Yankee Stadium's Long, Strange Soccer History
April 22, 2014, 1:42 p.m.
NYC FC's arrangement isn't so weird: Yankee Stadium has a long history of soccer.
From last year's Chelsea vs. PSG friendly.
Yesterday's news of NYC FC making Yankee Stadium their home for the forseeable future may have come as a surprise to some, but perhaps it shouldn't. The original Yankee Stadium was a regular host to big soccer matches throughout its history.
Just eight years after opening its doors, Yankee Stadium hosted its first soccer match in 1931, with the touring Glasgow Celtics earning a 4-1 victory over the New York Yankees. Yes, the American Soccer League also had a team also called the Yankees, who played for all of one year before relocating to New Bedford. The match, played in front of a crowd of 10,000, was not much of a contest, according to the match report in the Gazette:
There was not the slightest shadow of doubt which was the better team today for right from the opening whistle the Celtics were on top and the margin would have been far greater if the goal posts and crossbar had not been in the way of several pile-driving shots.
In 1953, the US National Team played its only international match, a heated rematch of the 1950 World Cup stunner with England, at Yankee Stadium. David Litterer's American Soccer History Archives tells the story:
As usual, the incompetence of the game's organization represented another blown opportunity to publicize soccer in the United States. The National team included five World Cup '50 vets, but once again the team was put together at the last minute, with no opportunity for practice. Some of the New York-based players met for the first time at the locker room before the game.
The match was postponed by one day because of a light rain the night before. The groundskeeper ruled that there was too much danger of damage to the field. This despite the fact that a Giants-Cubs doubleheader took place as scheduled at the Polo Grounds right across the river. The English, who would have played in anything less than a hurricane were astounded at the low priority soccer received in the States.
The players took to the field before 7,271 fans, the fewest ever to witness an English team international. On the US side, the players were accompanied by a string of USSF officials, but were not accompanied by a potentially important person—a coach. The hapless Americans did the best they could, holding off the English until the final minutes of the first half. They scored again twice in the early second half, and then the US rallied with three. England finally scored two more to put the game away 6-3.
Fifteen years later, the Yankees would find themselves butting heads with a soccer tenant (sound familiar?). A 1968 Times article noted then that the Yankees exercised an option in their lease to block out the New York Generals for one match because of the condition of the field. And even when the field was functioning, width was a concern (sound familiar?):
But in last Sunday's opening game, the width was contracted to 50 yards. The ball continually went over the sidelines and hampered the Generals, who tried to play an offensive game against the defense-minded Toronto Falcons. The game was scoreless.
Later in 1968, a larger match would take the stage, with Santos and Benfica coming together for a friendly in front of 36,904. With Pele playing on Santos (nearly a decade before he joined the New York Cosmos), and Eusebio playing for Benfica, the game went to a memorable 3-3 draw that soccer writer Jack Bell described as "a glorious, live introduction to international soccer".
Speaking of the Cosmos, Pele's arrival forced them to move away from Downing Stadium to deal with additional capacity. Where did they spend 1976, before they finally settled at Giants Stadium? Yankee Stadium, naturally.
The new House That Jeter Built wouldn't get in on hosting soccer matches until 2012, when Chelsea and Paris Saint Germain met in a friendly.
So while the conditions may not be ideal for NYC FC (who reportedly booked 1,100 season ticket deposits in the first 24 hours), they can at least know they weren't the first NYC team to put soccer in a baseball stadium in the Bronx.
