'Goal!'
The New York Cosmos were the best and worst
'of what soccer in America was.'
We were the first big pioneers where big stars came to the United States.
'Pelé, Giorgio Chinaglia, Franz Beckenbauer, Johann Cruyff...'
It was my dream at that time to go to play for the New York Cosmos.
I think it was one of the best decisions I ever made.
'Goal!'
All of a sudden in that one summer, summer 1977, the Cosmos took over.
When you saw that stadium with 80,000 people
'you almost had an orgasm... really!'
It was a happening. It was an event. It was unprecedented.
'The Cosmos were North America's soccer ambassadors to the world.'
'We sensed we were in on something special.'
The world's sport is finally being berthed right here, right in our midst.
Soccer will be the biggest big league of all.
'Goal number three!'
We transcended everything.
We were international. We were cool.
We were everything to everybody.
The world's most popular sport came to its most powerful nation
in the same way the United States imported many of its people
through the gates at Ellis Island,
imported from almost every corner of the world.
'This is the cradle of New York soccer in the early days.'
Ethnic communities playing soccer on fields like this,
in and around New York for decades, really.
"Hyphenated Americans" we used to call them,
German-Americans, Greek-Americans, but never American-Americans.
From the melting pot came America's first great soccer team.
'In 1950, a free-spirited band of Yanks'
pulled off one of the most stunning upsets in World Cup history.
The World Cup, the Tournament of Nations
held every four years since 1930 is the global game's ultimate event.
The American's second match in 1950 was against mighty England,
the country where the modern sport was born.
I was just a teenager at that time, but it was a great shock to wake up
'to find England had been knocked out by the United States.'
We just couldn't believe it.
The winning goal was headed home by Joe Gaetjens,
a Haitian living in New York City who made his living as a dishwasher.
On the day he became an American hero, he wasn't even a US citizen.
It would be 40 years before the US fielded a World Cup team again.
'Americans don't have the attention span that other people do'
for watching a sport that is free-flowing and continuous.
'Hot smash! Burleson's gonna have a long throw. He makes it.'
'That ends the inning. Bottom of the 7th, 5-3, Cincinnati.'
In our sports there are all these artificial stops and starts,
'which we use to indulge ourselves in beer and Cracker Jacks and whatever.'
'Football, baseball, basketball, hockey,
'all have natural breaks.'
I think that people watching soccer
for the first time wonder what's going on.
It's just up and down, up and down.
'Our football is a game without stopping,
'where you've got to think for yourself.
'A game that you do with your feet and not with your hands.'
All these things are totally different for the American public.
'If you really want to get soccer,
'you have to concentrate on it for the entire 45 minutes.'
I have sometimes likened it to a play.
If you go to a play in the theatre,
'you are going to pay attention to it until the intermission.'
'Then you take a break and talk about it,
'then sit down again and watch the entire second act.'
Soccer's like that. It's not like the other American sports.
'It's about tradition.
'People in the rest of the world
'are passionate about soccer.'
There's no passion in America about soccer.
By the 1960s, there was no passion because there was no soccer.
It was just a country where 99.9% of the population never heard of it.
No youth leagues. No amateur teams, nothing.
It was an absolute barren country in terms of soccer.
And yet the next great American football club
would change the world's game forever.
The phenomenon known as the New York Cosmos
would not have happened without the passion of one man.
My father was a big sports fan. He loved watching football.
We went to basketball games and hockey games all the time.
'And I think the idea of developing a sport'
from basically scratch in the United States really turned him on.
He was a traveling salesman who became the world's first media titan.
Long before Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch,
there was Steve Ross, creator of Warner Communications.
'They owned Warner Brothers Studio which boasted
'some of the great film stars of the day:
'Redford, Streisand, Dustin Hoffman.'
They owned record companies that featured musicians
like Dylan and the Rolling Stones, Ray Charles.
He started the first true entertainment empire with comic books,
and ended up igniting the cable television revolution.
He also bought an arcade game company,
and helped create the first name in home computing.
He was a genius. In the financial world he was really unbelievable.
And he was also close to Frank Sinatra, by the way.
He was somebody.
He was fantastic. He was not only a big businessman.
He was very charming. He was like a father to us.
He had transformed his father-in-law's funeral parlor
and a collection of parking lots into a media empire.
