Yes, Virginia, there was pro soccer in the US before Pelé

Many people think pro soccer first burst onto the scene in the US with the founding of the North American Soccer League in the late 1960s. That league reached its peak in the late '70s when world supertstars including Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer, George Best and many others could be found roaming the pitches in various North American cities. Fifty or so years earlier, however, soccer saw its first surge in popularity on this side of the Atlantic, primarily thanks to the many European immigrants who had grown up playing the sport.

The American Soccer League, founded in 1921, was one of the first pro leagues in the U.S. with teams based in towns with large immigrant populations such as Fall River and New Bedford, Mass., Bethlehem, Penn., and Paterson, N.J., as well as the large cities of Philadelphia, Boston and New York. you can read more about the league's interesting history here.