Do We Ain't Got No History?
On Sunday, my afternoon radio partner, some dude named Eric Wynalda[1] took part in a celebration of Major League Soccer's first match in San Jose when D.C. United visited the San Jose Earthquakes.
The Quakes invited a group of former players from the then-San Jose Clash and D.C. United teams from 1996 to commemorate one of the seminal moments in modern American soccer history. Wynalda even recreated his famous goal, sort of. Spare a thought for Jeff Agoos, who had to relive the moment Wynalda chopped him and fired in the right-footed shot that became the first goal (and first winning goal) in Major League Soccer history.
I'm not exactly clear on why the club decided to celebrate the 29th anniversary of the game, but since most of our cultural attachment to round numbers is arbitrary, it's like, whatever. It's the 30th season of MLS, I guess?
The anniversary celebration got me thinking about American soccer history and our relationship to it. When I fired up the ol' webcam for The Daily Davis Monday morning[2] without so much as concept of a plan, I quickly found myself talking about 1996, San Jose 1-0 D.C. United, Eric Wynalda, and deeper issues with how we connect to our soccer past.
American soccer has a really weird relationship with its history. I don't think I'm breaking any new ground with that statement, but it's important to drive that stake into the turf before I dump out a bunch of thoughts on how and why I think it's weird.
There are few throughlines in this country that go back far enough to feel like "History", with a big "H", when it comes to soccer. I mean that in the way that names like Ruth, DiMaggio, Lombardi, Halas, et al, evoke a nostalgic link to the past that sometimes gets filtered through a rose-colored vision of the country in previous eras.
There's that line from Field of Dreams that pretty much sums it up. James Earl Jones as Terrance Mann is only talking about baseball, but the line hints at a broader truism that no matter what's happening in the wider world: the escapism of sports is an addiction we are helpless against. Wars, economic collapse, social upheaval, whatever the hell is happening right now—none of them can stop it.
Sports feel more important when they go beyond mere entertainment and enter the realm of identity. There's no more intense identity marker than family and most of us take our cues for which teams we root for from our parents or grandparents. My own love of the Denver Broncos flows directly from a grandparent from Colorado who bought season tickets in the first year of that franchise's existence (and considering how bad the football was, you have to give my grandfather credit for sticking with his team for the next 30 years).
As a military brat who settled in the D.C. area, I've never actually lived in Colorado, but my Broncos fandom is core to my identity in ways that go beyond rooting for the team for a few hours on Sundays.
It strikes me that one of the biggest reasons Americans love the English Premier League is the depth of history English football clubs provide. When you adopt Liverpool as your favorite team, you don't just adopt Van Dijk and Salah, you adopt Shankly, Dalglish, and Rush. You get a shortcut to legitimacy as a soccer fan that you can't get with almost any American team. Even though MLS is old enough to have been around before an entire generation of adults were born, its teams simply can't compete against almost any recognizable European outfit when it comes to history.
Even the youngest English clubs typically have a century on the original group of MLS teams (two of which have been dead long enough that someone born after their demise is old enough to drink). I'm not suggesting that large numbers of American soccer fans are versed in the exploits of Manchester United in the pre-war (meaning World War I) period, but it's comforting for them to know that history is there. They want to anchor themselves to something substantial.
Sometimes we do a good job of reaching waaaaay back and pulling up fascinating and remarkable episodes from American soccer's past[3]. Bumpy Pitch (remember Bumpy Pitch?) created a cottage industry by putting re-imagined badges for clubs like the Fall River Marksmen and Bethlehem Steel on t-shirts. There are historians who tell stories about some of the country's first soccer clubs, the ASL of the 30s, the 1950 World Cup win over England, and other moments from a soccer past that doesn't always easily connect to our current moment.
I'm not forgetting about the NASL. That history typically gets thrown into a bin marked "Weird American Soccer Shit" and played for laughs. Sure, Pele, Cruyff, and Beckenbauer came to the states, but the whole thing feels more like a fever dream than something we should earnestly celebrate.
And since the league and most of the clubs didn't make it past Reagan's first term, no one can really claim it as part of their modern soccer fandom. No offense to fans of the New York Cosmos in their 21st century incarnation, but it's mildly disingenuous to link a zombie team renaimated through opportunism and playing in a college soccer stadium to the sides that made international headlines with a collection of stars ranked among the best players the game has ever seen.
Pablo Maurer is the best at digging into American soccer history and telling stories about it. I think it's crucial that writers like Pablo are out there, looking for things like US Soccer's wild plan for promotion and relegation[4], a bit of forgotten lore that wouldn't otherwise see the light of day. But that's a different kind of history than the stories of a magical season from long ago, or the myths that grow about players and coaches out of them.
What we don't do well is embrace the history of our little league, like Wynalda's goal in the first MLS game ever played, or the beginnings of MLS more generally. Clubs do their best to acknowledge and celebrate (in most cases) though I wonder how effective those efforts are when so many teams have changed looks, logos, and even names.
Maybe 30 years is too soon, or maybe the way MLS has grown—a few teams at the start playing in American football stadiums, a few more teams building soccer stadiums, then an explosion of clubs and buildings and paywalls just doesn't feel the same as things we can only learn about in books. If we can put the birth of the league on a timeline next to the arrival of The Backstreet Boys in popular culture, it's not proper history.
I suppose what I'm really lamenting here is that American soccer is going to come up short for a lot of fans because what fans value goes beyond local connections (or quality of play...we don't have time to unpack that). That makes me sad even as I'm trying really hard not to judge people for attaching themselves to something that gives them satisfaction.
There will always be the sickos who do things like post a Dwayne De Rosario goal from Major League Soccer's first decade in response to Declan Rice scoring an incredible free kick goal in the Champions League. Who the hell would do that?
DeRo's was better. www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h08...
— Jason Davis (@davisjason.bsky.social) April 8, 2025 at 4:24 PM
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Maybe one day, casual American soccer fans will look back on the first years of MLS as an echo of the Big Bang (that being the 1994 World Cup) and celebrate that history like baseball fans celebrate...well, everything. We might be entering an era (thanks to old folks like me) we can help contextualize the launch of our plucky American soccer league and convince reticent fans that it's okay to tie yourself to a club that doesn't reach back to the time of horse buggies and gas street lights.
In the meantime, if you just want to find me on Bluesky and remember some MLS guys, I'm always around.
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