The remarkable story of Tom Schultz and his 29 minutes of international football

This piece was written by Cris Freddi for issue 49

St Louis, Missouri. The early 1950s.

Tom Schultz is a soccer star in high school. One season he scores at least 48 goals, including eight in one game. Tallish and strongly built, he knows “where to position [himself] on the field to receive passes”, and above all is cheetah quick. He wins the national junior title with Seco, and in 1952 helps the St Louis Raiders lift the US Amateur Cup.

That year, still only 18, he was called up for the Olympic trials. “It sounds immodest, but I did really well. I was really good. I scored in each game and I was sure I was in.”

Instead he was left out because of his age and “lack of experience”. Without him, the USA played only one match in those Olympics, losing 8-0 to Italy. Schultz says he did well to miss that one, but the rejection still stung.

And when he finally won his international cap, you sense it was something of a consolation prize.

In 1953 the States were tagged on to the itinerary of a country touring South America. And not just any country. England, no less, the old colonial power. Thomas Schultz would be playing against Tom Finney and Billy Wright.

In the years after the Second World War, St Louis became a hotbed of soccer in America. It was a European thing.

Built on the great divide of the River Missouri, the Lou was a gateway to the West. So it attracted waves of immigrants. As in most cities, they congregated in separate areas. Spanish in the south, Germans to the north (Tom Schultz is German-Polish), Irish in Dogtown, Italians on The Hill.

Five players from St Louis helped the USA beat England at the 1950 World Cup. Frank Borghi kept a clean sheet in goal, protected by the right-back Harry Keough and the centre-half Charlie Colombo, one of four Italians in the team. Another, Frank ‘Pee Wee’ Wallace (original name Valicenti), played on the right wing like Schultz, and lent him his boots, of which more later. Gino Pariani scored against Spain in that tournament.

“Frank Borghi. One of the nicest guys you could ever meet. Wallace became a very good friend. Colombo was a mean son of a bitch.”

Colombo sometimes wore leather gloves on the pitch, the kind you used for sparring. He didn’t actually go around punching centre-forwards (probably), but what a statement of intent.

Tom Schultz played against him in St Louis club matches. “Watch your ass, Schultz.” Soccer was rougher then, says Tom. A lot of wild tackling.

Harry Keough was a complete contrast. Schultz’s mentor. “An incredible trainer and manager.” Subtle and careful, thought things through. As a player too. He’d tell people to push up or drop back, mark this guy here. “The smartest soccer player we’ve ever had. Not just in St Louis, the whole country.”

In 1953, Schultz and Keough were the only two St Louis players picked to play against England. They were both with Kutis SC, named after the club’s sponsors, a funeral home. When Wallace died in 1979, his last rites were held at the funeral parlour owned by Borghi’s family!

The train from St Louis to New York took a whole day and night. Keough, who had a Spanish wife, used the time to polish Schultz’s lingo. “So I got something out of it!”

Tom’s kit contained that pair of boots belonging to Wallace – which gives you some idea about the status of football in postwar America. Football gear was hard to find and therefore expensive. At school, says Schultz, there were times he used newspapers as shin pads.

Really? Pages from daily papers? “True story,” he said. “Kids’ comics mostly.”

There was so little money that the 1953 team couldn’t swap shirts with the England players. “We couldn’t keep the uniform. Jerseys, pants, socks. Should have stolen them! Just kidding.” Schultz still has the socks he wore in training: white with a thick blue stripe and two thin red ones.

Meanwhile it wasn’t just his boots that were substandard. There was no organised football at college, so “I wasn’t in the greatest shape.” Stands to reason. He’d just finished his first year, after enjoying campus life to the full (photos show a young guy with a blond crewcut, confident in his looks). In his freshman year at high school, he’d studied to be a priest. “Then I found out what ‘celibacy’ meant and quit!”

Not that the US selectors would have known his fitness levels. They didn’t go to St Louis, and this time there were no trial matches. Most of the players against England were with New York clubs, plus another from Philadelphia. Schultz may have been picked because they owed him one from the Olympic trials. In fact, the whole team was a real mixed bag.

Of the players who caused that World Cup shock, only two remained: Keough and the captain Walter Bahr. The ten other players in the 1953 match included nine making their international debuts. Cecil Moore had kept goal for Ireland, Terry Springthorpe won an FA Cup winner’s medal alongside Billy Wright.

There were two brothers in the squad, the Deckers, who had moved from Nazi Germany to England as part of the Kindertransport in 1939. Only four of the twelve, including Tom Schultz, were born in the USA. Headline in the Daily Express: “Finney & Co. take on the United Nations.”

