The little-known stories of two American World Cup football superstars of Portuguese descent | OneFootball

Few people know that long before the MLS, the NASL or the hype surrounding the World Cup in 1994, football was big in the United States. The golden age of soccer came during the 1920s, a period of economic growth fuelled by the huge number of immigrants that travelled from Europe in search of a better life. Many of those were Portuguese, mostly from the Azores or Madeira, and settled on the East Coast, particularly around the Massachusetts area.

What even fewer people know is that two of the first great superstars of American football were of Portuguese descent. This is the story of how a footballer who was compared to the greatest baseball star in history, and a creative midfielder who helped pull off one of the greatest surprises in the World Cup, are now part of the Soccer Hall of Fame, and yet few in Portugal even know they existed.

Billy Gonçalves, the ‘Babe Ruth’ of football

Billy Gonçalves, known in USA as Billy Gonsalves (Photo: National Soccer Hall of Fame)

They didn’t call him the Babe Ruth of football for nothing. Billy Gonçalves – or Gonsalves, as many spelt it back in the day – was neither a small man nor had he ever faced a better footballer. He was huge for the time, measuring 1.88 m (6ft2), and he was strong as well. Perfect small moustache, cropped hair to the back, as was still fashionable in those days, he was a commanding presence. In a word, he was a star. Actually, the star.

Football in the United States had been played since the 19th century due to British – particularly Scottish – influence, but from the 1920s the game quickly became even more popular. First, many soldiers who had travelled to Europe to fight in World War I had got to know it first-hand from their fellow British or French comrades in the trenches. Also, huge numbers of European migrant workers, much like the Latino community of today, had embarked in search of the American dream since the turn of the century, and they seemed to prefer football to the more locally based sports.

American football, the national rugby version, was still pretty much a college sport, and basketball remained niche. Only baseball ranked as a national pastime, and football was very popular in certain areas, mainly in the East and Midwest states. In 1908, the Gonçalves family, who had just arrived from the Azores, brought another offspring to the world in Rhode Island. He was christened Adelino William. A first name for the Portuguese heritage and a second name for an easier life experience in his new country.

From boxing to baseball to soccer stardom

Adelino, like so many local kids in the area, grew up kicking a ball on the streets while their families worked mainly in factories and shipyards. He had six older brothers and a couple of younger siblings who were born after him as his family moved to Fall River, one of the biggest settlements for the Portuguese community in the country. He was a renowned boxer, played baseball regularly, but it was at football that he excelled. After spells at Pioneer and Liberal, alongside many other offspring from Portuguese families, the boy everyone knew as Billy became a key element for Lusitania FC, the local community-based club. In 1926, the club won the double for the Massachusetts league and cup, surprising everyone.

The Boston Soccer Club, which had just been admitted to the newly formed national league, the American Soccer League, quickly signed him, and he immediately became a household name. He netted in his first game, and the club went on to claim the ASL trophy by the end of 1928. He stayed on for another season, moving back to Fall River where the Fall River Marksmen were starting to make a name for themselves. As a deadly striker, he partnered Bert Patenaude, and for the following four campaigns, the duo netted incredible numbers and allowed the Fall River side to claim back-to-back league titles.

However, in 1929, the Wall Street Crash hurt football deeply. The economic crisis that followed made it even more difficult for a national competition to be sustainable, with the huge cost of travelling, and Fall River was forced to merge with the New York Soccer Club just to make it out of the storm. It was at the same time that the United States got an invitation to take part in the first edition of the World Cup in Uruguay. The tournament would be played in July, which would mean winter for North Americans, and many doubted it was an experience worthwhile but the US decided to board the ship nonetheless.

