The 2007 Monthly Column
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Were the Oneidas Playing Soccer or Not?
By Roger Allaway
(This column is a version of an article that originally was written in 2001 for the American Soccer History Archives Web site.)
They were the first organized football club in the United States. But how much of a place does the Oneida Football Club deserve in the history of soccer in the United States? Specifically, were they the first soccer club or not? What was the game that they were playing on the Boston Common in the 1860s? Was it soccer, rugby or some sort of hybrid?

Different people have different answers to those questions. All of them sincerely believe that they are correct, although they can't all be. Personally, I believe that we don't know the answers, and probably never will.

Some people take the idea that the Oneidas were playing soccer and that this was the birth of the sport in the United States almost as an article of faith. I have heard one such advocate contend that if you fed various data about the Oneidas into a computer, like the computers that have been used to determine the results of hypothetical boxing matches between champions from different eras, it would unquestionably spit out the answer that the game being played was soccer.

My view is that this is not the proper way to study the past. I am not up-to-date on the methods being used by academic historians in this electronic age, but I can't believe that turning to a computer for an absolutely black-and-white answer in a gray area such as this is the way to go.

Advocates on the other side feel that there is no question that the game being played was not soccer. They make the point that the meeting in London at which the rules of association football were formulated was held in 1863, a year after the Oneidas began playing. How could the Oneidas possibly have been playing soccer in 1862, they ask, when there was no such thing yet.

The Encyclopedia of American Soccer History, published in 2001, of which I was one of the co-authors, took a middle-of-the-road viewpoint. It noted that the Oneidas have sometimes been called the first American soccer team, which they have, and that their leader, Gerrit Smith Miller, has sometimes been called the father of American soccer, which he has, but it stopped short of agreeing that those labels are correct. We were not willing, and I still am not willing, to declare whether they are correct or not.  

So why don't I simply accept the position that the Oneidas can't possibly have been playing soccer in 1862? Because I'm not convinced of the correctness of that viewpoint, either.

The reason for my doubt has to do with the fact that when the representatives of various English football clubs gathered in 1863 at the Freemasons Tavern in London for the series of meetings that resulted in the formation of the Football Association, they did not invent a game unlike what most of them had already been playing. The purpose of the meetings was to standardize the rules, to iron out differences, not to create a new game. Some differences were too great to be smoothed out. Some clubs using rules based on handling the ball rather than dribbling with the feet split off from the group, resulting in the parallel but separate developement of association football (soccer) and rugby football.

I think that there clearly exists a possibility that when the Oneidas began play in 1862, they could have been using the rules of one of the clubs that met to form the Football Association the following year. The rules formulated at the Freemasons Tavern meetings were not the first set of written football rules. They are believed to have depended heavily on the Cambridge University rules, which were first formulated in 1848 and had been repeatedly updated since. In addition, several clubs leaning toward the dribbling style had been formed, and rules for their games drawn up, in the London area and the English Midlands in the 1850s. There seem to have been several sets of rules for the dribbling and handling games in existence in England before 1863. The Oneidas were mostly students at a private Boston boarding school. They were the sons of privilege. Miller had made trips to England with his father, and some of the others may have been to England as well. One of them might have brought back one of the sets of rules being used in England, or those rules might have come to Boston by some other hand.

I don't know whether it happened this way or not, but I don't think that the possibility that it did can be discounted. The fact that nobody knows how the Oneidas came by the rules that they were using is a large part of why nobody knows for certain whether it was soccer or not. It is not impossible, however, that the rules were those of the proto-soccer being played by one of those clubs. For that reason, I cannot flatly reject the possibility that the game being played by the Oneidas was a form of soccer, even though, with the Freemason Tavern meetings year off, it would not have been called association football (and it certainly wouldn't have been called soccer, since that name was not coined until the 1880s). It also is possible that it was a form of rugby. Former Oneida players are believed to have had some influence on football at Harvard, which was the leader on the rugby side of the question when the split between soccer and rugby in football-playing American colleges took place in 1876.