Further illustration of the state of American soccer: there was no national coach and no long-term planning. This was the USA’s only international match between the 1952 Olympics and the World Cup qualifiers in 1954 – and it was played at Yankee Stadium, which didn’t disguise its baseball background.

On the football pitch they marked out, Schultz says half the surface was sand. “OK, not half, maybe a third.” They flattened the pitcher’s mound, but it was still a mess. According to the Daily Mirror, “Half of the sanded infield diamond cut across one penalty area.”

Not that iffy surfaces usually bothered Schultz. Pitches were often doctored when his team came to town. A club in Dallas knew his side were speedy, so they left their grass long. It was Bermuda grass, which grows very fast. When Schultz & Co arrived, it was three inches deep. They still won 1-0, but it gives you an idea.

Meanwhile other pitches had no grass at all, and some matches were staged at night, when soccer players had to cope with floodlights used in American football, which were lower. If a goalkeeper launched a clearance kick high into the sky, players lost it in the blackness.

So Tom Schultz had less trouble with the visibility at Yankee Stadium than his opponents did (this was the first England match under floodlights). But Frank Wallace’s studs could have done with a little less drizzle.

It rained the night before and the morning of the match. Not very heavily, by all accounts, certainly not the astounding tropical deluge which ended England’s match in Buenos Aires earlier in the tour. But the rain in New York was enough to worry the Yankees, who didn’t fancy all those football studs tearing up their precious grass. So the game was moved to the following day.

Graphic illustration of that delay. The US players were presented with a gift. A wallet from Finnigans, a luxury goods shop in New Bond Street. “Very expensive leather,” Schultz recalled. “Beautiful. I used it in my corporate life later. Great conversation piece when I met with clients.”

Printed on the wallets is “USA v ENGLAND” and the date: “7th JUNE 1953.” The team had mementoes stamped with what turned out to be the wrong date.

So paradise postponed for Schultz. And I won’t resist saying it turned into purgatory for him.

There weren’t many there to observe his misfortune. In a stadium which held over 80,000, even the crowd figure of 7,271 probably referred to tickets sold, not spectators who turned up on that damp night. Some papers put the real figure at 6,000 or even 2,000. Most of the onlookers “will be school and college boys specially invited on the American catch ‘em young idea”, though there were Union Jacks too, waved by “a mob from the Queen Mary”.

The small crowd watched a weird match full of interesting things. Tom Schultz watched it too, the last two thirds of it, because the weather and his footwear let him down.

The rain had stopped, but he still remembered it as “a shitty day”, wet and miserable. The grass was slippery, while the sanded areas made shooting a lottery. “The English, when attacking the infield end in the first half, were somewhat disconcerted by the sudden change, running from the lush turf to the baseball sand.”

Schultz never had a chance to use his pace. It turns out Frank Wallace’s boots weren’t much better than his own. In a photo he sent me, they look colourful but pretty beat-up. “My cleats were not in the best of shape and the footing was bad and I turned my ankle.”

Schultz sent me one of those cleats. A parcel arrived from Columbia, Missouri, containing references to that England match, including a note: “I think there is still old Yankee Stadium mud on the cleat!”

Maybe, but I never saw it. The stud didn’t arrive. Presumably intercepted by Customs.. They probably binned it, which is a disgrace.

Those boots have pride of place in Tom’s house. Quite right too – though they couldn’t save him at the time. When his right ankle went over, his toes couldn’t stay down, so he could barely walk. He was substituted, watched the rest of the game from the bench, and wasn’t capped again. His entire international career lasted 29 minutes.

How did he do in that short time? “I was not having a good match. Probably too busy watching the great English players… I played a crappy game.”

He’s being typically modest, although it’s true the US attack couldn’t get going. “The Americans attacked spasmodically,” said the Guardian. In an outclassed team, the forwards see less of the ball and don’t keep it for long. And this particular team had never played together before.

Schultz didn’t know any of the New York members. Ask him about Milne, Chacurian, Connelly or Athineos, and he doesn’t even remember their names. Perfectly understandable, given that it was 70 years ago, they had only a couple of practice sessions and he never saw most of them again. Even Bahr, who’d made the winner against England in 1950. “I knew about him, of course. He was famous. But I didn’t know how he played, anything.”

On top of that, let’s not forget this was a 19-year-old college boy, short of full fitness, playing for a scratch team from a country that didn’t take soccer seriously, facing a strong side from a major football power. He was eight years younger than the youngest player in the opposition XI.

