So what kind of fanfare did team captain Walter Bahr receive when he returned from Brazil in 1950 after the Americans recorded the greatest upset in World Cup history?

“His wife (Davies) met him when he got back,’’ said Bahr’s son, Matt Bahr. “That was the only crowd he had.”

With the World Cup in the United States, television ratings are soaring and plenty of fans are following the red, white and blue heading into Monday night’s round of 16 game against Belgium in Seattle. But in 1950, it was a completely different story for American soccer.

Team USA won just one of three games in the World Cup in Brazil and failed to advance past the group stage, but the one victory was stunning. The Americans defeated England, then considered the top team in the world, 1-0. The story about the upset was made into the movie “The Game of Their Lives” in 2005.

Walter Bahr, a native of Philadelphia, was a midfielder and considered then the best player in the United States. He had the assist on the only goal of the game against England when his shot was redirected on a header by Haitian-born Joe Gaetjens.

Walter Bahr, named to the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 1976, was the last surviving player from that team, dying in 2018 at the age of 91. Were he alive today, Matt Bahr said he would be “thrilled” seeing what is going on now with Team USA in the World Cup.

“It’s been great,’’ Matt said from his home in Pittsburgh. “I think they have a good chance to advance. It’s been a delight to see how they’ve moved the ball.”

Walter had three sons, and all played professional soccer. Casey, now 77, also was a member of the 1972 U.S. Olympic team, following his dad having played for Team USA in the 1948 Olympics. Chris, now 73 and Matt, 70, became better known for being NFL kickers, with both winning two Super Bowl rings.

Matt played in the NFL from 1979-95 with Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Cleveland, the New York Giants, Philadelphia and New England, winning titles with the Steelers in the 1979 season and the Giants in the 1990 season.

Pardon Matt if he calls the team in Denver the “stinking Broncos” since he was on the Browns when they lost AFC Championship Games to them in 1986, 1987 and 1989 seasons. But before then, Matt actually called Mile High Stadium home.

Matt, a defender, in 1978 played for the Caribous of Colorado, who lasted one year in the North American Soccer League before being sold and moved to Atlanta. The Caribous, though, remain infamous for having brown and tan uniforms with tassels on the chest in an attempt to provide a Western look.

“They were the ugliest uniforms ever,’’ Bahr said.

But before Matt embarked on a two-year career in pro soccer and a 17-year NFL run, he was best known as Walter Bahr’s son.

Matt was born in 1956 and remembers his father playing soccer into the 1960s. He heard plenty of stories growing up about Team USA’s epic win in 1950.

Matt said it was basically a “pickup team” the Americans brought to Brazil for that World Cup.

“A lot of guys who probably would have made the team couldn’t get off work because they couldn’t afford to take that many weeks off,” he said. “(Players on the team) were supposed to be paid a hundred dollars a week but I don’t think they ever got paid. When they would get together (years later), that was a running gag. One would say, ‘Have you been paid?’ And the other would say, ‘Not yet.’ But they wanted to represent their country.”

Entering the World Cup, the Americans had lost their previous seven international matches by a combined score of 45-2. England, dubbed then the “Kings of Football,” entered the event having gone 23-4-3 since the end of World War II in 1945.

The Americans lost their first game in group play 3-1 to Spain, so at least they weren’t wiped out. England opened by defeating Chile 2-0.

Before the teams met on June 29, head coach Bill Jeffrey said the Americans “have no chance” and were “sheep ready to be slaughtered.” With England expected to win in a romp, the team didn’t even dress out Stanley Matthews, considered the best player in the world then when substitutions weren’t allowed.

With the game played in Belo Horizonte, a modest announced crowd of 10,151 showed up for the match Matt Bahr called “David vs. Goliath.” The fans were treated to a stunner.

In the 37^th minute, Walter Bahr took a shot from 25 yards. As the ball approached the goal, Gaetjens redirected it with his head. That amazingly held up as the game’s only goal.

“It was an upset of the best team in the world at the time,’’ Matt said. “In England, when the score came out, they thought it was a misspelled telegram. They thought it was 10-1 or something like that, not 1-0 on the bad side. It wasn’t as big of a deal in the U.S. then as it was in England.”

In 1950, only one U.S. reporter was at the game in Dent McSkimming of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who paid his own way since the paper wouldn’t foot the bill. But while there wasn’t a tremendous amount of buzz then in the United States about soccer, Matt said “the game went on to become more and more famous” as the sport gained popularity.

Team USA ended up losing its third game 5-2 to Chile and didn’t advance out of the group stage. England, shell-shocked from the loss to the Americans, also didn’t advance, losing its third game 1-0 to Spain.

