American Soccer History - Brooklyn Wanderers

One of our main goals when we started Bumpy Pitch was to help build soccer in America. We felt that before we could look forward and grow the sport, that there was a need to look back and understand the legacy and heritage that soccer has in the US. There is a rich and storied history that the sport has here and we have been sharing that for a few years now.

Our first collection focused in on some of the professional teams that helped build the sport from early on. Teams like the Fall River Marksmen, Bethlehem Steel (who had long been ignored until we brought them back) and the Brooklyn Wanderers. These teams all have great stories that date back a very long time. In the case of the Brooklyn Wanderers, over 100 years.

Some official info on the club:

While the origins of the Brooklyn Wanderers date back to the early 1890's, the independent club was the starting point for many of the brightest in the New York area before officially joining the American Soccer League (merging the National Association Foot Ball League and the Southern New England Soccer League) in 1892.

The Wanderers would spend nine years in the top flight before folding halfway through the 1931 ASL season, reaching as high as 2nd place in 1928 and 1931.

But those are just some facts. This team and this graphic has always meant way more to us. besides it being a trailblazer as a professional soccer franchise in America, the name always worked so well for us.

First of all - the name. The Brooklyn Wanderers. That name sounds so tough. So fitting. It sounds like a bunch of young soccer kids roaming the city looking for a place to play. I love that idea. Makes me think of being a kid and being with the crew and on the lookout for a spot to play a pick up game. There should have been an MLS team with this exact name.

Second - Brooklyn and New York provide amazing inspiration for design. So coming up with the design for this was fun to work on. Not easy though. You can't design something that lacks authenticity and credibility. So we had to get that part right. 

When we were designing this graphic we thought about what it would have been like if we had been commissioned to design this all the way back in the lat 1800's when the team was formed. We didn't want to create a modern looking logo for a team that was more than a century old. So we looked back to what was taking place in and around Brooklyn at the time. It just so happened that the Brooklyn bridge had been opened about a decade earlier. So we realized that the bridge had to be a huge point of pride for members of the Brooklyn community. Plus, it's visually interesting and instantly invokes a sense of "Brooklyn."

  As soccer continues to grow in the US it's great to look back and realize that the sport isn't "brand new." We have a history. We have a heritage. Teams like Brooklyn Wanderers represent this. They may be long gone, but they are certainly not forgotten.