SoccerBlogs

Featured image: The Bethlehem Steel FC victory float after winning their second US Open Cup,� then known as the National Challenge Cup, on May 6, 1916. (Photo: (Photo: University Archives & Special Collections Department, Lovejoy Library, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville)

Tuesday night will be the first time that the Philadelphia Union has hosted a US Open Cup match.

Philadelphia-area teams were an ever-present force in the American Cup throughout the 1910s. From 1910 through 1920, Philadelphia-area teams would appear in nine American Cup finals, winning the final six times.

1913 marked the first time the American Cup final was held in Philadelphia. And, as the Fates would have it, a Philadelphia team, Tacony FC, who had won the tournament in 1910, would be competing in the final.

When, a year after it had won the American Cup, Tacony FC traveled to St. Louis in 1911, they came back from two goals down to draw 4–4 with St. Louis champion St. Leos in what newspapers called a "blue ribbon" match to decide the "national championship." With the draw, talk of a national champion ended.

When Tacony FC traveled to St. Louis in December of 1911 in one of the first tours pitting the largely immigrant-based East Coast teams against the largely native-born teams from the West, they had lost only three games in two years. The confidence they felt on departure proved to be premature and they returned to Philadelphia with a 4–4 draw against St.

The Bethlehem Steel FC tour to St. Louis in December of 1916 for the unofficial title of "Champions of America" was not the first time a Philadelphia-area team had made a trip out West. Five years before, Tacony FC, the winners of the American Football Association's American Cup tournament in 1910 and a semifinalist in the tournament in 1911, had made the same trip in what would be the first of a series of exhibition matches between St.

Featured image: Courtesy Dan Morrison and bethlehemsteelsoccer.org

The 1913-14 season saw the launch of the National Challenge Cup, the competition now known as the US Open Cup, by the recently founded United States Football Association. While the National Challenge Cup would quickly become the singular competition for the title of Champion of the United States, the American Cup tournament had been founded in 1885 by the American Football Association, the first soccer governing body in America.

Visits to Philadelphia by English touring teams were important events in the wider popularization of soccer in the city. An exhibition game against the touring B. J. T. Bosanquet cricket team in 1901, the first international friendly to be played in Philadelphia, garnered approving coverage in the Philadelphia Inquirer and resulted in a boom of the game locally.

Featured image: Belmont Cricket Club main clubhouse, from a watercolor by Frank H. Taylor

Tours by the English teams the Pilgrims (1905, 1909) and Corinthians (1906, 1911, and 1924) attracted significant press coverage and drew large crowds when they stopped in Philadelphia. The tours resulted in increased interest in soccer and helped to boost the formation of clubs and leagues in the Philadelphia area.

Philadelphia Athletics historian Rich Westcott writes of Columbia Ball Park, "The park functioned as a major league stadium for just eight seasons starting in 1901. During that period, however, it helped to give birth to a new league, was the site of one World Series and was the ballpark in which numerous future Hall of Famers launched their careers.

Featured image: Bobby Moore, Gerry Francis and Pele before the Team America vs. England game at JFK

The news that PPL Park will be host the 2012 MLS All-Star Game means that Philadelphia will be the host of a major pro sport All-Star event for the first time since the NBA came to town in 2002.