England changed their team for this, but it was still close to full strength. Finney and Wright, Alf Ramsey and Jimmy Dickinson, Nat Lofthouse. “Going into the match we were told England would be upset about 1950 and above all we had to at our best if were to stay in the game.”

They stayed in it for quite a time, but mainly because England took a while to get used to the pitch, the floodlighting (which Schultz says “wasn’t the best”), and the white ball, unusual in those days. Tom remembers it being “porous”, soon growing heavy with moisture from the pitch. As a result, England wasted a string of chances, and when Schultz went off after 30 minutes the score was 0-0, so he can claim he wasn’t on the losing side. But his replacement did better for himself.

England didn’t score until two minutes before half-time, but then added two goals soon afterwards. Their players did better on that dragging pitch – partly, I presumed, because they were heavier and stronger. “Sure. Faster and fitter too. And they knew what the hell they were doing!”

At 3-0, the US must have feared a serious revenge beating. But their substitute wasn’t having it. When Otto Decker replaced Schultz, he joined his brother Rolf on the pitch. Both were winning their first caps. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle said they “acquitted themselves nobly at outside right and center half.” With an hour gone, Otto headed in.

It looked like just a consolation when Lofthouse scored his second to put England 4-1 up. But George Athineos, who led the line well, converted a penalty for handball, then Otto Decker scored again as the goalkeeper Ted Ditchburn was flattened going for a cross. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the patchwork team had two goals in two minutes. They were only 4-3 down and the spectre of 1950 was drifting down from the darkness over the floodlights.

But the USA had exhausted themselves chasing hardened professionals, and England added two late goals. The last one came from Redfern Froggatt, but he hadn’t had it easy against Keough and wasn’t capped again. Nor was his cousin Jack or six of the US players, including Schultz’s replacement who enjoyed his one crowded hour.

The United States lost 6-3, quite an achievement for an amateur team appearing together for the only time. Schultz “had the feeling after the sixth goal England backed off some” – but that was only the last ten minutes. Before that, they’d had to work for their win.

The game had trappings you didn’t get in Britain. At every break in play, the stadium announcer explained who the goalscorer was, or the corner taker, the substitute, “and future attractions at this stadium”. For the Daily Mirror, the whole thing “had just the suggestion of a circus in the local fashion, and the ringmaster was clearly Sam Galin, the referee,” who was born in England and wore glasses.

Bahr and Keough went on to play in qualifying matches for the next two World Cups. But for Schultz, young though he was, this was the beginning of the end. However, he did something the others didn’t. He played again the following day.

When he told me this, I doubted him. His memory’s exceptional for a man of 89, but this seemed a reminiscence too far. The train from New York to St Louis takes anything up to 33 hours. And Schultz had a badly twisted ankle. But match reports prove he made it. So I checked the travel time in 1953 – and trains got there considerably faster, presumably because they made fewer stops. Schultz arrived in time to play against Liverpool, who were touring the States.

“I played pretty good,” too. Liverpool’s manager Don Welsh, a former England player, said Schultz and his fellow-winger Butch Cook “could be made into fine players.” Very nice too. But how do you play an entire match 24 hours after hobbling out of another one? “Well,” said Schultz, “the strain wasn’t that bad. I think it was more of a bad cramp.” Short of conditioning, his muscles seized up on that heavy Yankee pitch. So it wasn’t all the fault of Pee Wee’s boots.

Schultz stayed in the sport a little longer. The following year, 1954, he reached the final of the USA’s top competition, the National Challenge Cup. After a 1-1 draw in St Louis, he returned to the north-east, where Kutis lost 2-0 to the New York Americans, who had Springthorpe in the team. And that was the end of senior football for Thomas D Schultz. He was 20 years old.

This took some believing too. I mean, here he was, still very young and already an international, praised by the manager of a top English club, reaching a national final. His whole career’s ahead of him, surely? He might not turn pro, but he could have played in three World Cup cycles.

No, things were different in his day. Hence this piece on him.

You’re probably wondering about that. All these words on someone who played just a few minutes of international football. It’s one thing to write about one-cap wonders if they’re famous and should maybe have won more. Charlie George, Clem Stephenson, Walpole Vidal. And a lot of players scored hat- tricks in their only international match.

But a teenager who didn’t do much before being substituted: why an entire article? Because he sent me a football stud? He’s avuncular in phone conversations? Because he’s still alive?

No.

Tom Schultz might have had a future in the game if there’d been any money in it. But this isn’t about him entirely. This is the past being a foreign country. Especially the United States.

