BETHLEHEM, Pa. — While fans are traveling all over North America to stadiums hosting the World Cup, you don’t have to go far to find the very first U.S. soccer stadium.
As 69 News Reporter Bo Koltnow shows us, it’s right here in Bethlehem.
“Do you ever think about this being the first soccer stadium in the country?” 69 News reporter Bo Koltnow asked Bob Wilkinson as they walked down the stadium aisle.
“I think about it for sure,” he said.
Just not when Bob Wilkinson is on the sidelines as the head soccer coach at Moravian University.
“When I first saw it, when I interviewed here and stuff like that, it really is pretty impressive that you know how old it is,” Wilkinson said.
Bethlehem Steel-built Steel Field, now at Moravian University between 1913 and 1916, as the company sponsored the Bethlehem Steel Football Club.
“So, this is my uncle Bobby Morrison, who’s in the National Soccer Hall of Fame,” Dan Morrison showed Koltnow.
Dan Morrison’s two great uncle’s played for Bethlehem Steel Football Club.
The Historian at Montgomery County’s Manor College has spent 30 years researching the team’s history, which you can see online, saying Bethlehem Steel built the stadium to protect and keep fans packed in during the cold months of the winter season.
“Bethlehem Steel soccer team was absolutely foundational to American soccer,” he said.
With an unlimited budget and the promise of a day job. Bethlehem Steel brought in the best players from around the world, the team won 11 league titles, the American Cup six times. They even had two 41 game winning streaks.
“There was a golden age of American soccer in the teens and the 20s, it all comes to an end in 1930 when Bethlehem Steel Company withdraws its team from the First Division League,” Morrison said.
The stadium stayed.
“Soccer guy like me, I mean, good fortune, it’s a great story for sure,” Wilkinson said.
As Moravian is set to take the pitch again later this summer, many fans will have no idea they’re standing in soccer history.