My own guess is that what they were playing was a hybrid, neither fully soccer nor rugby, but it is only a guess. I don't know, and neither, I think, does anybody else. Perhaps that is a rather unsatisfying answer in this day and age, but history is not an exact science.

So, we are back to our original statement. The Oneidas were the first organized football club in the United States. Not soccer club -- at least not that we know -- but football club. But does it really matter whether it was soccer? The key to the fame of the Oneidas is not the identity of the form of football being played but the word "organized." Earlier teams had been formed for the day or for the game, but the Oneidas were organized on a continuing basis. They were not just a pickup team. This is why they are owed homage, not just by historians of American soccer, but also by those of American rugby and American football.

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America's Lesser-Known Victories
By Roger Allaway
Most American soccer fans are aware of the major landmark victories along the way toward the U.S. men's national team's current status of world respectibility, victories like those over Trinidad in 1989, England in 1950 and 1993, Colombia in 1994, Argentina in 1995, Brazil in 1998 and Portugal and Mexico in 2002. There are some lesser landmarks, however, crucial victories that fewer fans remember. Here are some of them:

United States 1, Poland 0, New Britain, Conn, Aug. 12, 1975: This was the fourth time the United States had played Poland in 1975, and the pattern semed well established. Poland had won the previous three by a total of 9-0. Further, this was a very distinguished Polish team. The Poles had been a revelation at the World Cup the year before, finishing third by beating Brazil in the consolation game after being knocked out in the semifinals by eventual champion West Germany. The American victory at Willowbrook Stadium was the first for the United States over a European team since the famous upset of England in 1950. Al Trost got the American goal in the 38th minute. He gained control of the ball in midfield, dribbled to within about 25 yards of the goal and fired a hard shot into the corner of the net that took goalkeeper Jan Tomaszewski by surprise. Equally important to the victory was the work of American goalkeeper Mike Ivanow, who kept Poland at bay throughout the game.

United States 2, Hungary 0, Budapest, Oct. 26, 1979: The Hungarians were not the superpower in 1979 that they had been 25 years before, but they were not bad.They had been in the previous year's World Cup in Argentina, although they finished last in one of the toughest first-round groups in World Cup history, against Argentina, Italy and France. Their star was Tibor Nyilasi, the successor to Ferenc Puskas and Florian Albert in the line of great Hungarian forwards. This game was at the Nep Stadium in Budapest, Hungary's national stadium, and the United States had been beaten, 3-0, by France in its previous game on this European tour. It all suggested that this was going to be a long 90 minutes for the United States. But the Ameicans had 16 days between those games, plenty of time for coach Walt Chyzowych to prepare his team to face Hungary, and they used that time well. Both American goals came on breakaways, by Louie Nanchoff in the 70th minute and 10 minutes later by Angelo DiBernardo, who took advantage of the way the Hungarians were pressing forward for an equalizer. In between the two goals, Hungary had been awarded a penalty, but the shot went over the bar.

United States 3, Canada 0, Fenton, Mo., May 30, 1987: Technically, this was not a full international, but the Olympic eligibility rules then being used permitted CONCACAF nations to field their full national teams in Olympic competition, and both the United States and Canada did for this qualifier. The United States was still in the soccer doldrums at the time of this game. The NASL had folded in March 1985 and the United States had been eliminated from the 1986 World Cup in May 1985. Canada had won the first leg of this two-game, aggregate goals series by 2-0 a week before. The winner of the series would advance to the Olympic qualifying finals against El Salvador and Trinidad, but the American chances did not look promising going into this game at the St. Louis Soccer Park, a frequent home field for the United States in the 1980s. U.S. coach Lother Osiander declined to make wholesale changes in his lineup, fielding eight of the same starting 11 that he had a week before. A pair of early goals by Paul Krumpe evened the aggregate at 2-2. In the second half, Jim Gabarra scored the goal that gave the United States the victory that started it toward Korea in 1988 and the American soccer revival of the 1990s

