Readers may have noticed that a recent lawsuit brought by the USL against the UPSL for breach of trademark brought many soccer commentators to bemoan the return of new “soccer wars”. Why would a beef between leagues result in such an immediate and specific response? The simple answer is that a turf battle between soccer organizations helped doom the Golden Age of U.S. soccer. And, it is not hyperbole to say that the implications of that original “soccer war” continues to resonate until today. Sadly, top-level soccer in the U.S. seems unable to break a regular cycle of internecine wars. In order to give some background, in this article of Kicking Back we present a survey-style history course on American “soccer wars”.

1924-25: An Opening Skirmish

Following the 1923-24 season, the American Soccer League was on the ascendent. The league was stable and pulling in a good deal of fans. The league’s owners decided it was time to grow the eight-team league. They added three new clubs in New England (Boston, New Bedford and Providence) and brought in Fleisher Yarn, a top-notch Philadelphia amateur club.

The added clubs meant more games and the league pushed the schedule from 28 to 44 games. League owners began negotiations with the U.S. Football Association concerning their clubs’ ability to play in the National Challenge Cup (now called the U.S. Open Cup). ASL owners claimed that the additional league games would make it difficult for the clubs to schedule National Challenge Cup games during the season. But, a more practical reason for the disagreement was that the USFA made most of its annual income from the cup by taking a relatively high percentage of the gate receipts. And, after the association took its cut, the pro clubs found it not worth the loss of money when playing in front of smaller audiences when they had to play smaller clubs in the early rounds.

A month before the league season started the ASL voted to withdraw from the NCC. The country’s other major pro league, the four-team St. Louis Soccer League, also voted to withdraw. These moves led to Bethlehem’s local newspaper, The Globe, to announce “Looks Like A Soccer War” in its August 11, 1924 edition.

The leagues hoped to hold a replacement tournament but their different schedules made the idea impractical. Instead, the ASL held a league cup in the spring with the winner, Boston S.C., playing the American Pro Soccer Championship against the winners of the St. Louis league, the Ben Millers. Boston took the three-game series two games to one.

The USFA blinked first and, at their May 1925 annual meeting, they decided to lower their percentage of the NCC gate receipts by over half. This made the competition more palatable for the pro clubs and both pro leagues re-joined the cup in the next year.

1928-29: The Soccer War

Even though a truce was called after the 1924-25 season, the ASL and USFA continued sniping at each other as each regularly threatened to sever relations with the other. In the summer of 1928, the ASL voted Nat Agar as its delegate to the USFA’s annual meeting. Agar was empowered by the league to get the USFA to agree to keep the National Challenge Cup from disrupting the ASL schedule or the league would again withdraw its clubs. Agar, manager-owner of the Brooklyn Wanderers and long-time major domo of New York soccer, was a prime mover in pushing the ASL to flex its muscles. Another such owner was Charles Stoneham who owned baseball’s New York Giants as well as the ASL’s New York Nationals. Stoneham wanted the ASL to become the preeminent U.S. soccer organization. Stoneham’s Nationals won the 1928 NCC. After that victory, he pledged that his club would never play in another USFA tournament, and he called for other major league pro baseball owners to form or acquire ASL clubs to grow the league.

Stoneham’s biggest idea was a push to have the ASL’s champions to be named the champions of the East. In addition, he recommended that a new western league of baseball-owned clubs be created, whose champions would be named champions of the West. Under this plan, the eastern and western ASL champions would meet for the national soccer championship. At this point, the NCC was the preeminent soccer competition in the US and, via that tournament, the two finalists were considered the champions of the east and west with the winner considered the national champions. Stoneham’s proposal would shake up the power structure of U.S. soccer in a major way including greatly weakening the position of the USFA.

Agar came back from the July USFA meeting without a compromise and, in mid-September 1928, two weeks into the ASL season, the league voted to withdraw from the NCC. While the league owners voted to withdraw from the cup, three clubs decided to reject the boycott. Bethlehem Steel F.C., New York Giants S.C. and Newark F.C. ignored the league edict and registered for the tournament. These clubs saw financial benefits from playing in the cup and also rejected the Stoneham plan, in part because the league he wanted to create was a closed franchise model that would cap the number of clubs allowed to take part in his proposed national championship.

On September 27, the ASL suspended the three clubs from the league and fined each $1,000 for entering the NCC. On October 2, the USFA suspended the league. The grandfather of all soccer wars had begun in earnest.

