Pre-Modern Indoor Soccer

It is common knowledge that indoor soccer was a creation of the seventies and eighties. The sport was the inevitable result of the U.S. soccer fan’s need for a faster-paced, higher-scoring version of the game. When the old NASL self-destructed, indoor soccer was there to take its place as the only form of the game that Americans would find palatable.

But, that anecdotal version of the sport is woefully near-sighted. The history of indoor soccer stretches back into, at least, the early part of the 20th century. Other than cup ties, the winter months are usually a slow time on the soccer calendar. That was especially the case in the northeast during the early years of the game due. Inclement weather often made play impossible on snowbound or icy pitches. Even back then, clubs and owners looked for ways to fill open dates and indoor soccer was one of the experiments.

A Boston Globe article from December 30, 1909 notes that Amos Alonzo Stagg, at the time coach at the University of Chicago, planned to try indoor soccer. The notion was that professors and students could try out the relatively new sport indoors during the winter months.[“Stagg to Try Indoor Soccer”, The Boston Globe, Dec 30, 1909, page 7]

On May 1, 1926, an indoor soccer doubleheader was held by the Empire State Football League in Manhattan. The first match was between picked teams from the Empire State and German-American leagues. The second match was between Vasco F.C. of the International League and Galicia F.C. of Spanish Leagues. A reported crowd of 1,000 was on hand to watch Vasco defeat Galicia 3-1.

A photo of St. Louis Arena in 1929. (image courtesy of St Louis Post-Dispatch)

The first indoor night soccer game staged in St. Louis was held at the St. Louis Arena in late December of 1929. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch noted that it was the first time an attempt was made to play indoor soccer with 11 players on each side. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle later opined that, while there was plenty of action, the small size of the field led to a “mob scene”. The article notes that the indoor game could not sold the cold weather problem because there were no fields of standard size in the U.S. to play pro and cup soccer matches. It also states that Cleveland had held an indoor soccer tournament “with some success” but that the game was played seven-a-side. A final quote is prescient: “But that is a strictly American product, for the Old Country boys would turn up their noses at anything so radical as seven-man soccer.” [“Indoor Team Is Soccer Problem”, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Dec 29, 1932, page 2C]

On March 31, 1932, two American Soccer League clubs, Boston S.C. and Pawtucket Rangers, played an six-a-side match at the Rhode Island Auditorium in Providence. At the time, both clubs were already out of the National Challenge Cup. And, with only four teams in the league due to the withdrawal of three New York-area clubs, the ASL itself was at the tail end of a shortened six-game spring schedule. The two New England clubs attempted to shore up their schedules, and bottom lines, by taking the game indoors.

The exhibition had three 15-minutes periods with no corner kicks and unlimited substitutions. Boston took the match 6-5 with inside forward, Johnny Ballantyne, scoring a hat trick. The Boston Globe noted that the game was the first ever indoor match staged in Rhode Island.

The endeavor was successful enough for Pawtucket to hold another six-a-side indoor match. On April 20, a few days after then end of the ASL spring season, the Rangers hosted the New Bedford Whalers at Rhode Island Auditorium. After three 20-minute periods, Pawtucket prevailed 11-10 over New Bedford. Robella scored six goals for the losing side.

In the late 1930s, indoor soccer was popular enough in New York that the State Football Association began sanctioning a six-a-side indoor tournament during the winter months. Following the association’s lead, other metro leagues put on their own indoor soccer tournaments. In January 1939, 40 teams took part in the annual New York State Football Association’s six-a-side indoor championships held at the Second Naval Battalion Armory.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle (February 11, 1941)

On February 10, 1941, indoor soccer made its debut in Madison Square Garden when the four New York clubs of the American Soccer League played a tournament. The first two games were played with 20-minute halves. The winners of the opening bouts played in the final that evening. That game had 15-minute halves.

In the first matches, Brooklyn Hispano defeated the New York Americans 3-1 and Brookhattan beat Brooklyn’s St. Mary’s Celtic 2-0. In the final, Brookhattan and Hispano battled to a 1-1 draw. Nearing midnight, a five-minute overtime was unable to break the tie.

