Stephen Smith (20 February 1899 – 27 December 1994) was a Scottish

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

goalkeeper In many team sports which involve scoring goals, the goalkeeper (sometimes termed goaltender, netminder, GK, goalie or keeper) is a designated player charged with directly preventing the opposing team from scoring by blocking or intercepting o ...

who began his career in the United States and ended it with Aberdeen. In 1921, Smith joined Thistle, a team in the Association Football League, an ethnically British league in Chicago. A year later, he was with the All Scots in the same league. At the time, Chicago teams would tour during the off-season and Smith came to the attention of the

Brooklyn Wanderers The Brooklyn Wanderers was a U.S. soccer team which was a founding member of the National Association Football League in the late nineteenth century. Later versions joined the original American Soccer League and the reorganized American Soccer Le ...

of the American Soccer League. They signed him for the 1923–24 season, but he saw time in only nine games. He became the regular starter the next season, a position he held for much of the next five years. Over the course of his career with the Wanderers, he played 246 league, 11

National Challenge Cup The Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, commonly known as the U.S. Open Cup (USOC), is a knockout cup competition in men's soccer in the United States of America. It is the oldest ongoing national soccer competition in that country. The 2023 U.S. O ...

and 12 League Cup games. In 1930, Smith returned to his native Scotland and joined

Aberdeen F.C. Aberdeen Football Club is a Scottish professional football club based in Aberdeen, Scotland. They compete in the Scottish Premiership and have never been relegated from the top division of the Scottish football league system since they were ...

where he finished his career in 1938. Record of pre-war Scottish League Players John Litster / Scottish Football Historian magazine, October 2012

References

External links

* Aberdeen F.C. players American Soccer League (1921–1933) players Brooklyn Wanderers players Scottish footballers Scottish expatriate footballers Footballers from Aberdeen 1899 births 1994 deaths Association football goalkeepers Scottish expatriate sportspeople in the United States Scottish emigrants to the United States Expatriate soccer players in the United States Scottish Football League players {{Scotland-footy-goalkeeper-stub