Chicago Soccer History

Chicago’s soccer history is a rich one with many layers, reflecting the city’s diverse communities and a passion for the world’s game that threads back to the nineteenth century. Having grown into one of the nation’s soccer hotbeds, the city can trace its roots in the sport back to late 1800’s when British immigrants helped popularize the game by playing through their places of work, school, churches or bars.

The first organized soccer match in Chicago occurred in 1883 when Pullman Car Works and Original Wanderers faced off. Ten years later,  the world turned its eyes to the city for the Columbian Exposition of 1893, when the Chicago’s World’s Fair hosted an “association football” competition – Braidwood, a club located just outside of the city, participated.

At the turn of the century, neighborhood clubs came together to form Chicago’s Association Football League, which provided steadier competition, while also working to attract foreign clubs to the city for some of the nation’s first soccer tours. In 1909, Peter J. Peel, who would later become the president of the Illinois State Soccer Association and the United States Football Association (now U.S. Soccer Federation), donated the Peel Cup — a trophy awarded annually to the winners of a competition in the city and eventually to the state champion of Illinois.The Peel Cup was one of the nation’s oldest annually awarded soccer trophies until being retired in 1970.

The rise of other non-British ethnic populations in Chicago saw different leagues form and merge throughout the 1920s and 1930s before the Chicago Soccer League and International Soccer Football League came together to form the powerhouse National Soccer League (NSL) of Chicago in 1938. Still in existence today, the NSL has long been supported and dominated by clubs representing many of the city’s collected ethnicities: Czech club Sparta dominated the league early before Hakoah Center , Vikings, A.A.C. Eagles (later Polish Eagles), Slovak, Ukrainian Lions and the major German representation of Schwaben, Kickers and Hansa, all took their turns as league champions through the 1960s.

Nationally, NSL clubs represented Chicago well in the U.S. Soccer Federation’s National Challenge Cup, now known as the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, U.S. Soccer’s own cup competition. Sparta won two national championships in 1938 and 1940, followed by Viking (1946) and Falcons (1953) and later A.A.C. Eagles (1990).

Though the U.S. Men’s National Team wasn’t involved, the 1966 FIFA World Cup was shown in the United States and pushed the game’s popularity and interest in creating rival professional leagues. The following year, Chicago had entries in both leagues, with the Chicago Spurs playing in the United Soccer Association (USA) and Chicago Mustangs in the National Professional Soccer League. A year later, the leagues merged into the original North American Soccer League (NASL), with the Mustangs carrying on before folding in 1969.