I am writing this column before any of us know what will happen. 

I’m writing it in the excitement of the World Cup, not only its wonderful return to North America after 32 years, but also with the shared joy and anticipation of what might become of our national team. 

I’m writing in awe that a good portion of this World Cup is happening here in Atlanta, the city where I first learned to love the global game. 

Adults of my generation who grew up in Metro Atlanta during the 1960s and 1970s will know how much soccer meant to the suburban children of Generation X. Following the phenomenon of the Atlanta Chiefs—who beat the great Manchester City in 1968, and who later became our city’s first true champions as winners of the North American Soccer League—the YMCA of Metro Atlanta founded a youth soccer program that endures to this day as a fixture of weekend life across the archdiocese. 

I played in the YMCA system for more than 10 years, from ages 6 to 16, and I loved every bit of it. My career ended with a red card on a dirt packed sod field in East Cobb County, but I have followed the game ever since. 

Soccer is deeply ingrained in Atlanta now. Never mind the eight World Cup games we’re hosting this summer; we are home and headquarters of United States Soccer. Our MLS Atlanta United plays around the corner from my home. An international women’s tournament is coming here next year. A local pub, the Brewhouse Café, is honored as the best soccer bar in America. 

Still, many locals shrug and complain. “There’s no scoring;” “What’s stoppage time?;” “Why the water breaks?;” “A tie?” 

Folarin Balogun of the U.S. and Belgium’s Brandon Mechele compete in the FIFA World Cup at Seattle Stadium July 6. The United States men’s national soccer team was eliminated from the tournament following a 4-1 defeat in the teams’ round of 16 game. OSV News photo/Albert Gea, Reuters

Impatience and ignorance about soccer continue to aggravate me. I’ve spent much of my life as an apologist for the game, and I’ll try once more to defend the sport here. 

Soccer, to me and to the millions of others who love it, is a metaphor for life. How often do you score in real life? Seriously, how often do you get the promotion, hit the number, get the date you wanted? Yet how much do you long for success? You work for it, you maneuver for it, you even pray for it. Yet you can toil for years and not seem to get a break. You can work years and not get a raise. You can scheme and dream and come up with nothing. Then one day…it happens. You get the promotion, the raise, the date. 

Happiness in soccer is a lot like happiness and good fortune in life. Sometimes it comes from hard work, sometimes from luck, and sometimes from faith. 

In the case of the greatest USA soccer World Cup victory of all time, it came from a combination of them all. 

In 1950, the fledgling United States soccer team beat the great and heavily favored English side 1-0 in a match that shocked both England and the world. 

The young men who comprised the team that accomplished this feat were overwhelmingly immigrant, most from St. Louis, and most of them Catholic. Their community and their faith were as crucial to their victory as their athleticism and determination. They deserve to be celebrated, 76 years later, not only as ambassadors of the game but as proof that if soccer is truly the global game, then an American team can win. 

A story of the ‘quietest glory’ 

The story of this remarkable team of immigrants is beautifully told in Geoffrey Douglas’ book “The Game of Their Lives,” published in 1996 and made into a fine film in 2004 by the same creators who produced the films “Rudy” and “Hoosiers.” 

As the game’s generally accepted birthplace, England is so closely associated with soccer that many readers may be surprised to learn the 1950 tournament was the country’s World Cup debut. Yet England was also regarded as the world’s greatest national team. It was favored to win the tournament, while the United States was given only a 500-1 chance. 

In their first group match, England defeated Chile 2-0, while the United States—as expected—lost 3-1 to Spain. But on June 29, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, the Americans achieved the unimaginable and beat England on the Haitian-born Jean Gaetjens’ goal in the 37th minute. While the nearly 13,000 fans in attendance were rapturous in their acclaim, the game had almost no consequence in the United States. Only one American journalist had been at the game, and he had paid his own way. Unfair and xenophobic criticism of the American team as a collection of illegal immigrants served to further stereotype soccer as a foreign working-class game. 

Ironically, soccer was probably more rooted in the American aristocracy and Ivy League schools than anywhere else, but there is no doubt that it was also an immigrant game most often played in inner city communities that were centered around Catholic parishes. 

The Hill neighborhood in St. Louis was closely associated with St. Ambrose Parish, and four of the American players, all of them Catholic, were chosen from that area. Frank Borghi was the American goalkeeper, unique in that he cleared the ball from the goal not by kicking but by throwing it in great heaves that often cleared the center line. Gino Pariani, Charlie Colombo, and Frank Wallace were the other three chosen from the Hill. From the southside of St. Louis, defenseman Harry Keough was chosen from the Carondelet neighborhood. 

Of the team, then, five Catholic men came from St. Louis; the rest were chosen from the Northeast. Of the 18 players on the team, almost half were Catholic. Of the starting 11, eight were American citizens and the other three were awaiting citizenship. 

Perhaps the surge in popularity of soccer and the recent American successes in international play by both the men’s and women’s national teams will result in greater appreciation for the American upset of 1950. While the game is remembered by the soccer community, and while it remains a source of great pride in St. Louis (Anthonino’s Taverna in St. Louis commissioned a mural in 2025 for the 75th anniversary of the game), the “Miracle on Grass” has not captured the country’s imagination like the 1980 “Miracle on Ice.” 

Neither England nor the United States had further success in the 1950 World Cup. England lost to Spain 1-0 in their final group match, while the Americans were dispatched by Chile 5-2. The 1950 tournament was ultimately won by Uruguay.  

One of the great achievements of Douglas’ book is to portray the American players as ordinary people who lived ordinary lives, but as Douglas writes “those lives were wonderfully well lived.” They were, he writes, “a team of young men who once played a game brilliantly but obscurely—asking nothing of it but joy, and whatever wins might come along—then went on to live and die in exactly the same way. It is a story of lives of the quietest sort of glory.” 

Consider goalkeeper Frank Borghi, for example, who made a living as a funeral home hearse driver. Or Harry Keough, who worked 35 years for the U.S. Postal Service and retired on a $17,000 pension. Other players were teachers or restaurant workers, or worked odd jobs. The cast of characters is almost like a Little Golden Book, yet Douglas renders them all as memorable and unique individuals who came together for one great victory.   

Much like other great sports narratives such as Roger Kahn’s “The Boys of Summer” and William Gildea’s “When the Colts Belonged to Baltimore,” “The Game of Their Lives” depicts the players beyond the game. They have careers, they raise families, they experience birth and death and all the other rites of passage we associate with ordinary life. And they do it with gratitude and humility. 

A Belfast reporter described the American team as “A band of no-hopers drawn from many lands.” Pity that writer, for his words echo down the decades with wonderful irony. If 250 years of American history and the American Catholic experience have taught us anything, it is that our greatest strength comes from our unity in diversity, and with that gift springs a full and lasting hope in both our soccer and our shared destiny, no matter what might happen.