The Portadown man who kept US soccer alive for decades from a broom closet in New York

In May, the United States Soccer Federation opened a $250 million (€218.8 million) headquarters across 200 acres in Fayetteville, Georgia. Last year, the organisation generated more than $268 million in annual revenue, paid the sporting director $990,000 while the chief executive took home $898,787. Other officials carrying portfolios linked to commercial matters, financial affairs and development drew down around half-a-million each. As everything about this most corporate of World Cups has illustrated, the sport here is big, lucrative business.

Once upon a time, a former Irish cycling champion named Joe Barriskill performed versions of all of the above roles for nothing. He ran what became the USSF out of a spare broom closet at the Turtle Linen company in Tribeca where he had a day job as a salesman. When US soccer’s current governing body wanted to hire Mauricio Pochettino as coach, they tapped up hedge-fund billionaires to help pay him $6 million a year.

Throughout the 1930s, 40s and 50s, Barriskill, famous for riding his bicycle around Manhattan, often dipped into his own pocket just to keep the game afloat.

The most influential character in the history of American soccer grew up on a farm in Portadown, Co Armagh and arrived in New York in 1910. He began working for Turtle Linen at their downtown premises shortly after that. More noted back home for sporting prowess on a bike rather than with a ball at his feet, the 21-year-old quickly started to feature in newspaper reports as a promising right-half. One account mentions him scoring “a pretty goal” for Bensonhurst versus Richmond County in what was quaintly called the “New York and New Jersey Socker League”.

Barriskill was not at the Astor Hotel meeting founding the United States Football Association (now USSF) in 1913 but was present at the fledgling outfit’s first banquet the following year. So began an involvement that endured until his retirement in 1971. Through decades when soccer flourished and floundered here, he served as president, executive secretary and treasurer. The title often varied but his influence and control never did.

“I conducted business with an iron hand,” said Barriskill in Tony Cirino’s excellent book, US Soccer vs The World. “People who did not like it could leave it because I was working for nothing. The government never gave us a penny. Nobody helped us. We had to fight like hell and we went around begging. The officials did a lot of fundraising, we sent out notes to our friends who were interested in soccer football. Between you and me, I paid plenty.

“We always had enough to come from behind and say, well, go ahead, I’ll help you. And they did. They loaned us some money and they didn’t expect to get it back. And they did not get it back. I myself put money into it and never expected to get it back and I never did.”

Having begun his professional career as a stock clerk, he took night classes at Brooklyn Central and, as Turtle Linen’s top salesman, was once earning $10,000 a year. His employers turned a blind eye to him running American soccer from the premises, tolerating him devoting much of his time to cobbling together the means to send national teams to Olympics and World Cups. He often employed Alice, his wife, as his unpaid stenographer.

“Barriskill’s greatest value to the USSFA (they adopted soccer into the title in 1945) may have been his determination to see that its finances stayed on the positive side,” wrote Roger Allaway on ussoccerhistory.org. “He was a familiar sight at games where the USSFA was owed a share of the gate receipts, making sure that the USSFA wasn’t shortchanged.

“There were a lot of people in Barriskill’s lengthy era who had run-ins with him over one matter or another. He was anything but smooth, someone who might be out of place in the more glamorous world to which American soccer has risen today. Nevertheless, he was perhaps more responsible than any other person for helping American soccer to stay alive through the dark ages that preceded that rise.”

Perhaps it was the financial strain that prompted him to take a second job at Yankee Stadium where he ended up as press box custodian, the man charged with looking after visiting sports journalists in the era of Yogi Berra and Joe DiMaggio. Apparently as beloved in that role as he was feared in the soccer world, writers on the baseball beat clubbed together to buy him a fancy travelling bag when he was heading off to manage the United States team at the 1948 Olympic Games.

One year later, he controversially ended the international career of the gifted Jack Hynes. Born in Scotland but reared in Staten Island, Hynes publicly questioned the quality of the national squad picked for a qualifying tournament in Mexico. Once he heard about the criticism, Barriskill called up the player, tore strips off him and assured him he’d never wear the shirt again. When the USA secured its most famous victory over England in the 1950 World Cup the following year, Hynes wasn’t even in the squad. You crossed the boss at your peril.

Barriskill retired to Paradise, California, where he died in December 1981. As news of his passing spread across the soccer community, friends and foes nationwide were simultaneously receiving his annual Christmas card. Knowing his health was failing, the 92-year-old still got them mailed off in time. Efficient to the end.

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