Boston’s rich and sometimes debated soccer history is coming into focus as the city prepares to host matches for the 2026 World Cup.
Central to this narrative is the Oneida Football Club of Boston, recognized for being the first American team to play a version of the sport continuously.
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A stone monument on Boston Common commemorates the Oneida Football Club, highlighting the enduring connection between the city and the origins of football in the United States.
The Oneida Football Club, active from 1862 to 1865, holds a place in the U.S. Soccer Hall of Fame for its pioneering role. The monument dedicated to the team stands on the Boston Common between Beacon Street and Frog Pond, erected in approximately 1925.
However, the precise nature of the game the Oneidas played and how their legacy is remembered remains a point of discussion.
Julian Cardillo, Boston 25’s Soccer Analyst, described the Oneida Football Club as “a team of 52 kids, mostly from wealthy families who lived around Beacon Hill, and they played a variant, a precursor to the game that we now know as soccer.” Cardillo noted that the game included recognizable elements such as “offside” and “scoring goals.”
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He added that “we do think that there are some early rules from what we now know as American football and rugby being played in this game.”
Mike Cronin, author of “Inventing the Boston Game: Football, Soccer and the Origins of a National Myth,” offered a nuanced view, stating that “what we’re really talking about the Oneidas playing is that kind of muddy sort of prehistoric soup of a game that isn’t yet soccer, isn’t yet rugby, certainly isn’t American football, but does have some of those key kind of kicking skills that soccer will have.”
Cronin pointed out a unique aspect of the monument, calling it “the only monument on the whole of the common that’s put up by people still living, paid for and in memory of themselves.”
The monument’s interpretation has evolved over time. The top of the monument, which appears to be a football, was temporarily changed to a soccer ball in 1994, when the U.S. last hosted the World Cup, before being changed back to a football years later. Cronin noted that “what they themselves memorialize in 1925 football American football college football what does somebody cheekily do in the 1990s is they kind of recast it as a soccer memorial.”
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Cronin further explained that the Oneidas “fell perfectly into that need to say there is a first, there is an origin point. America has maybe not been successful at running a domestic league or internationally, but it’s actually been playing this game for a very long time, that these boys, 1862 to 1865, were playing their game as the first organized football club a year before the rules of football came out of London.”
He summarized the varying perspectives, stating, “it’s a really kind of contested story about what they were doing and how people choose to memorialize and remember that.”
New Boston soccer history will be created in 2026 when the city serves as a host for the World Cup. Cardillo emphasized the significance of this event, noting “to have the best team in the world right now. A stone’s throw literally from where the first organized team ever played a variant of soccer in the United States I think is really special.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.
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