[1][2] This led the USFA to briefly suspend the ASL, only to reinstate them when the league agreed to allow its teams to enter the next Challenge Cup.
The ASL caused more problems for USFA in 1927 when the league signed numerous top European players to lucrative contracts.
However, at the Sixteenth Annual Congress of FIFA, the USFA offered several concessions which led to an agreement among national organizations regarding player contracts.
The most vexing was the requirement to enter the National Challenge Cup which ran during the league’s season.
[4] Three of the ASL teams, Bethlehem Steel, Newark Skeeters and New York Giants chose to enter the cup.
With the stock market crash a month later, the corporate sponsorship on which many of the teams depended began to dry up.
By the end of the first half in November 1929, Bethlehem Steel led the standings with twenty-three points off an 11-2-1 record.
[9] The ESL therefore suspended its season, declared Bethlehem Steel the champion and began negotiations for the upcoming merger.