Wangerin, David

David Wangerin (1962-2012) was a noted soccer historian, writing for When Saturday Comes, a British soccer magazine, and authoring several highly-respected books on the history of soccer in America, including Soccer in a Football World: The Story of America’s Forgotten Game (2006) and Distant Corners: American Soccer’s History of Missed Opportunities and Lost Causes (2008). Born in Chicago and growing up in Wisconsin, Wangerin was a soccer enthusiast all his life and in 1978 helped to set up one of the first adult soccer leagues in the Jefferson County area. He also coached the first girls’ and boys’ soccer teams at Fort Atkinson High School in 1986. He moved to the U.K. in 1987, in part as a fan of Aston Villa Football Club, and was employed at an Edinburgh-based asset management firm. He passed away from cancer in 2012 at 50.
The Wangerin collection encompasses research materials for his books and articles, almost extensively photocopies of newspaper articles on American soccer matches, plus approximately 200 books on the history of soccer and the NFL. Wangerin plots the ebb and flow of American soccer through stories in major publications and, more significantly, small local newspapers. A rare collection of sources on a topic that can almost only be researched through the press it garnered, a selection of materials documents early St. Louis and Wisconsin soccer leagues.