Eighty-five years ago, Bert Patenaude scored all three goals in USA’s 3-0 win over Paraguay – but it wasn’t until 2006 that he was recognised by Fifa

Eighty-five years ago last week, a 20-year-old American stepped off the field in Uruguay’s Estadio Parque Central stadium, Montevideo, having scored what he thought was the first-ever World Cup hat-trick. His teammates agreed. His manager agreed. Even the local media – who could have been forgiven for struggling to identify goalscorers because of the language barrier, lack of numbers on teams’ kits, or inexistence of television replays – agreed.

But Bert Patenaude, who today features on Fifa records as the scorer of the World Cup’s first-ever hat-trick against Paraguay, on July 17, 1930, would never see his achievement officially recognized. Until his death, in 1974, and for decades after, Patenaude was credited with scoring in the 10th minute, the 50th minute – but not the 15th.

***

Patenaude was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, on November 4, 1909, and, according to reports from the time and his family, was as hard-working on the soccer field as the industrial city in which he grew up. Playing as a forward, the French-Canadian Patenaude was a prolific marksman: in the original American Soccer League, he would score 114 goals in 158 games, between 1928 and 1931. During his club career, Patenaude would have stints at Philadelphia Field Club, Newark Americans, St Louis Central Breweries, and Philadelphia Passon. But it was his hometown team, the Fall River Marksmen, that he would enjoy the most success.

Having helped The Marksmen to the US Open Cup, in 1930 – one of three Patenaude would go on to win – the swift forward was selected as part of the United States’ 16-man team to travel to that summer’s inaugural World Cup, in Uruguay. (Archie Stark, believed to be the United States’ best center-forward at the time, opted not to go. In an era of no substitutes, some say this paved the way for Patenaude, who may not have gone otherwise.) After an 18-day voyage, Patenaude and his teammates would arrive in Montevideo on July 1; their first game in the 13-nation tournament would come against Belgium, 12 days later.

At the time, the United States national team was inspirited by the ASL, with some players declared to have skills on a par with those playing playing in the likes of Britain and Europe. With many of Europe’s elite teams not willing to travel to South America – England, Italy and Hungary did not participate, for example – the United States had favourable odds of progressing, despite a lack of interest back home.

It is believed that no American journalists were present when the United States defeated Belgium, 3-0, in its opening game; Patenaude, the youngest player on the team, aged 20, scored once. The youngster from Fall River would then go two better four days later, when, in front of a crowd of more than 18,000, he scored all three goals in the United States’ 3-0 win over the 1929 Copa America champions, Paraguay.

“He does seem to have been a streak scorer, one who got goals in bunches,” Roger Allaway, a National Soccer Hall of Fame historian, told the Guardian, pointing at the many four and five-goal hauls Patenaude scored in matches, “so the World Cup hat trick doesn’t seem all that surprising.”

That win saw the United State progress to the semifinals, where they would eventually eventually lose, 6-1, to Argentina.

Despite returning home to a country whose media had barely embraced the tournament (some acknowledged the three-month-long trip as a tour rather than the World Championships), Patenaude had his own story to tell: he had scored the first-ever World Cup hat-trick – two days before the tournament’s top scorer, Argentina’s Guillermo Stabile, had netted three in a group stage match, against Mexico.

But despite what Patenaude knew – and what USSF records and its coach’s report showed – official records would not agree. Fifa’s official match report would credit the second goal to Tom Florie, the United States captain, while Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation listed the goal as an own goal by Paraguay. According to those who knew him, Patenaude didn’t seem to mind.

“He probably would have just said, “Hey, I know I did it. But I’m not going to make a mountain out of a molehill,’” Patenaude’s son, Bert Patenaude Jr, said.

After his playing career was over, Patenaude held down a variety of different jobs, such painting and hanging wallpaper. Up until the day he died - on his birthday, on November 4, 1974, aged 65 - he did not actively push for Fifa records to be altered. His grandson, Bert Patenaude III, told the Guardian how he remembers Patenaude’s teammates talking about the hat-trick at his grandfather’s wake is if it were fact. Patenaude Jr (and most likely Patenaude’s teammates) knew the record books said otherwise.