United States 3, Peru 0, East Rutherford, N.J., June 4, 1989: Going into this game, the United States had scored only two victories over South American nations in 17 games dating back to 1930. Peru was not one of the biggest South American powers like Brazil and Argentina, but it had reached the quarterfinals of the World Cup in 1970 and 1978 and won the Copa America in 1975. The game at the Meadowlands was the final of the Marlboro Cup tournament, and the United States was taking a break in between the two halves of the eight-game CONCACAF World Cup qualifying group. Coach Bob Gansler brought in a new goalkeeper, Tony Meola, who had played one full international a year before and now began a run in which he was the United States' first-choice goalkeeper for the next five years. Brian Bliss, Tab Ramos and Bruce Murray scored the goals on this day as the Americans gained some confidence heading into those World Cup qualifiers.

United States 2, Mexico 0, Los Angeles, July 5, 1991: The United States had never won a significant international championship before its victory in the first CONCACAF Gold Cup, of which this was a semifinal. The Americans had served as a punching bag for Mexico for decades, last beating their southern neighbor in a game that really meant something 57 years before. So it is not surprising that this result came as such a shock to the losers that Mexican coach Manuel Lapuente resigned in disgrace. The American attack didn't produce much until after some halftime adjustments, but the first goal then came quickly. In the 48th minute, as Hugo Perez floated an angled free kick into the penalty area, goalkeeper Pablo Larios came off his line but didn't get the ball. Marcelo Balboa outleaped a defender to head the ball on toward John Doyle at the far post for a shot into the open net. Peter Vermes then clinched the upset with a beauty of a goal in the 64th minute. He took a pass from Fernando Clavijo, broke free from two defenders outside the penalty area and looped a shot over the charging goalkeeper into the net.

United States 3, Ireland 1, Washington, May 30, 1992: The United States turned in one of its best performances ever in this game, the opener of a dry-run tournament being conducted by the organizers of the 1994 World Cup, against a team that had been in the World Cup quarterfinals just two years before. The result was particularly impressive because it came in a downpour that should have favored the visitors' long-ball style. The United States was fielding a full-strength team, including the long-awaited U.S. debuts of Roy Wegerle and Thomas Dooley, and it showed. Two spectacular goals in the final 20 minutes broke open a game that had been tied, 1-1. In the 70th minute, Wegerle played a long ball down the left side to Fernando Clavijo, who sent a low cross into the center that Tab Ramos turned into the corner of the net with a bullet of a volley from 20 yards out. With three minutes left, Wegerle drew the defense with him as he dribbled across the top of the penalty area, then back-heeled the ball toward Dooley in the opened space behind him. As goalie Gerry Payton dove at the ball, Dooley chipped it between defenders toward the far post and John Harkes ran onto it to blast it into the open net.

United States 1, Mexico 0, Pasadena, Calif., June 4, 1994: Coach Bora Milutinovic took a chance by sending his team up against a strong opponent in front of a hostile crowd of more than 90,000 in its final game before the start of the World Cup. It paid off in a victory that sent the American team's confidence soaring. Mexico had slightly the better of the game despite not fielding either Hugo Sanchez or Zaguinho, but it failed to capitalize. The American goal in the 52nd minute was a fine one. Thomas Dooley sent a long ball from well behind the center line to Eric Wynalda near the left corner of the Mexican penalty area. Wynalda beat one defender as he dribbled to the end line, turned the corner, nutmegged another defender and drew goalkepeer Jorge Campos toward him at the near post. He then flicked the ball out to Roy Wegerle in the center of the penalty area for an open shot inside the far post. After the goal, the United States did a good job of holding the lead the rest of the way, particularly when Paul Caligiuri headed away a threatening cross in the 88th minute.