On October 8, the three former-ASL clubs and five other eastern clubs quickly formed a new professional soccer league, the Eastern Soccer League, with the sanction of the USFA. The ASL felt the effects almost immediately. Due to the suspension, the ASL was operating as an “outlaw league” outside the sanctioning of the USFA and FIFA. Any player who played in such a league could also find themselves banned from signing contracts with sanctioned leagues domestic as well as international. As such, many foreign players decided to leave their ASL clubs rather than risk such a ban.

Stoneham’s New York Nationals were the hardest hit. On October 12, ten Nationals players quit the team before a match against the Wanderers due to the USFA’s suspension of the ASL. Most of these were former SC Hakoah Vienna players who joined the league after that club’s 1926 tour of the U.S. The Nationals played an impromptu exhibition with the Wanderers but had to cancel their next two games while they signed new players. In addition, a month later, the club moved from the Polo Grounds to the much smaller Innisfail Park in the Bronx.

While most of the non-ASL clubs were semi-pro outfits, one, the Hakoah All-Stars, was a new club made up primarily of the former ASL Hakoah Vienna players. The first game of the new ESL was held on October 13 between the New York Giants and Bethlehem Steel.

The ESL included several teams from the Southern New York State Football Association. The SNYSFA saw the ESL as an encroachment on its territory and the Association’s president, Dr. G.R. Manning, resigned in protest. Nat Agar ascended to the SNYSFA’s presidency and withdrew the organization from the USFA.

The two pro leagues battled for fans during the fall. On December 23, the clubs from the ASL and the SNYSFA formed the American Soccer Association with the intention to challenge the authority of the USFA. In the spring, following the ASL regular season, the ASA held a cup for all the clubs in the ASL and the SNYSFA. As a counter, the USFA formed a new New York State Football Association and all the ESL teams entered a cup competition of the newly organized NYSFA.

Both pro leagues completed their 1928-29 seasons and moved forward with 1929-30 seasons. The ASL launched relatively early in mid-August in hopes of getting ahead of their rival. But the soccer war and the late-summer recession severely strained the finances of all clubs involved. As the soccer season began, it became glaringly obvious something needed to be done and the parties began formal negotiations.

On October 22, most of the ASL clubs were reinstated by the USFA. While the ESL continued play, the ASL suspended operations as the parties worked toward forming a new league. Two days later, in the middle of these negotiations, the “Black Thursday” stock market crash signaled the beginning of the Great Depression. “Black Monday” struck on October 29 and the Atlantic Coast Soccer League officially formed in the immediate aftermath. The first games of the merged league were played on November 9.

1932: Everyone for Themselves

The 1931 American Soccer League (the ACSL was reorganized and renamed in the summer of 1930) season was the last one that it could be recognized as a true, stable major professional league. At the end of the ASL spring 1931 season, Nat Agar’s Brooklyn Wanderers’ sat in second place behind the New York Giants. Agar protested the championship results due to the Giants having one more game scheduled than Brooklyn. The protest was disallowed. Agar hosted a friendly at Ebbets Field against Glasgow Celtic for the next weekend. The USFA suspended Agar due to some issue with this game and he was forced to sell his interests in the Wanderers.

Numerous franchise moves and foldings over a short amount ended with most of the old guard of owners out of the league by late 1932. The loss of stable finances and leadership led to a chaotic situation for professional soccer. As touched on in an earlier Kicking Back, the remaining New York contingent of ASL clubs withdrew from the league before the spring season began in an attempt to form a new, but ultimately doomed, competitor to the league.

And there were even more battles during that year. After the tumultuous spring season, the USFA began plans to take control of pro soccer in the U.S. by directly promoting and organizing regional leagues. The governing body relied on the National Challenge Cup for income but the funds received were not enough and it was looking to the pro game for new funding sources. The state associations balked at the notion of the USFA circumventing their jurisdictions with rumblings that clubs could leave the USFA and operate as independents. The ASL responded to the USFA’s plan by electing the still-suspended Nat Agar as their new president.

Rather than embark on another protracted battle, the two sides decided on peace. The USFA reinstated Agar and the ASL agreed to allow its teams to enter the NCC. A few weeks later, Agar settled with the newly-formed National Soccer League by reinstating the New York Americans and entering a second New York club into the ASL.