For Steve Ross, anything seemed possible, even soccer.
It captivated him. The man owned movie studios.
The man owned six record companies, cable, you know.
'Company doing $6 billion a year,'
and he's enamored with going into a locker room.
'But for what reason? What purpose was he obsessed with it?
'What was that all about?'
The big bang of the Cosmos began with a backbeat.
And two brothers from Istanbul.
Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun are responsible for more classic vinyl
than Elvis and the Beatles put together.
Ahmet founded Atlantic Records in 1947.
Warner Communications bought Atlantic 20 years later,
and the Erteguns went to work for Steve Ross.
Here we were, two New York businessmen,
who had this love of soccer.
'My brother decided to leave Atlantic Records.'
And Steve Ross said, "If you'll stay, I'll do anything that you like."
So my brother said to Steve Ross,
"What I really would like is a professional soccer/football team."
Nesuhi Ertegun came to me and Steve actually and said,
"Soccer is going to be the biggest sport. It is the biggest sport in the world.
"Clearly it's going to overtake America."
Television viewers in the US had got their first taste
of world football's potential in 1966.
They saw almost 100,000 fans pack Wembley Stadium
for the final between England and West Germany,
as the BBC broadcast was carried live in America.
In one of the most thrilling matches ever played,
young Beckenbauer and his team-mates could not stop England's Geoff Hurst.
'England... it's a goal!'
'Some people are on the pitch, they think it's all over...
'It is now!'
In the UK alone, 32 million viewers tuned in to the extra time thriller.
Still the biggest audience in BBC history.
You can't have a professional league without having investors convinced.
I think the showing of the World Cup in 1966 was the turning point.
'That convinced them that it could happen in this country.'
The American game of the same name was flourishing
with the birth of the Super Bowl and the first network television contracts.
The American Football League franchises had become over the years,
sometimes quite quickly, worth millions of dollars.
'Soccer franchises were very cheap, so you had the opportunity'
of getting in on something on the ground floor.
Emboldened by the BBC success in '66,
American investors backed not one but two professional US soccer leagues.
'Trying to find an American who could play soccer,'
American-born who could play soccer, it just wasn't there.
By 1968, the two leagues had collapsed into one-
the North American Soccer League- featuring five largely failing franchises.
We knew if the league was going to be a success
'and get the media sponsorship and television attention,'
that we had to have a successful New York franchise.
The stars would align for the NASL just south of the border
in Mexico City at the 1970 World Cup.
'Goooooal!'
'Nesuhi and I gave a big party at the World Cup.'
We invited Pelé, and all of them came to our party.
'I just happened to gatecrash into a party.'
And a gentleman there introduced himself. He said, "Come on in.
"My name is Nesuhi Ertegun."
So right then, that night, I met his brother as well, Ahmet.
And we arranged to meet in New York later.
Nesuhi and Ahmet returned to Manhattan
and held Steve Ross to his promise.
'Steve and I called eight other executives.'
We got them to put in $35,000 each. I did it. Steve did it.
What's a million dollars between friends?
They hired Clive Toye as general manager
before most of them had ever seen a game.
'Nesuhi said, "I'm going to take you to St Louis.'
"'The hotbed of soccer. This is where soccer is really big."
'We got there, and 340 people were in the stands.
'I counted them. 340 people.'
We watched the game and I never knew what a header was.
I thought giving great head was something else!
'I looked at Steve and said, "We love Nesuhi. We love Ahmet.'
"But this is going to be a disaster!"
'The league was nothing to talk about. It was really semi-professional.'
And we had a rag-tag team.
They started recruiting players. All they needed was a name.
The previous New York professional club had been the New York Mets,
short for metropolitan, so I thought, "What's bigger than metropolitan?"
I came up with cosmopolitan, and suddenly it clicked, "Cosmos".
'That's how the Cosmos became the Cosmos.'
Toye's first hire was an English player/coach named Gordon Bradley.
Clive was in the office doing his planning and his thing.
I was out in the field, coaching.
My name is Gordon Bradley and I'm a professional soccer player.
A lot of you have probably not seen this game before,
but I think it's the greatest game in the world.
In the early years, Bradley and Toye built the team with players
mainly from New York's amateur leagues.
'The North American Soccer League was professional.'
