During
the most famous season in its history, the New York Cosmos was owned by Steve Ross, the ebullient and controversial
chief executive of Warner Brothers. He didn’t know much about soccer but he
knew the realities of the box-office. When he saw Franz
Beckenbauer playing at the back on his debut that memorable summer of
1977, he phoned down to the dug-out to bawl
out the manager with the immortal advice: “Get the Kraut into midfield! We’re
not paying him all that money to play deefence!”
Ross was a hands-on owner who had to
be strapped into his seat in the upper deck of Giants Stadium during matches
for fear he’d fall over the side with excitement. After one run of poor
performances that year, he took the corporate helicopter from Manhattan out to
New Jersey one morning, landed on the field in the middle of a training session
and warned every player, including Beckenbauer and Pele, that their jobs were
on the line.
At Hofstra University Stadium on Long Island next
Saturday night, the reborn New York Cosmos take on the Fort Lauderdale Strikers
in their first competitive game in 29 years. Anecdotes like those above explain
why the passage of almost three decades without playing has done little to diminish
the legend of the club. They remain one of the most storied outfits in American
sports and if their return to the North American Soccer League (a level below
Major League Soccer) has prompted an outbreak of unashamed nostalgia, it’s also
been a rather protracted affair.
When an English consortium including Terry Byrne,
best-known as David Beckham’s business manager bought the Cosmos name back in
2009, it was presumed a move to MLS was imminent, perhaps even with the then
Los Angeles Galaxy midfielder on board in some on or off-field capacity. In a
blaze of publicity, Eric Cantona was hired as director of football, Umbro began
marketing a range of retro shirts from the club’s 1970s’ pomp that were sold in
men’s clothes shops, and Pele was made honorary president. Although Cantona
remains involved in a rather tangential capacity as a loosely-defined
ambassador, the presence of Pele in the ground next Saturday will remind
everybody once more of the club’s unique heritage.
During the Cosmos' lengthy courtship
of Pele in the mid-1970s, it became apparent that the Brazilian government
might actually refuse to allow the country's most prized national asset to
leave. Knowing that sort of political intransigence had prevented the biggest
clubs in Italy, Spain and Portugal from signing the player from Santos before,
the Cosmos decided to try a different tack. Former US Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger (a soccer nut) accompanied one of the club's delegations to Brazil
where the central thrust of his rather blunt contribution to the debate was as
follows: "Listen, America has done so much for Brazil that we'd now like
you to loan us Pele."
The biggest signing of the new
edition arrived in a rather more straightforward fashion. Although the club
has largely eschewed the old-time route of importing expensive past-it marquee
names from other countries, an exception was made for Marcos Senna, the
Brazilian midfielder who played such a pivotal role in Spain’s 2008 European
Championship win. He’ll anchor a squad featuring half a dozen players from the
surrounding area that will be managed by Giovanni Savarese, a New Yorker and a former
MLS stalwart.
“We
know that we must earn every bit of respect and credibility that is afforded to
us in the highly competitive sporting landscape that operates across this
city,” said Seamus O’Brien, the Cosmos chairman who has driven what he calls
this “reboot” since buying out the English consortium in 2011. “I am happy for
us to be judged, not by words but by our actions and deeds. Step by step, we
have begun that journey, building a foundation which I hope will ensure that
when we reach the top again, and we will, we’ll be able to stay there long past
my lifetime.”
With
Saudi Arabia’s Sela Sport as co-owners, the Cosmos has more than just money
going for it. Firstly, the kids who lived through the glory years of Pele,
Giorgio Chinaglia and Beckenbauer (when for they drew an average of 40,000 plus
several seasons), are all parents now. They were the first generation in
America to grow up with pro soccer on the menu and, lately, they’ve been
dusting off the Pele lunchboxes from their schooldays to prove their
credentials. Secondly, opting to base themselves on Long Island, where they
hope to build a bespoke 25,000 seater stadium at Belmont Park racecourse, gives
them a population of 8m and the largest schoolboys’ league in the world to tap
into.
While
the previous owners opted to garner international headlines by putting together
a team of all-stars, including Robbie Keane, to play at Paul Scholes’ testimonial
in 2011, the new bosses are all about tending the grassroots and building for
the long-term, with moving into MLS the eventual goal. Cosmos’ players and
officials have been visible at events in the island’s soccer community for the
best part of a year. A much more organic approach, it’s befitting an outfit
that in its previous incarnation went from desperately giving away tickets free
with Burger King Whoppers to having Mick Jagger, Barbara Streisand and Muhammad
Ali turning up to watch them play.
“The beautiful and the
near-beautiful dropped out of the skies in corporate helicopters, while down
below Jersey housewives in pink polyester suits found themselves in traffic
jams getting to the games,” wrote Shep Messing, the Cosmos’ Harvard-educated
goalkeeper during the glory years. ‘So
did pin-striped stockbrokers, large Ukrainian families, college students, bored
baseball fans, the Governor of New York and the President’s son. Those of us
who were there in the beginning, the mud-caked crazies who played for
food-stamps and the sheer fun of it, call it a miracle.”
Messing is back in the
Cosmos fold as a television announcer today, hoping to see the water turned
into wine all over again.
(first published in the Irish
Mail on Sunday, July 28th
2013)
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