We don't yet know whether there's room even for one soccer league in America,

but it's perfectly sure that there's no room for two.

Welcome to It Was What It Was with me, Rob Draper.

I'm here of Jonathan Wilson, and we're back in the USA this week.

We're looking at all things American soccer wise and the rich history, actually, of football in the USA.

And that quote was from the esteemed late, great British football writer Brian Glanville, quite an astute quote.

He's talking in the late 1960s about the

attempt to establish a new American Soccer League, the NASL in America and the rivalries

that are ongoing at a time. So you've got two rival leagues going on and he's just making a

point that definitely there isn't room for two soccer leagues in the USA.

So do go back and listen to Dennis Stewart, who we have spoken to about the glory years of the NASL

when he was playing for New York. Cosmos Pellé's replacement.

That was a great listen and he had some fascinating insights on that.

And also do go back and listen to Jonathan's

reprise of the early years of soccer in the USA because really up to the 1930s Jonathan

things were going you could argue reasonably well because they are the first established

professional soccer league, football league,

outside of Great Britain and outside of Scotland and England.

That's quite a landmark occasion.

There are lots of rivalries between the clubs and a federation as to how to do this,

but they are slowly established themselves as a league in American sport until the Wall Street

crash comes along and that kind of blows everything apart. Yes, I, I, the Wall Street

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