But in essence it was a semi-pro league.
We didn't make a lot of money. We practiced twice a week.
We all worked for a living. I worked for an architectural firm.
I was teaching at a high-school and then playing for the Cosmos on the side.
I'll never forget the first contract I signed. I was so proud.
I thought I needed an agent. "How do I negotiate?"
Then the coach Gordon Bradley said, "I'll offer you $2100 for the season."
I said, "Well, what would you say if I said no?"
He said, "I couldn't care less." So I said, "OK, yeah. I'll sign."
I worked at Warner Brothers Jungle Habitat
which was an open safari up in West Milford, New Jersey.
Randy Horton was the Cosmos' first leading scorer.
A chimp named Harold from his day-job was the team's first mascot.
Horton's boss at the wild animal park, an architect from Havana, Cuba,
named Raphael de la Sierra,
became the Cosmos' first vice president.
A friend asked me if I knew
how many people played on each side.
And I had no idea if it was ten or nine.
I don't know, a bunch of guys. You know?
I mean, it was really a disgrace of a team in many ways.
When we started with the Cosmos, it was a small ethnic crowd.
Nobody knew who we were.
And we just played because we loved the game of soccer.
They played their first game at Yankee Stadium,
but soon moved 25 miles east of the city
to Hofstra University on Long Island.
'The fifty people in the stands were mostly the families of the players.'
We were thinking how can we possibly draw anything to see this game?
'We'd give away T-shirts, balls, key chains.'
They would have me call radio stations of two listeners.
'I felt like Jimmy Swaggart or Billy Graham at the time'
to spread the word.
It was almost an impossible situation, you know?
We tried everything. It didn't really work.
In 1972, the Cosmos won the league championship.
Not that anyone noticed.
But by then the rag-tag team had hooked the only fan that mattered.
We're in the stands in the pouring rain
with 100 people watching the game.
My father is running down the sidelines
giving the players towels to wash off.
'That's who he was. Anything he did, he did with a great deal of gusto.'
'It was all his dream of owning a major league sports team,
'and he tried to believe that this was a major league sports team
'when indeed it wasn't.'
'I went to Steve and I said,'
"Steve, clearly this is something that Warner should take, not us,
"because this is going to lose quite a bit of money."
The ten original investors sold their stake in the Cosmos
to Warner Communications for one dollar.
Ross put his empire behind the idea of American soccer.
When it first was released that Warners were buying this team,
I don't think anybody really took it seriously.
Sports editors treated soccer as if it was a leper colony.
They wouldn't give us the time of day, so I bought them soccer magazines
so they knew how to spell the word soccer.
The only magazine willing to publish a feature on the Cosmos
barely mentioned the sport.
A friend of mine asked me whether I wanted to pose nude in a magazine.
I said, "Dude, you're crazy." He said, "No, they pay $5,000.
"They're looking for a professional athlete in New York."
'I thought it'd be semi-nude. A towel or dim lighting or an artistic picture.'
Needless to say, when the magazine hit the newsstand,
there was nothing subtle about it.
'There I was naked, frontal. It was wild.'
'Man, I didn't think anybody would see it.'
But the Cosmos saw it. Clive went nuts.
There was no morals clause in the contract,
but he said it was disgraceful.
"A professional athlete! We're trying to be role models, to sell the sport."
I said, "Clive, wait. You told me our biggest challenge is to get exposure.
"I got you more exposure in one centerfold than you've got all year!"
In 1974, Ross moved the team closer to the city
in an effort to attract more fans.
The only available venue was Downey Stadium on Randall's Island,
just below the Triborough Bridge
connecting the Bronx and Queens with Manhattan.
It's Randall's Island, a prison and some guy selling hot dogs. That's all!
The field was like broken bottles and dirt, but we thought that was a step up.
I remember having great difficulty getting out of my bed on game days.
'You know, really not wanting to go to Randall's Island.'
It was not the type of place that you'd play on purpose.
It's where you've played all your home games.
You might not like the ground, but they like it 50% worse than you.
You can do it! But it's up to you.
Randall's Island was quite appropriate for some of the players we had.
The team's fourth season would be its worst yet: 14 losses in 20 games.
We were getting absolutely nowhere. Nowhere. It was hopeless.
Steve Ross would need more than just the game
to transform the Cosmos into a major league attraction.