The 10,000 fans in attendance were presented with a helping of soccer combined with hockey when the Brookhattan and Celtic match broke out to a scrum. Brookhattan’s goalkeeper, Johnny Bryndza, got the worst of it coming out of the tussle with a swollen eye and needing four stitches before he could resume the match.

The biggest culprit wasn’t the players but the playing surface. The matches were literally played on the terrazzo concrete surface of the Garden’s floor. Players were constantly slipping, sliding and falling. Fergus Hunter, the Celtics goalkeeper, broke a finger sliding for a ball and needed hospitalization for that and other arm injuries. Brookhattan’s center forward, Rudie Kunter, limped off after a bad kick to the leg and was out of the lineup for weeks. More seriously, Mike Briscoe, Brookhattan’s left halfback, needed to spend the night in hospital due to concussion sustained during a scrum.

These games were a real success and a double-header between ASL clubs was held the evening of May 6 at Madison Square Garden. Brooklyn Hispano took on St. Mary’s Celtic which was followed by the ASL champions, Scots-Americans of Kearny, N.J., meeting an all-star team made up of the New York Americans and Brookhattan clubs.

The clubs learned their lesson from the winter exhibition and installed a rolled dirt surface over the Garden’s hard flooring. In addition, padded walls were added for further protection. Competitive rule changes were also made. The penalty area and offsides were removed and unlimited substitutions were allowed.

Celtic defeated Hispano 4-1 in a game marred by a three-minute fight. In the second match, the Brookhattan-New York Americans aggregation defeated the Scots-Americans 3-2. Around 9,000 were in attendance to watch the festivities.

While smaller indoor soccer tournaments continued, big-time indoor soccer never took hold in the mid-twentieth century. But it wasn’t lack of interest that caused the downfall. Experiments to come up with a coating for the Madison Square Garden flooring were unsuccessful. And, plans were indefinitely put on hold because rubber matting was unobtainable due to war-time rationing. Without an answer, American Soccer League clubs were not willing to play on the hard surface because of the risk of injury.

The popularity of the indoor game wasn’t limited to New York. In spring of 1950, the amateur National Soccer League of Chicago held a 13-week indoor soccer season between the six top Chicago clubs. Three games were played each Sunday afternoon and were televised on channel 4 by WBKB, the local CBS affiliate.

While other amateur leagues held indoor tournaments or leagues, the NSL’s competition was the most successful indoor soccer league at that point in the history of the game and regularly drew crowds in the 1,000 to 2,000 range. After the first couple of years, the number of clubs grew to over a dozen and the league was split into two divisions with promotion and relegation between them. Games continued to be broadcast Sundays on WGN-TV. The NSL’s indoor league lasted at least through the mid-1960s.

It wasn’t until March 1971 that the old NASL got into the indoor soccer game when they held the “1971 Hoc-Soc Tournament” at the St. Louis Arena. Four clubs took part: Dallas Tornado, Rochester Lancers, St. Louis Stars, and Washington Darts. The fifth active club at that time, the Atlanta Chiefs, did not join. The league called their variant of indoor soccer “hoc-soc” due to the combination of hockey and soccer rules. The arena’s NHL hockey rink, including surrounding dasher boards, were the dimensions and the surface was covered in AstroTurf surface. With 5,060 in attendance, Dallas defeated Rochester in the final 3-0 with the St. Louis Stars taking the third place game 2-0 over Washington.

A few years later, in February 1974, the Soviet Red Army of Moscow club took part in three exhibition games with NASL clubs: a NASL All-Star team; the St. Louis Stars; and the then-champion Philadelphia Atoms. While the Red Army clubs crushed their opponents, the interest in the game was high with crowds close to 12,000 for each games.

These matches against the Red Army team are commonly seen as the stimulus for the modern age of indoor soccer. The next year the NASL launched the first league-wide indoor soccer tournament and held three more smaller tournaments over the next four years. It was then in the 1979-80 offseason that both the NASL and the newly-formed Major Indoor Soccer League began holding full indoor soccer seasons.

