Over the years, there have been some great names associated with St. Louis soccer, both individuals like Charlie Colombo and Harry Keough and clubs like Scullin Steel and Stix, Baer and Fuller. But increasingly, those names are just names, and nothing more. They aren't connected to any flesh and blood. Just about everyone in St. Louis knows the city has had a major impact on soccer in America but just what that impact was, other than having a bunch of players on the U.S. team that beat England in the 1950 World Cup, gets increasingly hazy with each passing year.

"Soccer Made in St. Louis" addresses that problem and is an elegant solution. Author Dave Lange neatly spells out just how big soccer was in St. Louis, why it was and how it got there. The book explains who those players were and what they did in often meticulous detail. Even those who know a lot about St. Louis soccer history are bound to learn something from it.

The title is a takeoff on an old PBS series, "Soccer Made in Germany," which was one of the first programs that allowed Americans to see high-level European soccer. But St. Louis had a measurable product of its own that affected the game around the country, even if for years it played by different rules than its Eastern counterparts. St. Louis' soccer leaders went on to be leaders at the national level; its players represented the country at the international level. When the U.S. national team was floundering in qualifying for the 1958 World Cup, the U.S. Soccer Federation got rid of the whole squad and had St. Louis' Kutis club team represent them in the final two qualifying games. (There would be no St. Louis magic; the team lost both its remaining games and didn't qualify.)

Lange's research is extensive, both through interviews with soccer players and officials, and with archival material from the city's newspapers from a time when, before the NFL, NBA or NHL were in St. Louis, the sport received ample coverage. Books like this are obviously dependent on imagery, and photographs of early soccer teams are abundant, though, alas, static. It's a shame that the photography of the sport in its early days was limited to players posing for team photos. While Lange can write that the first recorded soccer game in St. Louis took place in 1875, no one seems to have taken a picture of a game until 1920.

How soccer was back then is almost hard to fathom today. Manchester United, now the world's most famous club, came to St. Louis in 1960? And played at old Public School Stadium on Kingshighway? Against a team of CYC All-Stars? But major foreign clubs used to routinely visit St. Louis.

Lange's book is not alone in looking at St. Louis and soccer. Another recent book on American soccer history, "Distant Corners" by David Wangerin (Temple University Press), provides a different — more critical, less pictorial — take on the early days of St. Louis soccer. The book looks at the country as a whole, but focuses one chapter on the often over-the-top physical nature of the St. Louis game and the insularity that may have doomed the sport here. Wangerin, a native Midwesterner who has lived in the United Kingdom for more than 20 years, also touches on some topics that Lange doesn't, such as the slightly dubious path Scullin Steel took to the 1921 Challenge Cup final.

The sad part of "Soccer Made in St. Louis," of course, is that you know how it's going to end. Soccer would finally make it in America in the 1990s, but it would bypass St. Louis. Major League Soccer has expanded to 19 teams, none of which are in St. Louis. St. Louis University has won 10 NCAA titles, but none since 1973. The last U.S. World Cup team had no players from St. Louis. The last chapter of the book, dealing with the sport since 1980, is downright depressing, as St. Louis has a brief flirtation with indoor soccer, a failed attempt at getting an MLS team and a women's team that would shut down in the middle of its second season. You wouldn't be blamed for shutting the book after Southern Illinois Edwardsville wins the NCAA title in 1979.

Soccer still remains big in St. Louis — it's among the leaders in MLS players produced per capita — but the city will never dominate the sport the way it once did. The rest of the country has caught up and passed it by. The work done by those St. Louis pioneers may not have helped soccer here, but it kept the game going and shaped the sport nationally. The people who did that deserve to be remembered.

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'Soccer Made in St. Louis'

By Dave Lange

Published by Reedy Press, 208 pages, $35

Dave Lange with U.S. National Team players, Pat McBride and Al Trost

When • 7 p.m. Wednesday

Where • MacDermott Grand Hall at the Missouri History Museum, Forest Park

How much • Free

More info • mohistory.org