New York, we talk about Joe DiMaggio,
and we talk about Babe Ruth and we talk about Mickey Mantle,
and we talk about Joe Namath.
And we said, "You know, what we really need in this team is a big name player."
'Clive said to me, "Why don't we talk to this guy, Pelé?"'
I said, "Who's Pelé? I have no idea."
Pelé was Pelé, there was no better player more spectacular
and more famous in the history of the game than Pelé.
As a boy growing up in the slums of Brazil, he saw his father weep
after their country's loss in the 1950 World Cup final.
Pelé vowed to win one for his father.
Eight years later at age 17, he became the youngest man ever
to win a World Cup winner's medal, leading Brazil to victory.
The first of a record three World Cup championships.
Only one player in the world could break through this crust of antipathy,
'more than just indifference,
'and that was Pelé.'
In October 1974,
he announced his retirement from his life-long club, Santos.
Clive came to us one day and said, "I think there's a chance of getting Pelé."
That's not quite true.
My brother told Steve Ross to sign Pelé.
That's the biggest load of nonsense I've heard today,
maybe this week, maybe this year.
The idea of signing Pelé was either Phil Woosnam's or mine.
The first approach to Pelé was done in 1970.
Long before anyone at Warner, including Ahmet and Nesuhi
and Steve Ross and everybody else had ever heard of soccer.
Steve Ross asked Nesuhi, "Who is the greatest player?"
And Nesuhi said, "The greatest player is Pelé."
I got to tell you that...
I'm going to stop for a minute by saying this is going to be like "Rashomon".
Everybody's going to have a different view of everything.
Toye and Woosnam had in fact approached Pelé
about coming to America just one month after the Cosmos were formed.
Toye even insisted the teams colors be yellow, the same as Brazil.
The Cosmos, New York, my face, my name had been registered.
In 1971, Toye could only dream of signing a World Cup legend.
By '74, he worked for a dream maker and a risk taker.
People said, "You can't get him."
He'd say, "I don't want to hear about can't. Let's try."
'Ross didn't just see the world's greatest soccer player.'
He saw a global brand, he saw Pelé soccer shoes,
'Pelé jerseys, even Pelé cologne,'
'that Warners could license to every soccer playing country in the world.'
And he also saw something else. He saw television.
He saw a path to what had been promised.
Soccer, as America's new big league sport.
What'll it cost? That's always the first question.
That's very much the American mentality.
"'If we can't create it we can assume it,'
"because at the end of the day it's all about money."
'Nesuhi, myself and Pelé, Raphael and, I guess, Clive
'met in a seaside resort with a fellow called Shisto, who was into every...'
Pelé had 32 advisors.
We played soccer with Pelé on the beach. Can you imagine?
That'll be on my headstone: "He played soccer with Pelé."
'And by then Real Madrid and Juventus had started sniffing around.
'And so I had come up with:'
"If you go to them, all you can win is another championship.
"Whereas if you come with us, you can win a country."
He loved the lure of that. He was going to open a new frontier.
'And that was America, the great challenge of America.'
'That night I called Steve Ross.'
I said, "I think this guy's gonna play for us."
And he couldn't believe it!
'I was negotiating with Dustin Hoffman
'for the film called "All the President's Men".'
Then I got a call to see Steve and Jay in their office, and they said,
"Norman, we want you to go to Brazil
"and sign a soccer player named Pelé."
And I said, "OK."
I was greeted by a number of paparazzi and other photographers.
People idolized Pelé, as they did all over the world, I suspect.
But in Brazil he was clearly a national treasure.
And they didn't want to let him go.
Ross was ready to risk $2mn for three years of play.
Pelé wanted $5mn for two years.
Quite a difference.
There was no way we were going to spend that. So we called Jay.
'They called me about 2:00 A.M., saying, "Change the deal a little."'
I said, "Norman, do what you have to do. We got to get him.
"We want him. No matter pretty much what it costs."
And he said, "I have one more thing to tell you."
'I said, "What's that, Jay?" And he hung up on us.'
I took the phone off the hook, cos I knew there'd be more calls.
All right, so basically it was up to us.
And we proposed a five-part deal. Five contracts.
Three years for playing.
Ten years of world-wide marketing rights.
A 14-year PR contract.