United States 2, Germany 0, Guadalajara, Mexico, July 30, 1999: The year before this game, a 2-0 loss to Germany had set the tone for the United States' poor performance in the World Cup. It was therefore quite satisfying that the Americans were able to beat Germany twice in 1999, first in a February friendly and then in this first-round game at the Confederations Cup, and to do so using two largely different lineups. In this game, coach Bruce Arena made full use of his deep roster in the same way that he did again at the 2002 World Cup. Two days before this game, the United States had suffered a 1-0 loss to Brazil, and Arena started only two of the 11 players who had started against Brazil (and only three of the 11 who had started against Germany in February). The American goals in this game came from Ben Olsen in the 23rd minute and Joe-Max Moore in the 50th.

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Bethlehem Steel's 100th Anniversary
By Roger Allaway
The significance of Nov. 17, 2007 in American soccer depends on your perspective. To many fans, the importance will be that it is the day before the MLS championship game, when the league's awards banquet will be held and the all-star team announced. To soccer history junkies, it's the 100th anniversary of the day when the great Bethlehem Steel team played its first game, in Harrison, N.J., a few blocks from where the New York Red Bulls now are building their new stadium.

The Steelworkers from Bethlehem, Pa., were a far cry that day in 1907 from what they would become within a few years. The team that reached the U.S. Open Cup final five years in a row in the next decade lost by 11-2 on that first day. Bethlehem was playing the West Hudson team of Harrison, perhaps the best in American soccer at that time. Bethlehem blamed the heavy defeat on the fact that some of its its best players were unable to make the trip to Harrison and said it would do better when the teams met again in Bethlehem a month later, but it lost the return game by 9-0. The truth is, Bethlehem was not yet a very good team and in West Hudson it had bitten off far more than it could chew.

The Newark Evening News, which had good coverage of soccer in those days, said that West Hudson "had an easy time" in defeating Bethlehen, that the visitors "were outclassed and put up a poor exhibition" and that the West Hudson forwards "had little difficult in eluding the defense of the visiting club." Not a promising start for the team from Pennsylvania.

Ironically, the word "steel" was not yet part of the team's name, even though most of its players in 1907 were genuine steelworkers. By the time the Bethlehem Steel Corp. assumed sponsorship of the team in 1915 and the name was changed from Bethlehem Football Club to Bethlehem Steel Football Club, real steelworkers were becoming rarer in the team. Work in a steel mill is tiring and dangerous. The inside of the mill was not a place Bethlehem Steel was eager to subject its star athletes to. Dual employment, on the soccer team and in the steel company, was the rule in later years, but in less arduous parts of the company. For example, Archie Stark, Bethlehem Steel's most famous star in the 1920s, worked in the drafting departrnent.

By 1907, soccer had been played in Bethlehem for about three years. The first official game on Nov. 17, 1907 had been preceded by a series of informal, intramural scrimmages in Bethlehem and neighboring Allentown. Although he was not at the game in Harrison, Edgar Lewis had began to emerge as a leader of the team. Lewis was very unusual among soccer players in American industrial cities at the time in that he was a white-collar worker. While most of his teammates earned their living with their backs, Lewis was the head of the accounting department at Bethlehem Steel. By the time he left Bethlehem in 1930, he was the executive vice president, making nearly $400,000 a year. For more than a decade, he was the guiding force of the team, which benefitted greatly from having a leader who was high in the executive ranks of the corporation.

The place where that 1907 game was played is still quite prominent on the map. It's now a parking lot, a common fate for old-time soccer fields in the New York area. The lot, bounded by Second, Third, Burlington and Middlesex streets, mainly serves commuters on the PATH subway line running into New York. In 1907, the field was called Harrison Oval. In 1915, a ballpark for the Newark Federal League team was built on the site, and in addition to baseball, the stadium hosted one of Jack Dempsey's heavyweight title fights and a number of significant soccer games before it burned down in 1923.

