Boston is widely credited with having the first organized football club un the U.S. But exactly which form of football has been a matter of some debate.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The FIFA World Cup starts tomorrow, and all the excitement around the tournament got us thinking about the origin of soccer, or football. The game was created in England. Here in the U.S., Boston is widely credited with having the first organized football club. But turns out, there’s been debate for years about which form of football the city should be recognized for, as Sam Turken of member station GBH reports.
SAM TURKEN, BYLINE: At Boston Common, America’s oldest public park, there’s a monument that looks almost like a big tombstone. Over 6 feet high, it’s easy to spot on this end of the huge park. I meet with a man who knows as much about it as anyone.
MIKE CRONIN: Yeah, so I’ve spent far too long here (laughter).
TURKEN: Mike Cronin wrote a book about the history of this monument and points to its inscription.
CRONIN: So it says, on this field, the United Football Club of Boston, the first organized football club in the United States, played against all comers from 1862 to 1865.
TURKEN: Football like soccer, right? Not quite. What if I told you right above that inscription, there used to be an engraving of an American football? Then it was changed to a soccer ball. Now it’s back to an American football.
CRONIN: This is where the whole thing gets a bit silly.
TURKEN: Cronin says, back in the 1860s, when this club, the Oneidas, started playing on Boston Common, modern-day football and soccer actually didn’t exist yet. Instead, kids across the country would make up their own games with their own rules. The Oneidas, they called their game the Boston game. It involved elements of what today is rugby, American football and, yes, soccer.
CRONIN: It’s a round ball. They talk about passing and kicking. They talk about some players dribbling, literally taking the ball around a player at their feet.
TURKEN: Over the next few decades, gridiron football and soccer become official sports with codified rules. In the U.S., soccer is mainly played in working-class communities. Football is popular more broadly. And the Oneidas, they want some credit. So in the 1920s, they commission the monument on Boston Common, carve the American football on it and call themselves the first football club. Kevin Tallec Marston co-wrote the book about the Oneidas with Cronin.
KEVIN TALLEC MARSTON: They are using this to essentially write themselves into history, but they know that they’re fudging it. They know that their ball was round and that they were not playing American football as it is in the 1920s.
TURKEN: Tallec Marston, who’s reviewed writings from the Oneidas, says they ignore their connections to soccer because it wasn’t as prestigious in the U.S. But over time, that starts to change. There’s a FIFA World Cup here in 1994, with electric moments like this.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER: Oh, a terrific goal.
TURKEN: Around then, the U.S. Soccer Hall of Fame seizes on the story of the Oneidas and is like, no, they didn’t play football. Their game was more like soccer. So the Hall of Fame led a successful effort to change the football on the monument to a soccer ball. Jack Huckel worked with the hall back then.
JACK HUCKEL: The idea was this promotion would elevate soccer, which of course would redound that people would now want to know more about the history and end up coming to the Hall of Fame.
TURKEN: Still, it was only a matter of time before American football struck back – thanks to this guy.
TOM MCGRATH: My name is Tom McGrath.
TURKEN: McGrath has no connection to football. In fact, he says he doesn’t care about any sports. And yet, about a decade ago, he got the soccer ball engraving changed back to a football.
MCGRATH: I’m a historical preservationist. The guys from Soccer Hall of Fame tried to revise history when it says football.
TURKEN: McGrath dismisses any argument that the Oneidas themselves misrepresented history. The result of all this? Today, when people at Boston Common pass by the monument, they usually associate it with American football. But after I tell Ellie Malesiada the full story of the Oneidas, she has one word to sum up the monument.
ELLIE MALESIADA: It’s misleading.
TURKEN: Soccer historians say the Oneidas and their monument is a lesson on how easily history can be manipulated. But despite all the debate, there is one thing everyone can agree on. The game they played evolved into football. Both kinds. For NPR News, I’m Sam Turken in Boston.
(SOUNDBITE OF LUPE FIASCO SONG, “KICK, PUSH”)
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