The Cosmopolitan Soccer League plays a traditional international schedule with competition beginning the second weekend of September and running through June, with a winter break from late December to early March.

During the winter months, the league runs an indoor tournament due to New York's cold climate.

Attendance and popularity declined sharply until the founding of the North American Soccer League in 1968.

Prior to the professionalizing of the modern American game, the United States national team often consisted of Cosmopolitan League players.

Brooklyn, Hoboken FC 1912 and Newark S.C., banded together to found the German American Soccer League.

As the name suggests, the teams were largely composed of recent immigrants from Central Europe, primarily Germany.

In order to continue to play a competitive schedule, the GASL joined with the Eastern District Soccer League to run a joint season.

That season, the GASL All Star team entered the ISL as the New Yorker, going to the final where it lost to Polonia Bytom 5–1.

As part of this process, the league's teams were directed to change their names to ones with less ethnic connotations, although this requirement was dropped three years later.