Earl Clark and the Fashion Shop Forfeiture
A Moment of Brilliance: A Soccer History Blog, April 3, 2014
Earl Clark - Boston Braves Source: The Sporting News Archive Led by British and Scottish expatriates, soccer aficionados in Washington D.C. championed the beautiful game in the American capital throughout the early 1900s. Efforts to establish city amateur leagues, inter-city leagues, and the professional Southeastern Soccer League all failed, though the game thrived within Washington’s public schools. The lack of a legitimate amateur league or professional club left the city’s best players no option but to give the game up, or attempt to find meaningless pickup games with local elevens. Finally, in 1925, local advocates created the city’s first permanent soccer league, the amateur Washington Soccer League (WSL). This newly established league gave Washington’s soccer players a legitimate arena to display their skills, compete, and eventually gain entrance in National Amateur Cup tournament – known today as the US Amateur Cup. It took three years from the creation of the WSL for Washington’s first clubs to ent
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