Even today, football’s not one of their top sports. Name a truly great US player, from any era. How far do they ever go in the World Cup? Now imagine them in the 1950s, when football was very much a minority pastime. No soccer on TV, hardly any in the papers, huge distances to travel. When the USA beat England in the World Cup, only one US journalist was there, the immortal Dent McSkimming, another of the St Louis posse. Nowadays the goalscorer, Joe Gaetjens, would be a national hero. By 1953 he was playing for Haiti again.

And this article is about something else. I wrote the first draft when COVID was doing its worst and sport didn’t matter very much. Same in 1950s USA. In a way, Tom Schultz is one of us. He gave up soccer because it just wasn’t that important. His country had taken up battle stations again.

By 1955, the Korean War had been over for a couple of years. But it was ended by an armistice, not a treaty, and the US weren’t sure the armistice would hold. So they maintained a military presence in South Korea. To avoid being drafted, Schultz joined the air force.

Because the draft would have landed him in the infantry? “That’s right. And I really didn’t fancy going over there to be shot at! If there had to be any shooting, I guess I wanted to be the one doing it.”

He didn’t shoot at anyone in Korea. He was part of the Air Defense Command at home, a fighter pilot in an interceptor squadron. He was on active duty for three years, reaching the rank of captain, then in the reserves for another six, so he was nearly called back into action when the Cuban Missile Crisis kicked off in 1962. “It scared the hell out of me.” Him and the whole planet.

It wasn’t just a war which made Tom Schultz quit soccer. He got a life instead. He married at 21 and had three kids, all born in different towns (the air force moved him around). At the University of Missouri, he enrolled in the famous J School, the world’s first school of journalism. There he won the award for Outstanding Senior in Advertising. It’s something we’ve got in common (the advertising, not the award). That and sprained ankles. A success in business, he was inducted into the St Louis sporting hall of fame.

A full life by any standards. But of course I keep going back to his time in football. Why did he stop playing when he got to college? “There was no collegiate soccer in St Louis at the time, and really no monetary future in the game. But I travelled because of soccer, learned about places. Meeting folks with different backgrounds helped in my career. I was fortunate to have a couple good soccer years.”

Too modest, surely?

“I just happened to be in soccer at the right time. Got good press. Got lucky scoring goals because I had great players around me.”

But you don’t play international football at 19 because other players are better. The talent was there, and the extreme pace, but not the circumstances.

Then again, I doubt he’d have had it any other way. He lived a kid’s dream, then had an adult life. He had his children and his career, was around for the birth of rock ‘n roll, and played international football with Finney, Lofthouse, Ramsey, and Walter Bahr. And he kept his health. The class of ‘53 had some long-stayers. Keough lived to be 84, Bahr 91, Chico Chacurian 95. Schultz didn’t stop cycling till he was 84. “My wife’s 14 years younger. She walks the ass off of me!”

He still lives in Columbia, where the university is. A good small town, he says. Good medical facilities. His eyesight’s better after cataract surgery and his prostate cancer is in remission. He feels he’s been blessed.

There was one surprise in later life. This one. An interest in his football career. Outside the States, no-one had shown any for decades. Even when someone finally did, Schultz was part of a job lot. I’ve been researching the England national team for over 45 years. From the match details, you make lists. Some of those lists are about age. I know the average age of the oldest and youngest teams to play for and against England.

To do that, you have to find the date of birth of everyone who played in an England match. A total of 8,989 players so far. Yes, I counted. I didn’t say this was a sane pastime.

Some dates of birth are missing, including a few from USA teams. After exhausting various sources, I thought I’d try some horses’ mouths. So I set about contacting individual players.

When Mike Brady got back to me, I could confirm that the 1985 USA team was one of the youngest to play against England. And I struck a nugget of anorak gold with a written reply from Adolf Bachmeier, who played in the 1959 match.

Now, what Tom Schultz thought when I approached him, I don’t know. Who’s this weirdo from London and why does he want to know when I was born? If that’s all I’d ever asked him, he would have been a useful addition to my records and no more, and he’d have scratched his head and moved on.

But I already knew it was his only cap and he’d been substituted, and when he said he was only 19 at the time, I asked follow-up questions, and here we are.

Schultz isn’t just modest, he’s gracious. “If there is anything good coming out of the pandemic, it is getting to know you.” My interest in his football brought back important memories, and he’s looked through his scrapbooks again. “You have kept me busy, and my typing has improved!”

Needless to say, it’s been mutual. Intriguing to be in contact with an international footballer from before I was born.

Does he look back and wish the pitch had been dry enough to show Wright and Eckersley how fast he was? I get the impression he’s fine about it.

A couple of phone calls can’t tell you very much, but he comes across as a contented man, a class act, and a fit guy. Just to have played for his country is enough on a long and varied CV.