Thomas W. Cahill

Perhaps the single most important administrator in United States soccer for many years. 

Cahill moved with his family to St. Louis, Missouri in 1871 and was educated in the public school there and at St. Louis University. Early in life he developed a fondness for athletics of all sorts and was one of the most noted amateur athletes in the country. His speciality was long and distance running and in 1887 in Chicago he won the western championship at five miles. Later he became a charter member and one of the organizers of the Missouri Athletic Club. In 1890 he turned his attention to the organization of semi-Professional baseball, and organized the Missouri-Illinois Trolley League, perhaps the most famous nursery of baseball players in the country for many years. He became interested in soccer when he witnessed his first game on the occasion of the visit of the Toronto Thistles to St. Louis and after that was determined to learn the game and play it. He picked up the rudiments, developed the necessary skill and joined the St. Louis Shamrocks, then one of the more prominent clubs in the Mid-West. Cahill returned east in 1910 to Newark and, with the aid of Winton E. Barker, later a vice-president of the USFA, and J. Walter Spalding, a prominent sportsman set about pioneering the idea of a national governing body for soccer in the United States. In 1912 he attended the annual congress of FIFA in Stockholm with the idea of winning recognition for the newly-formed American Amateur Football Association, which he had helped to organize. While he was well received he was informed that the controlling body of a country must also include professional players.  Within a year, thanks to his continuing efforts, the United States Football Association (today's United States Soccer Federation) was formed and he became its first Executive Secretary. He held that position from 1913 until 1921, served a second term in 1923 and 1924 and a third term from 1928 to 1928 during the infamous "Soccer War" between the USFA and the American Soccer League. This led him to propose separate organizations to run amateur and professional soccer under the USFA umbrella. In 1916 he took an amateur team to Scandinavia during which time the U.S. played its first internationals. He returned to Scandinavia again in 1919 and 1920 on tour with Bethlehem Steel and a St. Louis All-Star team respectively. Cahill was also instrumental in forming in 1921 the professional American Soccer League, the first serious attempt at forming such a league in the United States, and in its early years was its secretary. In 1912 while visiting London he formed a contact with Sir Thomas R. Dewar the head of the famous distilling company which resulted in the latter donating the National Challenge Cup, today known as the Lamar Hunt Open Cup.