There are many in St.

Louis who claim that this city is a premier soccer town.

That it's part of our identity.

Well, spoiler alert, they're not wrong.

The proof is everywhere.

Soccer in St.

Louis has been played, loved and supported here for over a century by all ages and genders.

And this mural installed in the summer of 2025, commemorating one of the greatest upsets in World Cup history, boasts St.

Louis as America's first soccer city for all to see.

As we celebrate the 75th anniversary of what's largely considered one of the great American sports underdog stories and what historians call really one of the greatest upsets in FIFA World Cup history.

Matt Sebek, Chief Experience Officer for St.

Louis City SC, along with children of some players, are toasting this new mural of the 1950 U.S.

National Soccer Team, who went against all odds beat Powerhouse England in a World Cup match in Brazil.

What does that have to do with St.

Louis and the Hill?

Well, five of the 11 starting players were from St.

Louis, four of them from this neighborhood.

So we figured what better way to pay homage to that 75th year anniversary than a mural on the side of a foundational restaurant like Antonino's.

My dad was Harry Keough.

He wore number three in that match.

It's just terrific that St.

Louis City, our relatively new major league soccer franchise, recognizes the roots, how deep they go in St.

Louis for the beautiful game of soccer.

St.

Louis City SC commissioned local muralist Scott Pondrom to paint the tribute.

He quickly realized the significance of this game and what his mural means to those in this neighborhood.

Scott Pondrom, "I didn't really realize the level of detail that The Hill played.

And then when I started painting, like the sons and daughters of the players, the neighbors of the players, people who knew the players, like the story really came alive to me then.

In 2010, Patrick Murphy profiled the game and the players in the Nine PBS documentary, A Time for Champions.

The St.

Louisans all knew each other and had played together for years in neighborhood and amateur games.

Harry Keough was a mailman, an Irish kid who learned soccer in the Spanish neighborhood he grew up in.

Charlie Colombo, nicknamed Gloves because of his habit of playing in leather gloves, was a meatpacker known for taking no prisoners on the field.

Gino Pariani, a sheet metal stacker at a St.

Louis can factory, married just three days before he left for Brazil.

Two of the St.

Louis players had seen action in Europe.

Frank "Pee-Wee" Wallace spent 16 months in a German POW camp after his tank was set afire at Anzio.

Goalie Frank Borghi was decorated for his actions as a field medic in Normandy and made his living driving a hearse.

They were tough, they were good, and they knew it.

But the challenge before them was daunting.

They lost their first game against Spain in the tourney, 3-1.

Next they faced powerhouse England, and they had few illusions about the outcome.

If we gave them a good hard game and made them really work hard to win, that would have satisfied me personally.

I was hoping to hold them down at four or five goals.

The chances of us winning the United States was kind of weak.

England was favored to win the whole thing that year, the World Cup.

They were considered at that time the father of soccer.

The British had good reason to be confident.

London bookmakers put the odds of an American victory at 500 to 1.

With full-time day jobs, these young men were not professionally trained soccer players.

And it was tough from the start.

But shot after shot, England missed, or it was stopped by the American from the hill, goalie Frank Borghi.

38 minutes into the game, the miracle occurred.

Joe Gateson kind of dove out of a line of players.

Dove out and the ball was coming and he lunged like that and the ball went in.

It was just a one in a million, really.

One in a million made possible by five young men from St.

Louis, remembered on the hill by new generations of soccer players.

It's so foundational, you know, it's kind of the history of giants that we all kind of stand atop of right now and it's our job to make sure that that legacy is carried forward.