A music contract. The total package was,
we owned him, lock, stock and barrel.
Has anybody ever mentioned the amount we paid Pelé?
- He got a lot of money. - Pelé was paid $4.5mn.
- $3mn for two years. - $5mn.
All together, $2.7mn.
The highest-paid player in baseball became the home-run king that year.
Henry "Hank" Aaron was making $200,000 a season.
What Warners came to him with was like the apple in the Garden of Eden.
'It would've been a very strong and strange individual who'd turn that down.'
Pelé okayed the deal. His country did not.
Citing his status as a national treasure,
the president of Brazil demanded he play one more year for his country
rather than go to America.
Pelé turned to his suitors for help.
Warner Communications headquarters, 75 Rockefeller Center, New York.
Nelson Rockefeller was a Vice President of the United States.
'My father worked for Nelson Rockefeller.'
And they asked my dad to put in a good word to the Brazilian government
and wouldn't this be a great thing for both countries to have Pelé come here.
'Like three or four days later, Nelson called back
'and says he's no idea who Pelé is.'
He couldn't care less if he comes and plays here or not.
But that there is a guy in the cabinet,
who thinks it would be a fantastic idea, and his name is Henry Kissinger.
'In my dealings with all the Brazilian government,'
I tried to convince them that having Pelé play in the United States
was a tremendous asset for Brazil.
'Pelé got a phone call from
'the Secretary of State of Brazil,'
'begging him to sign the contract with the Cosmos'
for the good of the relationship of Brazil and the United States.
Well, when Pelé received that call,
he said, "My God, you guys can do anything, you know?
"I'm going with you, no matter what."
Steve Ross announced the signing at the legendary 21 Club in Manhattan.
The Cosmos held their press conference there
in a room aptly named the Hunt Room,
as if Pelé was the prize catch.
'The Press Corps got there before the conference'
and nailed their cameras into the floor.
'These people would never cover the Cosmos or show up to anything.'
And the sign said "Capacity 143 people".
There must have been 300 reporters from all over the world.
No cameras right in front!
And Pelé was on Pelé time which means that he was two hours late.
Steve and Jay were waiting. "Where the hell is he?"
"He's coming. He's coming."
And on my immediate left Steven J Ross,
chairman and president of Warner Communications.
And now at the door, the legend, the great one, the king, Pelé.
'When Pelé finally came out, people rushed up to meet him.'
It was unbelievable. I had never seen such a thing.
Behave yourselves!
'So all the reporters turned into fans.'
We finally calmed the press corps down. One person was heckling us.
It was Dick Young talking about the denigration of professional baseball,
how soccer would ruin the sport of baseball.
He was heckling the entire time. "Soccer is for foreigners.
"Shouldn't be played in America." Everything negative.
'Dick Young was a crusty, conservative man.'
He believed if you didn't love everything about America, you should get out.
'Young was probably the best read sports writer in the United States'
and held a considerable amount of power.
'To him the only story was that Warners was shelling out'
this obscene amount of cash for somebody he never heard of.
You can spread out the news to all the world
that soccer arrived finally in USA!
Within ten seconds, the time it took Pelé to sign his contracts, it all changed.
'Finally, something about an extraordinary man from Brazil...'
- '... the soccer superstar Pelé.' - 'Today in New York City, Pelé...'
'... greatest soccer player ever...'
Everywhere people knew
there was a Cosmos soccer team in New York and that Pelé played on it.
'We're practicing at Randall's Island with broken glass on the field'
and cuts on our legs
when a guy comes onto the field spray painting the dirt.
We had to spray paint the mud, because there was so little grass.
We're going, "This dude is nuts. I don't know what he's doing."
And then we see a helicopter flying over.
'The image was irresistible, it was a Greek piece of theatre.'
Pelé was stepping in to save this league from being trite and ordinary.
He was going to move it into the realm of a big-time league.
The Cosmos were already nine games into the '75 season
and last in their division with just three wins.
Nevertheless CBS agreed to broadcast Pelé's American debut.
'Pelé is the most famous player in soccer.
'Today at the age of 34 he began a new career
'playing for the New York Cosmos in the NASL.'
The first game that Pelé played here on a Sunday afternoon against Dallas,
'the place was filled.'
- What brings you out today? - Curiosity.
