Friday 4 September 2015

Bert Patenaude and the First World Cup Hat-trick - Part Two

I have always wondered why it took so long for Bert Patenaude to be credited with the first World Cup hat-trick, and for further background information please see the first article I wrote below in the link provided.

The question for me was why didn't the governing body of soccer in the United States petition Fifa to give Patenaude recognition, after all they had the Official report written by the US team manager Wilfred Cummings, who was present and witnessed the event and recorded it as it happened?

And why did it take Fifa 86 years to give Patenaude credit?

Part of the reason may lie in the fact the United States Football Association (USFA) lost the official record (Cummings report) when they moved their headquarters ''from their humble beginnings - a room above the Cornish Arms, an ex-patriart bar in downtown New York...'' to the Empire State building (Glasgow Herald, 2 June 1982) . However, that report would resurface via Mrs Meg Auld, the widow of Andy Auld, who was part of the US team, in 1982 when she gave the copy to the soccer governing body.

Also, knowledge of Patenaude's hat-trick had been published in print, some four years earlier in a book  titled All About Soccer by Jared Lebow (see link below) On page 53 of the book published in 1978, he notes that Patenaude scored all three goals against Paraguay.

And then in 1990 the Los Angeles Times (14 June 1990) wrote an article which recorded the American forwards three goal accomplishment after it interviewed Patenaude's team-mates, Arnie Oliver and and James Brown, as the United States were preparing to play in their first World Cup in forty years in Italy.

It would take the research of historian and journalist, Colin Jose, to pick up the baton and send his evidence to Fifa in April 1995. Why it would take Fifa another eleven years for its ''external'' specialists to finally give acknowledgement is rather baffling.

My previous article on Patenaude, had shown that there was more evidence to support the claim to the first World Cup hat-trick and recently I have found another article in a Brazilian newspaper, Diario Nacional, that adds even more weight, making it five contemporary newspaper reports that recorded the US strikers achievement.

Diario Nacional, 18 July 1930.





The first article on Bert Patenaude.
http://worldcup1930project.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/bert-patenaude-and-first-world-cup-hat.html

All About Soccer by Jared Lebow
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gjRLurbI6oMC&q=bert+patenaude+usa+hattrick&dq=bert+patenaude+usa+hattrick&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CD4Q6AEwBTgKahUKEwiL0f2-h9zHAhWtF9sKHQKAC78

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