A small monument near the carousel on Boston Common highlights what some historians describe as one of the earliest organized football clubs in the United States and a possible precursor to modern soccer in America.
The monument honors the Oneida Football Club, a group that played a round-ball kicking game on the Common between 1862 and 1865 during the Civil War era. One inscription on the monument states that the club was “the first organized football club in the U.S.” and noted that “the Oneida goal was never crossed.”
Authors Kevin Tallec Marston and Mike Cronin explore the club’s history in their book, “Inventing the Boston Game: Football, Soccer, and the Origins of a National Myth.” They said that several forms of football existed in both the United States and the United Kingdom before formal rules standardized the sport later in the 19th century.
“Different regions of the U.S. would have different forms of these schoolboy football games. The same is true in the U.K.,” Cronin said.
Cronin said the sport only evolved into modern soccer after different versions of the game merged under formal rules.
“It’s only when these games come together and they’re thrashed out in the 1860s and the 1870s … and they become what we now know as soccer,” he said.
Telemundo Deportes’ Luis Omar Tapia breaks down the offside rule in soccer, explaining one of the game’s most consequential calls ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
The authors said the Oneida club gradually shifted toward more ball handling, while immigrants from the U.K. and working-class communities in places like Fall River continued playing the round-ball version of the sport.
Marston said soccer culture remained active in immigrant communities, even if it received little national attention.
“You have a very active, but invisible from a national media perspective, soccer culture that is thriving in immigrant and ethnic communities,” Marston said.
NBC10 BostonNBC10 Boston
A monument on Boston Common to the Oneida Football Club.
The authors said Oneida members later promoted themselves as pioneers of organized football in America, before shifting their claims to soccer. In fact the monument itself has been re-chiseled a few times to replace a round ball for an oval one.
“I think the fascinating thing in the malleability of the whole story — you know, is it soccer? Was it football? What is it?” said Cronin.
“They are essentially setting themselves up as the first organizers of kicking football or football in that sense, because they know full well that the soccer game is invented in 1863,” Marston said. “They talk about it in their memoirs and correspondence. So, they say, ‘well, we were ’62.’ So, it’s very convenient for another Massachusetts first.”
Soccer fan Johan Romero said stories like the Oneida club could help Americans connect more deeply with the sport ahead of the FIFA World Cup.
“We don’t necessarily have, like, connective tissue to soccer as a sport,” Romero said. “But I think that knowing stories like this can get people closer. I know that we already have a history, already built here in the States.”