He's worth $4mn, I got to see him. I've never seen soccer in my life.
We could have got in three times as many. It was a huge game.
'Pelé's magic drew the largest crowd in Cosmos' history.'
Mr. Ross calling up, "How many have we sold?"
- 'I came to see Pelé because...' - 'He's the Muhammad Ali of soccer.'
'One minute the place is dead, the next minute the whole place is alive.'
He doesn't know what the field is like. Could be up, down, in, out.
But he played in it. He could've said, "I'm not playing in that field."
He played 90 minutes... enough said.
When the camera pointed to the field, it was green and beautiful.
The world's greatest player did not disappoint,
rescuing his new team in dramatic fashion.
'With the Cosmos trailing by two, his perfect pass made a goal...
'Then he soared above the Dallas defenders to head home
'powerfully, unstoppably, the equalizing goal.'
When the game was over, Pelé was in the shower.
'The locker room was packed with reporters.'
He gestured me from the shower. He goes, "Psst, psst, psst!"
'I go to him and he says,'
"Raphael, this is the first and the last game I play here."
"How can you say this to me?
"I mean, don't you see it's a big success?
"How can you possibly say that to me?"
He says, "The most important thing in my life is my feet.
"Look at my feet. I have a fungus that I have contacted here.
"I'm not playing with you any more." I said, "Pelé, this is green paint.
"We painted the field green." He could not believe it.
His first season would be the Cosmos' last on Randall's Island.
I had to get Pelé in the stadium which he could play in,
he should play in: the stadium, Giants Stadium.
Less than seven miles from Times Square,
construction in East Rutherford, New Jersey,
had been underway since 1972.
Giants Stadium, with more than 75,000 seats,
was scheduled to open for American football in the fall of 1975.
Ross was banking that by then America would be ready for professional soccer.
But in the summer of '75, Pelé could hardly save his team
much less his sport.
'He thought we were passing him the ball too often.'
We thought as long as we got the ball to Pelé, he'd take care of it.
'It was hard not to be in awe every day.'
You think you'd get used to it.
But everyday there's Pelé on a field.
'I mean, come on, it's Pelé.'
'I'm learning so much just by being around the guy, and how he plays.'
The biggest challenge for us on the field was not stopping and watching him play,
'because he still had these incredible moves.'
Every place we went, and we're straggling along, there's Pelé!
We're just like, "We're with him!"
'I don't think any one of us ever felt entitled. We were honored.'
We knew we were experiencing something...
I always said there could've been a hundred goal keepers as good as me...
I had a hard time, as well, thinking I belonged there.
He was a superstar in a strange land. But he knew his role.
I come to play in America because I believe in soccer in America.
'Kids here love the sport. The American people love sport naturally.'
I come to play here because I know, in a few years,
we will have a good team in America.
I think his challenge was really figuring out
how best to fit in to a team of journeymen that were trying their best.
He talked to me a couple of times,
"Play like you're playing a game of chess.
"Be two moves ahead of the ball."
He would finish the season with five goals and four assists,
leading his new team to seven wins in nine games.
Although the Cosmos missed the playoffs, Pelé had done his job.
We look at the world of the Cosmos as before Pelé and after Pelé.
His mere presence shattered attendance records
in Boston, Los Angeles and Washington, DC.
When I'd visit my grandmother in Washington,
you'd hope that when you were there
the Dips were playing the Cosmos
so that you could see Pelé.
After he pulled a hamstring late in the season,
more than 20,000 fans in Philadelphia came to see him in street clothes.
'Now that the world's most famous athlete was in New York City,'
the media could no longer ignore the sport.
'At the White House, President Ford found a soccer ball
'a lot more illusive than a football.'
Maybe I'd do it better with my hand than with my foot!
While most of the press was positive, there remained one powerful skeptic.
Dick Young wanted to meet Pelé, one-on-one, at a baseball game.
They attended a Mets game late in the season at Shea Stadium.
'No one knows we're at the game.'
End of the first inning, we get a cluster of people around us.
By the third inning, we were absolutely besieged by people.
'We couldn't control the fans. The umpire had to call play.'
'And the security couldn't control the stadium any more.
'It was absolute pandemonium.'
Dick Young is almost crying. Weeping openly.
His heart is breaking that his baseball fans recognize Pelé
'who he had come to take down.'