A Portuguese among Scots flying the flag for America

USA’s 1930 World Cup team, Billy Gonçalves second from the left, front row. (Photo: www.ussoccer.com)

They were drawn against Paraguay and Belgium, who were seen as heavy favourites to progress, and the national coach Robert Millar, a former Scottish international, called up a squad comprised mainly of Scottish-born players or sons of Scottish emigrants. There was one exception to the rule, and that was Gonçalves. He was so big that the press had already labelled him the Babe Ruth of football. Ruth, of course, was and is still considered the greatest baseball player of all time. That was the celebrity status he enjoyed and why he, aged only 21 by then, was already seen as the star draw of the side.

In the opener, Billy was amazing, creating chances which the Americans took as they ran out 3-0 winners against a much-fancied Belgium side in front of a crowd of 20,000 in Montevideo. In the following match, again his connection with Pateneude was key, as he set up his strike partner for the first-ever hat-trick of a US soccer player in a World Cup, something that no other North American footballer has done since.

Then came the decisive semifinals against the heavy favourites Argentina. The South American side had been runners-up in the Olympics and were seen as strong contenders to win the trophy, and they gave the US national side a sound beating, scoring six past goalkeeper Jimmy Douglas. Gonçalves was again in the starting lineup but could only watch on and marvel at the quality of the likes of Stabile, Scopelli, Peucelle and Evaristo. Without a 3rd/4th playoff match, the Americans returned home sharing the final position of joint third place with Yugoslavia, who had been beaten by the eventual World Champions Uruguay.

Multiple moves and a stack of silverware

It was the USMNT’s best ever result. Gonçalves, despite not netting, was considered the best player of the squad and returned home to be lauded as one of the key figures of soccer, but the economic depression was already taking a heavy toll throughout American society. The fusion with the New York side only worked for a couple of seasons as the squad was forced to move back to New Bedford, in Massachusetts, and was rebaptized as New Bedford Whalers before then returning to Fall River to their original name.

Gonçalves kept on scoring, but there were no more titles to be won. In 1933, he was signed by the Stix, Baer and Fuller FC, a club that was trying to pinch the best players nationwide. It meant another league title, his fourth, and a new call-up for the 1934 World Cup, one of the very few to repeat the 1930 experience. Their campaign didn’t last long. In a full knock-out event, they were ousted by Italy, who would win it 7-1 in the last sixteen. Back in St. Louis, Gonçalves followed his friend and manager Alex McNab to the St. Louis Breweries, winning the league title as the key player in the side. He was by then the most decorated footballer in American history and was aged only 26.

The collapse of the ASL meant regional tournaments dominated the game, and after another season in the Midwest, Gonçalves returned to the East coast where he ended up claiming more silverware with the Kearny Scots and then to the Brooklyn Hispanos, where once again he was crowned league champion. He finished his career in 1952 playing for Newark, a former German-based club, but by then, there was another superstar of Portuguese descent in town.

John Sousa Benavides

John Sousa Benavides, known in America as John Souza, was selected in the 1950 World Cup team of the tournament

In 1920, Fall River was bursting with football passion when John Sousa Benavides was born. His family was from both Azorean and Madeiran descent and had arrived a couple of years before in Massachusetts, like so many others. He grew up worshipping Billy Gonçalves as he became the star player for the local side where John started to kick a ball, still in his early teens. After being drafted to fight in World War II, he returned to Fall River, where he enrolled in the first team of the rebranded Fall River Ponta Delgada.

He spent the next five years playing for the side, masterminding the game from a holding midfielder position. Contrary to Gonçalves, he didn´t look like a sports star. Not as tall, not as strong, he was also unlucky to lose almost five years of his footballing career due to the war. By the time he started playing the game seriously, he was already 25, and football wasn’t going anywhere. American football was starting to become extremely popular, and baseball still reigned supreme. The lack of a coherent national league made regional duels attractive but predictable. Sousa, whose name was spelt Souza in the local press, guided Fall River to three consecutive titles between 1946 and 1949, but these were the days of the American Amateur Cup, which didn’t enjoy the same prestige the ASL had twenty years earlier.

