The Cosmopolitan Soccer League was formed as the "German American Soccer League" in 1923. In 1927, the association changed its name to the German American Football Association. The league was highly successful in the 1920s and, in New York, was behind only
baseball and
basketball in terms of popularity. The league struggled through the
Great Depression and by the 1940s the game was viewed by most Americans as an "ethnic" sport. Attendance and popularity declined sharply until the founding of the
North American Soccer League in 1968. By the mid-1970s, league officials recognized that in order to maintain the league's viability in the same market as the star-studded
New York Cosmos, it needed to appeal to a wider audience and in 1977, it voted to change its name to the Cosmopolitan Soccer League. Prior to the professionalizing of the modern American game, the
United States national team often consisted of Cosmopolitan League players. In 1923, five teams, S.C. New York, Wiener Sports Club, D.S.C. Brooklyn, Hoboken FC 1912 and Newark S.C., banded together to found the German American Soccer League. As the name suggests, the teams were largely composed of recent immigrants from Central Europe, primarily Germany. The next year, four more teams, Swiss F.C.,
Elizabeth S.C.,
S.C. Eintracht and Germania S.C., joined the league. The league renamed itself the German American Football Association in 1927. While the GASL began as a single division league, it added a junior division in 1933. That year, the league also held its first indoor tournament. In addition to its junior division, the GASL also added several lower divisions over the decades. In 1943, all of the U.S. leagues suffered from significant player losses from the U.S. participation in
World War II. In order to continue to play a competitive schedule, the GASL joined with the Eastern District Soccer League to run a joint season. Following the end of the war in 1945, the GASL found itself turning from a lack of quality players to an overabundance as Central European professionals left their war ravaged countries to move to the United States. The league experienced a second influx of talented players when Hungarians fled their country following the
Soviet Union crushing the
1956 Hungarian Revolution. In 1964, the GASL joined with the professional
American Soccer League in a short lived experiment. That year, the two leagues formed the Eastern Professional Soccer Conference which competed during the GASL/ASL off season. The league was a failure and did not complete its one season in existence.While the merger with the ASL was less than successful, the GASL undertook a cooperative agreement with another league, this time the
International Soccer League (ISL) in 1965. That season, the GASL All Star team entered the ISL as the New Yorker, going to the final where it lost to Polonia Bytom 5–1.[https://web.archive.org/web/20100618030726/http://national.soccerhall.org/ColinJose/InternationalSoccerLeague.htm The string of league mergers continued in 1974 when the
National Soccer League of New York merged into the GASL. In 1977, the GASL changed its name in response to a changing American soccer scene. While soccer had existed as an ethnic sport since the 1930s, the creation of the
North American Soccer League in 1968 had brought the sport into the mainstream. Recognizing that maintaining its ethnic identity would hinder its acceptance by the wider U.S. sports culture, the GASL governing board voted to rename the league the "Cosmopolitan Soccer League". As part of this process, the league's teams were directed to change their names to ones with less ethnic connotations, although this requirement was dropped three years later. Despite the regional and semi-professional nature of the league, it featured many of the top U.S. player in the 1950s and 1960s. Even into the early 1970s, GASL players appeared regularly with the
U.S. national team. The high regard afforded to the league is reflected in that the
National Soccer Hall of Fame considers the GASL as one of a handful of leagues in which a player may become eligible for entry into the Hall of Fame. The GASL had named an All Star team beginning in 1930. In 1968, after the newly established
North American Soccer League approached the GASL about placing a GASL team in the NASL, the league formed its All Star team, known as the
New York Cosmos, into an exhibition team. The Cosmos did not enter the NASL until the
1971 season, but when it did, it was well stocked with former GASL players. == Clubs ==