As a reporter, he had only one recourse and that was to write the truth.
'This game was truly a spectators' sport and truly global.'
By the bi-centennial year of 1976,
foreign football was encroaching even further on the American pastime.
The Cosmos moved into Yankee Stadium.
Pelé, playing just half the season in '75, had tripled their average attendance.
Pelé brought instant credibility to the NASL.
'Because of him, other stars came over here.'
From Gordon Banks to Rodney Marsh to Geoff Hurst.
Even George Best touched down in Los Angeles.
Because every other franchise thought, "Well, if the Cosmos can do it, we can."
'When I arrived, one question the American journalists asked me was:'
"You've been described as the white Pelé."
'And I said, "That's not quite true. Pelé is the black Rodney Marsh."'
And that didn't seem to go down too well.
For Steve Ross, the world's greatest player was not enough.
New York likes winners.
You could have God himself as a striker for the Cosmos,
and if you lost, nobody cares.
'I scored, I think, in 220 league games 253 goals.'
So I was the man to put the ball in the back of the net.
Giorgio Chinaglia was the leading scorer of the Italian club Lazio in 1975.
I was the highest paid player in Italy and that was pretty unhealthy.
When I first met him in Rome,
'I was in his car and he had a gun in the glove compartment.'
I said, "What the hell am I doing here?"
He thrust himself upon us. His time in Italy was running out.
It was the easiest signing of a name player that anyone could ever have.
'My first wife was American, like my second wife is American.'
Therefore I said, "Let's go to America."
He talks a lot, but half of it is not worth listening to.
The other half I wouldn't listen to either.
Giorgio Chinaglia is Italian, speaks English with a Welsh accent,
scored a lot of goals...
And those are the only positive things I can think to say about him.
- A very disagreeable fellow at times. - He was a back-stabbing individual.
They probably can't stand me. I don't give a shit.
Why don't these people judge me for what I did on the field?
That'd be a nice thing, wouldn't it?
Steve Ross brought in five new players that year, three from overseas.
None more prolific than Giorgio Chinaglia.
I was demanding on the field, but at the end of the day
nobody else scored more goals in the history of the NASL than myself.
'Giorgio was extremely passionate about soccer,'
And I think he found a like-minded individual in my father.
Pelé was his prize catch, but Giorgio became his confidante.
Giorgio and Steve Ross had a very strange relationship.
I don't know what it was, but he did have Steve Ross. He had his ear.
That's absolutely the truth.
Giorgio had won a soft spot in the heart of Steve Ross.
'I remember Ross wearing a pair of Cosmos sweatpants
'with the number nine on it, Chinaglia's number.'
He was wearing Chinaglia's pants.
'That was sort of a metaphor for their relationship.'
'Giorgio was the opposite of Pelé.'
He wore his emotions on his sleeve.
'Dynamic, big, good looking, long hair.'
'An idol like a movie star in Italy.'
'Walking down the street with Giorgio'
was like walking down the street with Joe DiMaggio or Mickey Mantle.
'Pelé reached the whole world and got New York's attention.'
'Giorgio put it over the top because people wanted to come'
to boo him or cheer him or yell at him or throw things at him.
That's the kind of passion you expect in New York.
He scored 19 goals in 19 games, while Pelé led the league in assists.
Together they took the Cosmos kicking and screaming into the playoffs.
Giorgio was a little jealous of Pelé. He wanted to be Pelé.
'I just wanted to score goals. I didn't care who played beside me.
'I never did.'
Sometimes I wasn't liked, but I don't care about that either.
He's the only professional player I've ever heard who'd criticize Pelé.
Off the field, he was a loveable person.
On the field, we had some problems, yeah.
'There was a memorable episode in the Cosmos' locker room'
when Chinaglia said that he was disgusted
that Pelé wasn't giving him the service that he needed to score goals.
Pelé, you can imagine, is not used to team-mates criticizing him.
He fired right back and said, "You shoot from no fucking angle."
And Chinaglia jumped off his stool and shouted, "I am Chinaglia!
"If I shoot from someplace, it's because Chinaglia can score from that place."
'And Pelé was near tears.'
He shook his head and walked out of the locker room.
'I didn't want him to do bad. I wanted him do well.'
But he kept coming inside of me, and I said, "One guy'll mark the two of us.
