By one account, soccer reached Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1904, when a ball arrived from Scotland and local men began playing a team from Allentown.³ Pickup games among mill workers grew into the Bethlehem Football Club.⁴ Its first official match, on November 17, 1907, was an 11–2 defeat at West Hudson in Harrison, New Jersey. The return match a few weeks later ended 9–0 to West Hudson.^1,3

Bethlehem joined the Eastern Pennsylvania League in 1911, then moved up to Philadelphia's Allied American Football Association the next year. It won the 1912–13 league with 17 wins, clinching the title with a 6–1 win over Cardington.³ In 1913–14 it won the Allied league, the Allied Amateur Cup and the American Cup, beating Tacony 1–0 in the American Cup final on May 4, 1914.¹⁷

In 1914 Charles M. Schwab of Bethlehem Steel took the team professional and began recruiting the country's best players, later importing others from Scotland and England.¹ The New York Times headline that August read “Schwab corners football stars.”¹ Recruits were given jobs at the plant.⁴

The company also built the team a ground. It moved from East End Field to a new athletic field on Elizabeth Avenue, on eight acres bought from the Moravian congregation.^2,5 It is widely described as the first soccer stadium in the country, though accounts of when it was built run from 1913 to 1916.^1,5,18

The results followed. A 1998 Morning Call article put the team's record from 1913 to 1919 at 162 wins, 6 losses and 16 draws, with Paddy Butler, “Mudhorse” Easton, Jack Lance, Harry Ratican, Billy Sheridan and Harry Trend among its players.⁵ Bethlehem won the National Challenge Cup in 1915, 1916, 1918 and 1919 and the American Cup four years running from 1916.¹

Fall River

The main opposition came from Massachusetts. In the 1916 cup final at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Whitey Fleming's penalty gave Bethlehem a 1–0 win over the Fall River Rovers. Fall River fans rioted over a handball that wasn't called, and a policeman drew his revolver. The Rovers won the 1917 final on a first-minute goal by Thomas Swords, and Bethlehem took the 1918 final in a replay. When the Rovers folded in 1921, Sam Mark's Fall River Marksmen took over the rivalry. The clubs played 53 times in all: Bethlehem won 23, Fall River 19, and 11 were tied.⁶

In the summer of 1919 Bethlehem became the first American professional club to tour overseas.⁹ The party of 17 players, six of them guests including Archie Stark and Davey Brown, sailed from New York on July 23 aboard the Stockholm and landed at Gothenburg on August 4. The opener against AIK filled Stockholm's 20,000-capacity Olympic Stadium, with several thousand more outside.⁷ Swedish observers reportedly took the visitors for a Scottish side.⁴

John “Rabbit” Hemingsley led the scoring with eight goals. The team left Bergen on September 27 and the main party reached Bethlehem on October 7. A follow-up tour of Brazil was called off that August, when the Brazilian government withdrew its invitation.⁷

Two newsreel clips of the tour survive in the Swedish Film Institute's collection, showing the AIK and Swedish Provinces matches. The Society for American Soccer History, which acquired them, believes they are the earliest known footage of a professional American team in match play.⁹

The club won three straight National Association league titles from 1919 to 1921, but few people came to watch.^1,4 Poor attendance led management to move the team to Philadelphia for 1921–22, as Philadelphia FC, in the new American Soccer League. Most of the players kept their homes in Bethlehem and their jobs at the plant.¹⁷

Philadelphia won that first ASL title with 17 wins, 4 draws and 3 losses. The club returned home as Bethlehem Steel for 1922–23 and finished second three years in a row.¹⁰

Archie Stark, a forward born in Glasgow, had guested on the 1919 tour. He joined Bethlehem in 1924 and scored 67 goals in 44 games in 1924–25, with eight hat-tricks, then stayed until the club folded, finishing with 240 league goals. He was inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 1950.¹¹ The team scored 127 league goals that season and still finished second.¹⁰

The ASL kept its teams out of the 1924–25 Challenge Cup over schedule conflicts.¹² Bethlehem came back in 1926 to beat Ben Millers of St. Louis 7–2 at Ebbets Field for its fifth and last cup.¹⁵ The next season it won its only ASL title under the Bethlehem name, with 29 wins, 8 draws and 7 losses.¹⁰

In the summer of 1928 Charles Stoneham, owner of the New York Nationals and baseball's New York Giants, proposed that the ASL pull its teams out of the Challenge Cup and create its own national final. The dispute was over who controlled American soccer, the league or the United States Football Association.¹²

The ASL voted on September 10 to bar its clubs from the tournament.¹³ Bethlehem, the New York Giants soccer club and Newark refused and were suspended. The USFA then suspended the ASL itself.¹² Six games into the season, Bethlehem helped form the Eastern Soccer League with the other two clubs and semiprofessional teams from New York.^10,12 It won the new league twice.¹

The ASL gave way in October 1929 and regrouped as the Atlantic Coast League. The stock market crashed about two weeks later.¹²

The war and the Depression had badly hurt the club's finances.¹ Bethlehem finished its last season seventh in the Atlantic Coast League.¹⁰ Rumors of disbanding ran in mid-April 1930, and the league accepted the club's withdrawal at a meeting in Providence.^14,17 The Bethlehem Globe called it “the most staggering blow to soccer football.” The paper said the club had hinted at quitting two years earlier and stayed only at the USFA's request during the war. The sponsors promised to pay the players through April, after which they would be free agents.¹⁴

Its last cup run ended against Fall River in the eastern semifinal: a 1–1 draw at the Polo Grounds, then a 3–2 replay loss in New Bedford. Sam Mark tried to arrange a farewell friendly in Fall River for the club's final weekend, and Bethlehem declined.⁶

The ground still stands. Steel Field now belongs to Moravian University, whose football team plays there, and a plaque under the grandstands lists the club's record.^2,5,18

The name came back in October 2015, when the Philadelphia Union revived it for a reserve team that began play in 2016 at Lehigh University's Goodman Stadium.¹⁶