***

Things would change, however, when, in the early 1990s, a chance conversation was struck up between one of Patenaude’s teammates, Arnie Oliver, a reserve player in 1930 World Cup squad, and Colin Jose, a North American Soccer historian. Jose, a collector of World Cup annuals, knew that FIFA had credited Patenaude with two goals in the Paraguay match. Oliver, who he met at a National Soccer Hall of Fame ceremony, told him otherwise.

“Later at the Hall, I also saw a recorded interview of Oliver along with Jim Brown, who played in 1930, and they were also talking about Patenaude’s three goals,” Jose said. “I didn’t give it another thought until [some time after chatting with Oliver] I found the official report on 1930 by the US manager, Wilfrid Cummings, who recorded that Patenaude hit the net three times against Paraguay. I began to wonder how I might find out if this was correct.”



Having spoken to Patenaude’s teammate, seen the interview, and read through Cummings’ match report, Jose began to look for further evidence of the hat-trick. He would visit the University of Massachusetts, which keeps microfilms of Latin American newspapers, where he would search for domestic match reports from the time.

Jose found a report in O Estádio de São Paulo, dated July 19, 1930, which stated that a Patenaude or Petenande had scored all of the goals in the Paraguay match. He would then discover a page from La Prensa, a Buenos Aires publication, which provided diagrams of the three goals – all accredited to Patenaude. (A copy was sent to the Guardian, which shows the controversial second goal being assisted by Florie from the left, before Patenaude scored inside the box.)

With the South American findings, as well the likes of testimonies by teammates, Cummings’ report, and USSF records (the 1994 USSF Media Guide recognized all three of Patenaude’s goals), Jose decided to approach Fifa. He would send off his findings on April 12, 1995, and received a letter of acknowledgement from soccer’s governing body a little over a month later. It stated that though the goal was credited as either an own goal or to Florie, Fifa would commission an “external specialist” to look into the matter.

“When they said, ‘We will have our experts look into it,” I was thinking to myself, ‘Yeah, sure you will,’” Jose said. “But they did.”

Yet despite being pessimistic about Fifa’s investigation, Jose would eventually receive the news he was hoping for: confirmation that Patenaude had – officially – been credited with the hat-trick.

Although the matter was resolved, just how and when the change in Fifa’s record books came about is still a little up-in-the-air. Jose said he was never directly informed by FIFA that the goal was changed, and that he believes he found out while reading a copy of the organization’s official magazine at a later date, prior to 2000. In the magazine, he said, there was a “short announcement,” which stated that Patenaude’s hat-trick had been acknowledged.

“I didn’t get too excited,” he said. “I thought, ‘Oh, well, I’m glad that’s settled.’”

But, for the majority of the soccer world, Patenaude’s achievements would not be cast into the limelight until 2006, when Fifa would make an announcement. (Some individuals spoken to for this piece suggested that, perhaps, soccer in the US was not as popular when the announcement Jose claims was made, and that a rejuvenation of the sport led to the topic being discussed again, in 2006. At press time, Fifa had not responded to a request to clear up the matter.)

The announcement read that “evidence from various historians and football fans, as well as lengthy research and confirmation from the US Soccer Federation” had helped in the decision-making process.

One individual who read a version of this announcement, on the New York Times’ website, was Bert Patenaude III, who, 32 years earlier, had heard the stories of his grandfather’s (then unofficial) hat-trick during a wake. He said that he had been aware of Fifa’s investigation, but not of the work of Colin Jose. He called his father.

“When I first called him, his first words were, ‘You’re kidding … you’re kidding,” he said. “In the family, this was a cold case. You couldn’t go back through and talk to people or go through videos like you would do today. To me, I thought the hat-trick had been lost forever.”