Soccer and Ethnic Diversity

Growth of Soccer in the United States

The United States Soccer Federation, founded in 1913, organized American soccer on the [Page 1971]national level for the first time, superceding earlier regional organizations. Soccer at the time remained popular primarily in the northeast, but professional soccer soon expanded to the midwest. Still primarily white, the game attracted players and fans from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, including German, Finnish, and Swedish Americans in the midwest. The growth of early professional soccer was stifled by the Great Depression, but even as the sport declined at the national level, it became increasingly popular in New York City, midwestern cities such as St. Louis, and ethnic enclaves in New England, such as among the Portuguese and Brazilians of the coast and the Quebecois of the mill towns. The perception of soccer as an ethnic sport, especially (in most parts of the country) for central Europeans and Italians, persisted until the 1970s.

In 1923, the German American Soccer League was formed by five semiprofessional soccer teams in the New York/New Jersey area: S.C. New York, Wiener Sports Club, D.S.C. Brooklyn, Hoboken FC 1912, and Newark SC. The teams were primarily made up of German Americans and other European immigrants, and the league soon expanded to include other teams, a junior division, and several lower divisions. In 1927, it was renamed the German American Football Association (GAFA). During and after World War II, GAFA prospered as an influx of central and eastern Europeans feeing first the war and later the eastern European communist regimes filled both the stadiums and the player rosters.

GAFA team names continued to reflect the ethnic origins of their players, including the German-Hungarian SC, New York Hungaria, the Brooklyn Italians, and Greek American AA, in addition to the founding teams. When the North American Soccer League (NASL) formed in 1968, GAFA was invited to let one of its teams join. The eventual decision was for the GAFA All Star team to join as the New York Cosmopolitans (or Cosmos for short), a name meant to imply something grander than the New York Metropolitans baseball franchise. The Cosmos became a NASL team in 1971.

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