Bethlehem Steel went on to win the U.S. Open Cup in 1915, 1916, 1918, 1919 and 1926, win significant league championships in 1919, 1920, 1921, 1922 and 1927, and produce 10 players who are now members of the National Soccer Hall of Fame. It ranks alongside the New York Cosmos as the two greatest dynasties American soccer has seen. Nov. 17, 1907 was not one if its finest days, but was its first.

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Steve Ralston and the All-Time Games Played Record
Steve Ralston, currently with the New England Revolution of Major League Soccer (MLS), is approaching the career record for games played in American first division soccer set by Bill McPherson during his American Soccer League (ASL) career with the Fall River Marksmen and the New Bedford Whalers. This compilation includes all league games, both regular-season and playoff.

Ralston’s 12-year MLS career includes play with the Tampa Bay Mutiny prior to coming to the Revolution in the 2001 dispersal draft. He has been remarkably steady with at least 25 games played per season. Through the 2006 season Ralston has started all but two games in which he played. Like McPherson, Ralston is more of a set-up man than a goal scorer and recently entered the MLS record books as the all-time leader in assists.

McPherson played from 1922 until 1931 in the ASL and is one of the most successful players not elected to the Hall of Fame. His playing career included three seasons (1932 – 1934) in the St. Louis Soccer League (a league which does not count for this record because it was primarily a semi-pro league) for Stix, Baer and Fuller. His career totals include 7 league championships and 7 U.S. Open Cup championships.
A right halfback, McPherson scored 56 goals in his ASL career.

The next MLS player likely to join the Top-Ten Career First Division Games Played list is goalkeeper Kevin Hartman of the Kansas City Wizards who has played in 301 regular season and playoff matches to the date of this column (8/6/07). Others who are approaching the Top-Ten include Chivas USA’s Jesse Marsch, currently at 295 games played, and D.C. United’s Jaime Moreno, currently at 289.

*Active Players

American Soccer League: Regular season and playoff games from its inception in 1921 until the first incarnation of the League collapsed in 1931.
North American Soccer League: Regular season and playoff games from its1968 inception through the 1984 Season
Major League Soccer: Regular season and playoff games since 1996.

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Americans in Italy
Alfonso Negro - The First American to Play in Serie A
When soccer fans in the United States talk about history, the name Alfonso Negro is rarely if ever mentioned.  Yet this man holds two unique records.  He was the first American born player to play in Italy’s Serie A (First Division), and the first and only American born player to play for the Italian national team.

Alfonso Negro was born in Brooklyn, New York on July 5, 1915. At what age he left the U.S., and moved to Italy with his parents, it has so far been impossible to determine.  What we do know is that at the age of 15 he was playing in Italy’s Serie C (Third Division) for a team called Angri.  Whether or not he had played in the U.S. before going to Italy has so far been impossible to establish.

What we do know is that he played for Angri from 1930 to 1933 before moving to Catanzarese in Serie B (Second Division) where he spent the 1933-34 season.  While still with Catanzarese he played for Italy’s national “B” team against Hungary on October 22, 1933 in Vercelli, a sign that here was a player with a lot of potential. Negro was an offensive midfielder called in Italy in the 1930s “ala” or better “interno sinistro.” At some time during the 1934-35 season he signed with the famous Italian club Fiorentina playing in Florence (Firenze), and played three games in Serie A during that season, while attending the university.

When not playing for Fiorentina he played for a team composed of players attending university known as GUF Firenze.  GUF standing for Gruppo Universitario Fascista, and it was from this team that he was selected to the Italian national team to play in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. In that competition the Italians played four games and won the Gold Medal, beating Austria in the final 2-1.  Negro played in just one of the four games, the semi-final against Norway on August 10, and scored one goal in the 2-1 victory that took Italy to the final, a goal that is described as being the most beautiful in the tournament.

The season following the Olympics 1936-37 Negro became a regular in the Fiorentina first team playing in 21 games and scoring two goals. He was a regular again in the 1937-38 season, but was transferred to Napoli, also in Serie A, for the 1938-39 season.  He remained with Napoli until all regular play in Italy was suspended due to World War Two. In his career in Serie A, Alfonso Negro played in 77 games and scored 7 goals.

