The Globe -- Bethlehem
Monday, August 18, 1919
SOCCER TEAM WINS ANOTHER CONTEST
Local Champions Took Into Camp Abroad on All-Star Swedish Team.
SCORE WAS 2 TO 1

Sweden hurled the pick of its best soccer players against the Bethlehem Steel Workers at Stockholm yesterday in a desperate effort to offset the one tie game and one victory already annexed by the United States champions, but met with the same result as in the previous game played the latter part of the week -- a defeat. An Associated Press dispatch meager in detail says:

Stockholm, Aug. 17 -- The Bethlehem Steel soccer football team defeated a Swedish team made up of players from several clubs, by the score of two goals to one.

Bethlehem now has a good sized edge on the foreigners and it would appear from the showing of the Steel Workers to date that they will return with the greatest honors ever garnered by an American soccer eleven in the history of the game in this country. Also that a victory in this international series in a sport that is really still in its infancy in this country is another high tribute to the standard of athletics developed in America. The Bethlehem Steel team has won all the honors possible in the United States and to add to its glowing record was forced to invade foreign shores for still more glory. Prophets, who from time to time last season could not fully reconcile themselves to the fact that the team sporting the Bethlehem colors was the peer of all other soccer aggregations in the country and contributed many of the victories to games played on home grounds or some other ridiculous reason, are awakening to the fact that their contentions were all wrong and that the champions possess the ability to carry on their victorious stride on foreign soil as well as at home. The feats accomplished to date are especially remarkable in view of the conditions encountered before taking on the foreigners in their own back yards. The long voyage, curtailed period of training, climatic conditions and, greatest of all, the scientific style of play for which the opponents have been noted, were some of the conditions that had to be and were mastered. The schedule is by no means complete, at least again as many games as those played begin listed before the return trip. However, the two victories are certain to send the players into the remaining battles with more confidence and a greater determination to bring back an international title, a task for which the Steel Workers were selected by the United States Football Association.


1919-1920
Bethlehem Steel Soccer Club