Daily News | Kensington’s Walter Bahr upset England, then took down North Catholic
The score remained tied after regulation, sending the 1964 City Championship into overtime and keeping the shivering players at 29th and Clearfield Streets until someone could score.
Bahr will be remembered Friday before the U.S. plays England in the World Cup for assisting on the stunning goal in 1950 that handed the Americans a 1-0 win. But it was his motivation 14 years later — pushing his players to keep going even when they couldn’t feel their legs — that still resonates with the teenagers he gathered on that frozen field in North Philly.
“Hey, I’m a Kenzo, you know what I mean,” said Larry Sullivan, who grew up on Gransback Street. “I didn’t think they would call the game off, but they got close to it.”North — a soccer powerhouse until it closed in 2010 — won 11 straight Catholic League crowns from 1957-67 while Frankford shared the Public League titles in the 1960s with Central, Mastbaum, and Dobbins.
Most of the United States, Bahr recalled a few years before his death in 2018, didn’t even know the World Cup was happening. A teammate — Kensington’s Benny McLaughlin — had to drop out because he couldn’t get off work. The sport was very much a niche in America, but it was king in the neighborhoods that fed Frankford and North Catholic.
“The Brazilians, from the start of the game until the end of the game, they were rooting for us,” Bahr told The Inquirer in 2010. “And when it ended, they stormed the field and they carried off some of our players. At first, some of us didn’t realize why they cheered for us the entire game rather than some for the British and some for our team. It was because if we won, England probably would not play in the final game.
“He hung up the phone and said, ‘You all have scholarships to Penn State.’ That was it,” Albright said. “That’s how much drag he had back in the day.”
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