Good Seats Still Available

Society for American Soccer History board director Steve Holroyd returns to help us decipher the last decade of the enigmatic second incarnation of the American Soccer League (1933-1983) – the longest-lasting “professional” soccer circuit in US history prior to today’s MLS. A smaller-scaled reboot of the original ASL (1921-33) that, for a time, rivaled the fledgling sport of pro football in terms of fan interest – “ASL II” began its more-modest life playing in the urban centers of the Eastern Seaboard during the height of the Great Depression.  For much of its 50-year existence, the ASL was a relatively loose but heartily competitive amalgam of ethnically-identified clubs concentrated primarily in the immigrant-heavy neighborhoods of the industrial Northeast.  Teams came and went with regularity – and changing identities or even folding in the middle of a season was not uncommon. As the “big league” NASL gained popularity in the early 1970s, the American Soccer League began to expand its geographic footprint