Aug. 2 (1924)

Soccer pioneer and future U.S. Soccer Hall of Famer Tom Cahill (pictured), who spent his early life in St. Louis and profoundly influenced the growth of the sport there, strikes a major blow against the U.S. Football Association (today’s U.S. Soccer Federation). Cahill convinces one of the nation’s two major professional leagues, the American Soccer League of the eastern United States, to pull out of the National Challenge Cup (today’s Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup). The action follows the withdrawal of the professional St. Louis League from the National Challenge Cup several days earlier. The moves are the latest salvos in what will go down in U.S. soccer history as “the soccer war.” Cahill, the principal founder of the USFA in 1913 and of the American Soccer League in 1921, had overseen the growth of the ASL to the point where soccer was on the verge of becoming the nation’s second major professional sport after baseball. The ASL and the St. Louis League leave the Challenge Cup when the USFA refuses to schedule early-round Challenge Cup matches around the pros’ regular seasons. Cahill’s machinations “cut off nearly 90 percent of the USFA revenue and took 14 of the strongest clubs from the (Cup) competition,” sports editor John E. “Ed” Wray will write in the Aug. 4, 1924, edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “With no revenue and no major teams to speak of, the cup competition appears only the ruin of a once imposing structure.” On the contrary, the cup competition will survive to this day, while the ASL will be ruined. Three ASL teams will defy Cahill by entering the 1925 Cup, the USFA will suspend the ASL, and a new league sanctioned by the USFA and FIFA will form in the eastern U.S. The Depression that starts in 1929 will eventually kill the ASL in 1931. Meanwhile, pro football fills the void, ending soccer’s bid to become the nation’s major pro sport during the baseball off-season.