In another upset, host Brazil ended up losing the World Cup final 2-1 to Uruguay before 173,850 mostly stunned fans in Rio de Janeiro.

After the World Cup, Walter Bahr was so respected in England that he twice was offered opportunities to play for Manchester United. But he turned them down because it didn’t pay enough for him to travel across the Atlantic to play. He remained well known over the years in the U.S. soccer community, meeting celebrities such as Pele when he came to America in the 1970s and Joe Biden when he was vice president in 2010.

After starring as a player, Walter made his mark in coaching, which included leading Penn State from 1974-88. During that time, he coached sons Chris and Matt, who both played soccer and football for the Nittany Lions. Chris ended up being a second-round pick by Cincinnati in the 1976 NFL draft while Matt went in the sixth round to Pittsburgh in 1979.

In 1978, after Matt had used up his soccer eligibility at Penn State and before his redshirt senior season playing football for the Nittany Lions, he turned to pro soccer. He was the eighth pick in the first round of the NASL draft in 1978 by the expansion Caribous of Colorado. They had filled the soccer void in the city after the Denver Dynamo moved to Minnesota after playing the 1974 and 1975 seasons in the NASL.

One of the Caribous owners was James Guericio, owner of the Caribou Ranch recording studio, where Elton John, Joe Walsh, Chicago and others had recorded albums in a barn in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. So that’s where the team name came from.

In order to create buzz, the team came up with the brown and tan jerseys that included a strip of leather fringe across the chest.

“They were just silly,’’ Bahr said. “The other teams laughed at us. We kind of looked like belly dancers with that fringe. You would try to leave your warm-up suit on as long as possible before the game. At first, my name was misspelled on the back of my jersey, ‘Bhar.’ I didn’t tell them because, ‘This is good. No one will recognize me.”’

That wasn’t the only gimmick for players on the team.

“When we traveled, we were required to wear ten-gallon hats, these big cowboy hats,’’ Bahr said. “It was our costume.”

Bahr made a salary that season of $12,000. He played 24 games as a starter for the Caribous before being traded late in the season to the Tulsa Roughnecks.

“I don’t think we ever got more than 20,000 fans for a game and when we were playing at Mile High, it was cavernous,’’ Bahr said of the Caribous, who finished 8-22 that season. “The crowd seemed even smaller than it was. We were probably regarded as a minor-league outfit. Soccer hadn’t really caught on among the general public.”

NEWS: The fringe is BACK! Rapids to wear Caribous kits. http://t.co/18FMB3UYPB #CaribousofColorado pic.twitter.com/X9dAlVEaTe

— Colorado Rapids (@ColoradoRapids) April 1, 2014

Bahr still keeps up with some players on the team, including Jomo Sono and Louis Nanchoff and at least they can laugh about the uniforms. Bahr got a chuckle when the Colorado Rapids on April 1, 2014, posted on social media a photo of the infamous Caribous uniforms and said they would be wearing them as throwbacks for an upcoming home game. It turned out to be an April Fool’s joke.

“That was cute,’’ he said.

Bahr ended up playing for the Philadelphia Stoners of the American Soccer League in 1979 before turning his attention to the NFL. During his impressive career, his most notable game was kicking five field goals, including a 42-yarder on the final play, as the Giants defeated San Francisco 15-13 in the 1990 NFC Championship Game.

A week later, Bahr’s 21-yard field goal with 7:32 left in the game closed out the scoring in the Giants’ 20-19 win over Buffalo in Super Bowl XXV. That gave him three career Super Bowl field goals, one in Pittsburgh’s 31-19 win over the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl XIV and two against the Bills.

“I don’t have a worship-me room in my house, but I have the two Super Bowl team pictures up that I played for,’’ he said. “I do very few card shows and things like that, and I might bring out my Super Bowl rings then but they’re uncomfortable to wear. When someone shakes your hand, it hurts.”

After his retirement as a player, Bahr became a successful electrical engineer in Pittsburgh, which has included owning several companies. He calls himself now semi-retired.

Asked if it is a big deal to be living in Pittsburgh as a Super Bowl-winning player with the Steelers, he cracked, “It occasionally gets you a cup of coffee.”

For now, Bahr is enthusiastically watching the World Cup on television. He saw Team USA’s first three games while in Italy for a wedding and was back in Pittsburgh to see last Wednesday’s 2-0 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina to start knockout play.

Team USA and England are on opposite sides of the bracket, so the two can’t meet until the final on July 19. If that were to happen, don’t be surprised to see another movie made about those teams playing in the World Cup.