However, he had been capped for USA by the end of the decade, taking part in the 1948 Olympics, and when the 1950 World Cup came by, his name was mandatory on the team-sheet for national coach William Jeffrey. A Scotsman, Jeffrey belonged to the old guard generation that had made the game popular in the country almost three decades earlier, and he became part of the Penn University college squad, which he coached for decades. Popular and a no-nonsense manager, he was approached by the national federation to form a group of players capable of competing against the very best. They were all practically amateurs, had little experience playing against sides from other countries, and when they were seeded alongside heavy favourites Spain and England, few even bothered to take note of the names who travelled south to Brazil.

Souza and Souza

Among the team selection, and alongside names who would make the history books like Haitian-born Joe Gaetjens, the goalkeeper of Italian descent Frank Borghi and skipper Walter Bahr, there were two sons of the Portuguese diaspora who had made a big name for themselves in the American Amateur League. Although they shared the same surname, they weren’t relatives, but both Ed and John Souza not only made the trip south but also took the same Portuguese flavour to the American endeavour.

John was the key figure of the side, as he controlled the run of play from midfield, but not even he was able to prevent a Spanish win by 3-1 in the opening round despite assisting Gino Pariani for an early goal. Spain then went on to beat Chile, who in turn had been beaten by the England squad who had a B-side touring Canada at the time, full of high-profile players. The English believed they could take it easy against the Americans, expecting a decisive showdown against Spain in the final match for a place in the group stage that would replace the semi-finals and final.

USA stun England

Although Walter Winterbottom selected many popular names such as Stan Mortensen and Billy Wright, there was no Tom Finney nor Stanley Matthews in the team. Jeffrey added Ed Souza to the attacking line, and his combined moves with John Souza proved a nightmare for the English defence, who expected a much lower-quality opponent. Seven minutes before half time, Joe Gaetjens scored one of the most iconic goals in World Cup history, but if the United States side stayed afloat, it was due to John Souza’s commanding presence.

The win knocked England out of their first World Cup, and they would go on to lose against Spain. But for the United States soccer community, it was a huge achievement. They would be well beaten by the Chileans in their last match 5-2, but John Souza assisted yet again for the first US goal scored by Frank Wallace, and Souza then suffered a foul that led to Maca’s goal from the penalty spot.

Best midfielder at the World Cup award

When the competition was over, he was elected by the local newspaper Mundo Esportivo as the best midfielder in the competition and was included in the official team of the tournament alongside the famed Uruguayan and Brazilians who played the famous Maracanazo match that decided the tournament´s winner. Claudio Reyna, back in 2002, is the only US player since to have made it into a best eleven of the World Cup which puts Souza’s standing into perspective. He is without doubt one of the most popular and lauded footballers in the history of American Soccer.

Going back to Fall River, John played for another season before moving to the New York German Hungaria FC, where he claimed a fourth league trophy before taking part in the 1952 Olympics for a last call with the Stars and Stripes, then ending his career. He lived to be 91, passing away in Dover in 2012 and was inducted into the Soccer Hall of Fame in 1976. Billy Gonçalves, Souza’s idol as a teenager, had been inducted into the Soccer Hall of Fame back in 1950, and Gonçalves lived to see the induction of his fellow successor of shared heritage, dying in New Jersey the following year. Two legends of the American game with the same Portuguese roots.

Nobody in Portugal ever mentioned their passing, nor bothered to check out where they had come from and yet, before Eusébio, they were the first Portuguese-related players to shine at a World Cup. In today’s game, with the ability to scout players from different backgrounds, as happened with Euro 2016 winner Raphaël Guerreiro and Nations League 2025 champion Diogo Costa, they would have been able to be selected to play for Portugal. Yet, they remained a mystery. What is undeniable is that both Billy Gonçalves and John Sousa – known in the country where they made their names as Gonsalves and Souza – are authentic World Cup stars. Their stories deserved to be told and celebrated as role models among the widespread Portuguese community in the United States, as well as on the other side of the Atlantic in their nation of their ancestry.