Andrew Brown

There is in the US Soccer Hall of Fame the following entry, "He was President of the American Football Association at the time of the formation of the U.S. Football Association (USFA) in 1913 and the man who convinced the other members of the AFA to join the new organisation, later was president of the USFA and played a key role in helping it to fend off penalties sought by Austria and Hungary in 1927 over player signings by American Soccer League (ASL) teams and was a delegate to the 1929 FIFA meetings at which the decision to hold the first World Cup the following year was made. He was Inducted in 1950."

The "he" was Andrew Brown, and expansions of his biography are as follows:

"Son of a university professor, he was originally trained for the ministry, he was born in 1870 in Paisley, Scotland and died on August 10, 1948 in Ravenna, OH."
"He came to the United States at the age of 20 and played soccer in Philadelphia. He later worked with the Alexander Smith Company in Yonkers as a carpet designer and then became personnel manager for the Babcock and Wilcox Tube Company in Bayonne, New Jersey. He was credited with having a deep understanding of human nature and was said to have a soft tongue, be a patient listener and a pacifier of ugly emotions and an inherent believer in justice and fair play. Very early in his sports activities he became a delegate to the American Association an organization then controlling soccer in the eastern U.S. and sponsor of the American Challenge Cup. He as President of the American Football Association in 1913 is credited with finally persuading that organization to work with the American Amateur Association to form the United States Football Association in that same year. He was honorary secretary of the USSFA in 1925 and 1926 and president in 1927 and 1928. For some time he was also acting President of the New York State Association. When trouble brewed at the Helsinki Congress of the FIFA in 1928, at which time the USSFA was threatened with expulsion for harbouring and playing foreign professional players who had skipped out of their club agreements, he was sent as the U.S. delegate to pour oil on the troubled waters. When the Congress adjourned the USSFA was still a member in good standing. He was also present at the Barcelona Congress. After being appointed by the USSFA annual convention in Chicago that same year he was the goodwill ambassador to the Dominion of Canada annual meeting in 1948."

And:

"Andrew M. Brown (December 11, 1870 – August 10, 1948) was a Scottish soccer player, executive and coach who had a short tenure as coach of the United States men's national soccer team. Born in Paisley, Scotland."
"He played for Philadelphia Thistle during the 1909-10 Eastern Soccer League season."
Very early in his sports activities he became a delegate to the American Association an organization then controlling soccer in the eastern U.S. and sponsor of the American Challenge Cup.
He was president of the American Football Association, and was instrumental in that organization's 1913 merger with the American Amateur Association, which formed the United States Football Association.
He later became the president of the USFA, a position he held during the 1928 Soccer Wars. Brown was posthumously inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 1950."

But as has been with much written previously about several of the quietly important figures in the history of World football, and Andrew Brown was one, a deeper look at the detail reveals a mix of fact and some fiction, which in his case is both personal and career-related.

That Andrew Brown was born a Scot and in Paisley and died in Ohio an American is correct. That he was born in 1870 on 11th December is not. The day and month are right, the year was actually 1868, he the second son of local parents, his father Thomas, then a "power-loom tenter", a weaver, and his mother, Elizabeth McLure, hence the "M". But she would die in 1872, aged just thirty-one, in childbirth, and the following year his father now of three would remarry, still in Thread-toun, to Agnes Osborne, twelve years his junior, they having four more children.

And Andrew's father was clearly good at his trade. In 1891 he was Weaving Instructor and in 1901 he had moved the family to Glasgow, where he was employed not as a "Professor" but as a teacher at a Technical Weaver's College. Of course by then Andrew himself had made the move to America but not as reported, or at least not permanently. And the reason is in 1891, whether having trained for the ministry or not, he was still in or had returned to Paisley, recorded with the family already specifically as a Carpet Weaver. And all that means that he might have left shortly after but again not at twenty but twenty-one plus and once more not , as implied, specifically to be a footballer but more likely simply to weave and then design American carpets, in first Philly and then Yonkers, and no longer Scots ones, whilst continuing to play the game as a hobby, much as he must have done in his home town.

Then there is the question of his playing career itself. It is possible but unlikely that in the 1909-10 season he played for Philadelphia Thistle. He would have been forty-one at the time. It is more probable that in in 1897, although there is no indication of what position he played, that at twenty-eight he was the Brown at full-back in the Philadelphia Manz team, which that year had won the American Cup. However, whatever the situation not only did he have a presence on-field but off-field too such that by 1913, having already been a delegate, he was President of the 1884-founded American Football Association, from which position he would be clearly seen as instrumental in healing the rift with the 1911-formed American Amateur Football Association, the two merging that same year to become the United States Football Association (USFA), now the United States Soccer Federation, and its official joining of FIFA in 1914. It had for the best part of year been a provisional member.

And that might have been it. For the next decade Andrew Brown might well have been active in the game, but not overtly. But from 1925 he was to re-emerge, whether or not by design, first as Honorary Secretary of the USFA and then from 1926 as its President, succeeding Morris Johnson. It was to prove pivotal. Having left FIFA after The Great War due to objection to the continuing membership of Germany and Austria the Home Nations had re-joined in 1924. It meant that Scotland, which had from 1921 suffered the most from players registered with its FA being able without recourse to walk away from contracts with Scots clubs for far better money and conditions playing in America, could now, albeit belatedly, begin to apply pressure member-to-member via that international organisation. At first it had little effect but as it built up, probably as there was weakness in the USFA itself following the in-harness death in November 1926 of its Secretary, Charles Zimmerman, and reaction from the US clubs themselves, notably those in the 1921-formed, increasingly powerful and belligerent and independently-thinking American Soccer League, it threatened to come to a head.

But first there was a twist. After the 1924 Olympic Games, which were, of course amateur, a proposal had been made in 1927 at that year's FIFA Congress in Helsinki by Belgium and generally accepted by the other members for the payment of compensation, i.e. expenses, for lost wages to the footballers that would take part in the 1928 Games. One country, however, then registered its disagreement by a letter that stated it had not voted for the measure. But the letter was disingenuous. The minutes of the Congress showed that far from voting against it had abstained. That country was England and there was a complication. At the Olympics the team in theory representing not just England but also Scotland, Wales and by then Northern Ireland was Great Britain and with a withdrawal by England from, which during happened as a result in 1928, it could not exist, effectively forcing the withdrawal of all three of the other home nations.

Thus, again n 1927, when FIFA stepped into the trans-Atlantic contract argument it did so at the official instigation of Hungary and, somewhat ironically, Austria, both of which had suffered similarly but to a far lesser extent, the pair acting effectively in-proxy for the SFA, and by telling the USFA's President to attend. And that Andrew Brown duly did, not without criticism from home but to effect, a Scot talking largely to Scots.

The result was in theory

"Withdrawal of the British Associations of the United Kingdom . The Chairman reminded of the efforts made by the Executive Committee to discuss this matter with the British Associations in a sense of justice and equitableness. The situation might become serious if the Executive Committee was not sure t o possess the confidence of the National Associations . He proposed to put aside all divergent opinions and to support the prestige of the Executive Committee in order to maintain the power and strength of the International Federation."

Back to the SFHG Home page