By Tom Dunmore – 
Editor of Pitch Invasion and Vice Chair, Section 8, Chicago
Last week, we looked at how immigration patterns globally have been critical to the growth of soccer as the world’s game, and the reflection of this in American soccer. The question is, can the sport be a productive place for embracing the diversity that makes America great? Today, we look at one of America’s most diverse cities, Chicago, to find out.
Soccer in Chicago has a long if little-known history from the formation of the Chicago Football (soccer) Association in 1890 to MLS’ Chicago Fire Soccer Club today.
The mix of ethnicities playing the sport together in the early decades of the twentieth century has been a lost but important part of Chicago’s sports history, one thankfully rescued by Gabriel Logan’s 2007 dissertation at Northern Illinois University, “Lace up the boots, full tilt ahead: Recreation, Immigration and Labor on Chicago’s Soccer Fields, 1890-1939″.
Logan explores how a sport brought to Chicago by British immigrants was quickly embraced by non-British ethnic sides to develop a vibrant and heterogeneous soccer culture across the city. Importantly, native-born players soon intermingled successfully with immigrants on winning teams, such as one of Coal City’s team players who won the city’s 1909 Spalding Trophy”. As Logan says, “the many records of these native-born players challenge others’ conclusions that soccer was a ‘foreign game’.”
In the 1930s, the International Soccer Football League featured over a dozen nationalities represented among its original teams — which in 1938 merged with the Anglo-based Chicago League to form the National Soccer League of Chicago, an inter-ethnic league still in existence today.
Logan explains how soccer became a hub for enthusiasts for the sport from all backgrounds to come together to play and watch the game in this time. “Soccer thrived in Chicago during the fifty-year period from 1890 to 1939. Soccer players took to the fields or “pitches” for leisure, exercise, and competition on most weekends in the spring, summer and fall. Likewise, thousands of spectators attended the games, not only as pastime and amusement, but as a way to connect with their ethnic identities. Chicago’s immigrant communities and ethnic clubs embraced soccer. Newcomers to the city discovered that soccer provided an inter-ethnic community, spirited competition, camaraderie, and social support.”
The patchy professional development of the sport in the post-war period stalled the further development of this at the major league level, despite the brief success of the Chicago Sting. But it was only from 1997 on, with the founding of a professional team in the Major League Soccer (MLS), the Chicago Fire, that we have the possibility of a club that can represent the city’s diversity on and off the field in a way even Chicago’s established other major league sports teams do not.
The Fire’s ability to bring together the city was specially celebrated in a 2003 exhibition at the Chicago Historical Society, “Chicago Sports! You Shoulda Been There”. As John Russsick, curator, explained in the book “Sports In Chicago”, “In the Soldier Field section we told the story of the city’s newest professional team, the Chicago Fire of MLS. Here the message was diversity — the changing face of Chicago sports, the sports fan and the city itself.” Tellingly, Rusic goes on, the exhibition “focused the visitior’s attention on the fact the Fire broadcast their games in three languages, English, Polish and Spanish. Trilingual broadcasts reflect not only the fact that immigrants no longer simply embrace traditional American sports. Today they are able to support the spread of the sports that they grew up with and in the process, reshape the face of what is considered American sport.”
Over the past twelve years, embracing this diversity has been an opportunity and a challenge for the Fire. The club’s most famous players, such as Piotr Nowak of the Polish national team, Cuauhtémoc Blanco of the Mexican national team, and Brian McBride of the US national team, have ensured that diversity remains highly visible at the team’s current home, Toyota Park.
By setting up an Independent Supporters’ Association that serves as an umbrella organization for all Fire supporters’ (including Polish, Hispanic and Anglo-dominated groups), fans have banded together for the Fire regardless of ethnic background — notably with all groups standing together in sections 117 and 118 of Toyota Park. On a summer Saturday night, there is perhaps no more diverse and vibrant place in Chicago than these Fire supporters’ sections.
On the field, the city’s diverse youth soccer playing community is starting to be developed to produce professional players for the Fire from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. The founding of the Chicago Fire’s subsidized youth academy two years ago has opened up opportunities to kids from poorer families unable to afford expensive suburban soccer clubs. The Fire’s academy was ranked #1 in Major League Soccer by Soccer America just last week.
It may not be long until the team on the field for the Chicago Fire comes from the diversity of the city already represented in the stands, a fitting celebration of the sport’s rich history in Chicago.