During this time he continued to attend the University of Florence and eventually graduated as a medical doctor.  In World War Two he was a Medical Officer in the Italian Army and in addition organized sports events in for Italian soldiers in Greece.  In particular he was the manager of the Italian Army team that defeated the German Army at the Panathinaikos Stadium in Athens. Following the war he became a specialist in obstetrics and gynaecology and also became a lecturer.
He died in Florence on November 7, 1984.

(With thanks to Italian journalist Giorgio Farina)

Armando Frigo - a Tragic End
One grey September day in 1943, during the latter days of World War II, a detachment of the Italian army consisting of a major, a lieutenant, two sub-lieutenants and 40 soldiers was defending an access route in southern Croatia that was indispensable to the link up of Italian troops and Montenegrin partisans.

Near the village of Crkvice, on the border of Croatia and Montenegro, the Italian detachment was captured by the German Army and held prisoner. Following a court-martial, where they assumed all responsibility for military resistance, the Italian officers were executed in a local square and left lying there for four days in an attempt to intimidate the local populace. One of those sub-lieutenants was an American born Italian named Armando Frigo.

Born in the town of Clinton, Indiana on October 5, 1917, the third child of Giovanni Frigo and Angelica Costa, Armando, his brother Giovanni and sister Antonia, grew up in the nearby town of Blanford, much like any other American children of their time, except that when Armando was eight years old his father decided that the family should move back to Italy.

In the late spring of 1925 they settled in Vicenza, where Armando went to school and eventually attained a diploma in accountancy. Of course like any other boy growing up in Italy he also played soccer, and by
the time he had reached the age of 15, he had started to play for one of the junior teams of the local club Associazione Fascista Calcio Vicenza, then playing in Serie C, or the Third Division. Young Frigo made rapid progress and by the time that he was 19 had graduated to the first team where he starred for three years and soon attracted the attention of the big clubs in Italy's top division, Serie A.

In the summer of 1939 he was transferred to one of Italy's most famous clubs - Fiorentina and made his debut in the first team on October 15, against Bologna thus becoming the second U.S. born player to play in Serie A, after Alfonso Negro. While playing in the famous Renaissance city he entered university, where he studied economics and trade. In that first season, 1939-40, Armando Frigo made 21 appearances, in
the Serie A team, and scored five goals. One year later he played in 10 games without scoring and in 1941-42 made 15 appearances and scored two goals. Then it was off to Spezia in Serie B.

But by now World War Two had begun to turn and all normal soccer activity in Italy was suspended. At some point, after Italy changed sides, Frigo joined the Italian army and attended the school for officers in Fossombrone and then, tragically was sent to Croatia. When he and his fellow countrymen were discovered lying in the square by another Italian army detachment, among the documents found in Armando's pocket, and subsequently given to his brother, was a Fiorentina soccer player membership card.

(Much of the above information was supplied by Armando's sister Antonio Frigo Masera, who still lives in Vicenza).

Piccolo, Argentieri, and Lalas
While the success stories of Alfonso Negro and Armando Frigo are well known, there were two other American born players who played in Italy in the late 30s and early 40s, that we know almost nothing about. They didn't play in Serie A or Serie B, as Negro and Frigo did, but in Serie C, the Third Division, which in itself is usually split into two divisions.

The first was a goalkeeper named Umberto Piccolo, who played for Schio in Serie C in the 1939-40 season. According to "Il Grande Libro Degli Stranieri" published by the well known Italian magazine Guerin Sportivo, Piccolo was born in Diamondville (no state given) on September 9, 1915. Joining him in 1940 was inside forward Alfio Argentieri, who played for Cavese in Serie C in the 1940-41 season. He was born in New York on April 12, 1914. No doubt the war interrupted their careers as it did with Negro and Frigo.

Much later, in 1994, along came Alexi Lalas to join Padova.

Explore the History of our Hall of Famers

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