While received wisdom might tell us that indoor soccer in the US began with those two eighties leagues, a deeper understanding shows that the sport stretches back well over a century. Those modern leagues didn’t arrive out of the ether but were the next evolution of a long-standing game.

- Dan Creel

The Importance of Memory

You know what scares me? Spiders, sharks, snakes, and bears, obviously. But more from an existential angst angle - being forgotten. Regardless of your belief about what happens when you die, we can look around this world and see what death will bring for all of us. At first, your family and friends will mourn your passing and feel the absence you have left, but over time you will fade from their thoughts. Soon, you will be a name on a family tree, grandchildren will scratch their head when they spot you in pictures, not sure who you are. Eventually, those pictures will fade, of course. And in 100 years, you will be gone. Very few of us make a mark large enough to outlive the darkening that comes with passing time.

And this is not to say that this process is bad. It is what it is.

But that thought, of eventually being nothing more than a lost memory, terrifies me. In my own life, I have see this process. I had a younger brother, David. He was my best friend throughout my early life, particularly during my teens. I did nothing that David was not a part of. Then, when I was 21, in college, my brother, 19, died suddenly. It was a gut-wrenching experience. But after the shock of his exit, a numbing occurred - life had to go on. Classes and girlfriends, work and friends, each item took a bit of focus and blurred the absence of my brother. Now, some 20 years later, I often say that he is as dead as George Washington - meaning that he is a name and a face, but not much more than that. The years have layered memories that obscure his passing. It was inevitable.

Every person reading this article has gone through this experience or will someday. People die. Other people live.

I’ve written before about the Fall River Marksmen and the old American Soccer League several times, but, for those unfamiliar, here’s the elevator pitch. The ASL was the dominant soccer league in the northeast United States from 1921 to the early 30’s. Clubs like Bethlehem Steel and Fall River dominated the league and the National Challenge Cup (eventually renamed the US Open Cup). The best players in the country played in this league. It outdrew baseball teams at the time. And then, it all ended.

In preparation for this column, I’ve been researching a player from that era. While I am not going to be talking too much about that process (there will be an article eventually), I do want to scrape the surface to make a point. Because Fall River Marksmen is such an interesting story to me, I decided to pick a player to research. As I dug into this player’s life, I realized how little is known about these players. They came and went from the soccer world. Like all professional players, they eventually retired and went on to live their lives, had families, got day jobs - they moved on.

And the country moved on as well. Other sports began to dominate the conversation. The rise of the NFL, MLB, and the NBA relegated soccer to a marginalized space. Sure, people played the sport but it no longer dominated headlines. The names of players from the ASL era were almost completely forgotten. And sadly, USSF seems completely unconcerned about preserving this history. MLS has become the dominate brand of the sport and the only focus of those in power. Leagues that came before are almost entirely ignored, as if soccer began in this country in the mid 90s. In fact, American soccer might be the only major sport that refuses to celebrate its history in any meaningful way.

This indifference has meant that memorabilia, memories, the players are almost all gone. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to be the dominant player of a generation and then to be forgotten for the rest of your life. We see athletes struggle with adjusting to regular life all the time, but this group of players has been almost entirely erased from soccer consciousness. The old black and white photos cry out for attention, but for many time has erased any memory of the players beyond box scores.

I have been known to question the methods and style of Pro/Rel advocates online, but that group should be celebrated for its focus on the rich soccer history of this country. Focusing on that history is important, even vital, for the long-term success and sustainability of the game in this country. Pretending that MLS is something without precedent ignores the lessons that could be learned from the leagues that came before. The success of the NASL in the late 60s and early 70s dwarfs the crowds that MLS regularly draws now, even 25 years since founding. Go back and watch the videos of the Cosmos from that era, you see a league that captured the imagination of the country. This should be celebrated, not ignored.  And, more importantly, lessons should be drawn to replicate that success.

So this column is a chance to fight the dust of age. If you’re a fan of soccer in this country, it’s time to become a historian as well. It’s time to celebrate the clubs of the past because they contributed to what we have today. We’ll be doing that here at Protagonist (just wait till you see some of these stories!), but it’s time to for the entire American soccer community to begin preserving the past. If the Federation won’t, then we will. We will not forget.

-Dan Vaughn