had been steady, much still needed to be accomplished in the areas of coaching and referee development, along with identification of new ideas for the promotion and marketing of the game.

It would be up to the next generation of post-World War II coaches to address those challenges.

The Early Years of Soccer in the United States

Despite the fact that soccer historians can hark back to ancient times in terms of chronicling the start of the sport, when it comes time to chart the growth of the game in the United States, the term most associated with its progress is “spasmodic.”

Though there are references to games that somewhat resembled soccer in ancient Greece and Rome, and there is mention of medieval towns in England kicking the head of any decapitated invader from one end of a village to the other as a soccer-like activity, it wasn’t until the late 1880s that formalized soccer was taking hold in this country.

The action involved teams of Scottish, Irish, and English immigrants playing games largely among themselves and primarily in locales on the East Coast of the United States. Reportedly, in the late 1870s, more formal teams were organized in the West Hudson area of New Jersey; other similar leagues followed in New England led by Portuguese seamen in Fall River, Massachusetts. About the same time, Midwest centers of soccer interest popped up in St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati, and Cleveland. In the Far West, Denver and San Francisco were reported centers of soccer interest.

Early Organization

The first attempt to organize the game took place in Newark, New Jersey in 1884-85 when a group formed the American Football Association (AFA). In 1885, a group of teams unrelated to the AFA played organized matches in New York City’s Central Park. A year later, in New England, the Bristol County Soccer League was announced, centered in Fall River. In 1887, the New England Football League came into existence.

Various immigrant groups largely organized these aforementioned events. In St. Louis in 1890 a group of Americans were playing under the Kensington team banner. Interest was also reported in Western New York. In 1901, the formation of the Football Association of Eastern Pennsylvania was announced. Similar associations were formed in those Midwestern and Far Western cities previously referenced.

In 1904, the East Coast visit of the Pilgrims, a British amateur team, exposed various fledgling U.S. teams to a more sophisticated brand of soccer, with the invaders winning 21 of the 23 matches played. Later, similar visits by the Corinthian Football Club (1906 and 1911)) and the return visit of the Pilgrim SC in 1909 provided standards for various American teams to achieve, with the teams compiling a combined 47-6-5 record during their visits.

In 1905, a group of Eastern colleges that included Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Haverford, and Pennsylvania were playing soccer and formed the Intercollegiate Association Football League (IAFL).

USFA

After a somewhat protracted internal political battle between the American Football Association and the American Amateur Football Association (AAFA) in 1913, the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), in 1914, recognized the United States Football Association (USFA) as the governing body for the sport in the United States. USFA shortly affiliated 24 subsidiary regional organizations under its umbrella.

Dr. G. Randolph Manning and Douglas Stewart were two prominent individuals associated with the formation of USFA. Manning was a leader of the amateur group (AFAA) and hailed from New York City, and Stewart was a force in Philadelphia. When negotiations for FIFA recognition between the two aforementioned groups ensued, it was reported that Stewart’s throwing his organization’s support to Manning’s group resulted in the FIFA endorsement of the new organization.

Formed to oversee the sport in this country, USFA principally sponsored two national soccer competitions. The National Challenge Cup (open to both amateur and professional teams) was first contested in 1912-13, with teams competing for the Dewar Cup, a trophy valued at a reported $500! Later, in 1922-23, USFA introduced the National Amateur Challenge Cup.

In 1919, and following World War I, the IAFL became the Intercollegiate Football Association of America (IFAA) and was reorganized in order to accommodate the influx of new colleges that began soccer play. The principal roles assumed by the organization were rules codification and interpretation and referee training. The establishment of various leagues and promotion of the game were also items on the IFAA agenda.

ISFAA and the NSCAA

In 1925-26, and for the third time, the group changed its name to the Intercollegiate Soccer Football Association of America (ISFAA) and continued promotion of the game at the college level. Due to fiscal constraints, it merged its efforts with the National Soccer Coaches Association of America in 1996.

In the post-World War II period, as the game’s ascendency continued at the nation’s colleges, but more so at the secondary school level, the National Soccer Coaches Association of America (formed in 1941) began to play a role in the growth and promotion of the game.

The NSCAA’s stated objectives in 1941 included the following.

•Encourage the development of the sport of soccer in secondary schools, colleges, and universities.

•Develop mechanisms to better publicize the sport.

•Organize clinics to better teach the sport.

•Evaluate current teaching methods and improve them to make for better teaching of the sport.

•Seek to enroll more soccer coaches in the NSCAA to better achieve the above goals.

President John Brock of Springfield College led the NSCAA’s first slate of officers. Those included coaching legend Bill Jeffrey of Penn State, who was appointed chairman of its soccer clinics committee.

Early Cooperation

With two organizations now established with similar goals, cooperation, rather than conflict, was necessary in order for the game to progress.

To some degree, this took place as USSFA sought to select the player roster for the resumption of Olympic soccer competition at the 1948 London games.

Earlier, in 1946, and in an effort to showcase the playing ability of its collegiate players, the ISFAA organized an intercollegiate all-star game in New York City. The game...