"So try to stay wide because you'll be more effective and you'll score goals."
'All great goal scorers have an ego.'
"Give me the ball. Why are you giving it to Pelé?"
He wants the ball. He wants to score.
'If you don't have egos in life, especially in sports, you're not going to go very far.
The two huge personalities did have one thing in common.
Giorgio had his locker room with his blue velvet robe and his Chivas Regal,
pack of cigarettes, sunglasses, he had it all.
The women went wild. They just went wild.
I remember one night, there was Pelé with a blonde on each arm.
He looked at me, smiled and said, "Not for the book, my friend."
He'd sit in the lobby doing the old winky-winky,
like he was on the cruise.
Their shared passion for life may have cost them a shot at the championship.
In the second round of the 1976 playoffs,
the heavily favored Cosmos faced the Tampa Bay Rowdies
and Rodney Marsh.
We knew about the Cosmos team and the personnel,
'so we had a limo that met them off the plane
'with two girls in the limo and two bottles of Chivas Regal.'
And 24 hours later at the game,
they both came out onto the pitch looking very much the worse for wear.
Tampa Bay won the match 3-1.
Steve Ross was not happy.
He didn't like to lose games. No, he didn't like to lose in anything.
He didn't like to lose in board games.
A soccer game? He hated to lose a soccer game.
And championship games? You didn't want to lose one of those.
Immediately following the loss in '76,
Ross took his team where it could be truly appreciated.
We went on tour playing all over Europe.
'France and then Belgium and Switzerland and Italy.'
They went on two exhibition tours in the span of seven months.
We became like the ambassadors of good will.
Steve Ross wanted them to be treated like great stars.
'We traveled first class, five-star hotels, unlimited budgets.'
No such thing as per diem.
They were spending shareholders' money!
The publicity that we generated for Warner was enormous.
Publicity that they couldn't buy.
One little stockholder said to us at the annual meeting,
"What does this cost? Do you lose money?"
He says, "Well, we lose some." "How much do you lose?"
He looked at her straight in the eye and said, "Two cents a share."
And the whole audience applauded. What a wonderful venture this is!
Not recognizing that two cents a share was $5mn!
In 10 years, American soccer had developed
into a different game than world football.
The league had tailored the rules for American fans.
'There had to be a winner. If it ended 2-2, it went into a mini-game.'
'If it stayed at 2-2 or even became 3-3,'
it had to go to what was called a NASL shoot-out,
'going one-on-one with the goal keeper from 35 yards out,
'and having five seconds to get your shot off.'
- And I loved it. - I thought it was fantastic.
It makes the game more emotional.
I still think in Europe they should try it.
In the spring of '77, Steve Ross was at last able to move the Cosmos
across the Hudson River to Giants Stadium
for Pelé's final season.
While the League had Americanized the game,
Steve Ross wanted to take it a step further.
He asked me to prepare a plan
which included the Cosmos cheerleaders.
The half-time show.
Bugs Bunny, who I was able to get from Jungle Habitat.
Americanizing the game.
'Americans like putting their own twist to things.'
That's what they were trying to do-
to have more of the American fans come in and embrace it.
At the same time, he continued internationalizing his team,
surrounding Pelé and Chinaglia
with 14 new players from seven different countries.
We were the first team to have a totally international squad.
'It was like Noah's Ark.'
There was something to please everybody.
Nevertheless, they lost three of their first five games,
averaging little more than 20,000 fans in their new giant home.
Here we're putting up a lot of money on the field and we're not drawing.
So he wanted to make a change. Raise the bar.
They sent me to Germany.
They sent me to sign Franz Beckenbauer.
Turned back by Geoff Hurst in England in the classic World Cup final of 1966,
the Kaiser would lead his country to glory eight years later.
He was the ultimate team leader- the one that organized in the back,
who is just so calm and collected on the ball.
'You never got the sense that he was in any sort of state of panic,
'regardless of whether he was up by four goals or down by four goals.'
Twice voted European player of the year,
Franz Beckenbauer was lured to America at the height of his career.
I knew Pelé and Giorgio Chinaglia were there,
but the rest I didn't know so it was an adventure.
'Giorgio was berserk, "Why do we need to hire Beckenbauer?"'
"Why do we need Beckenbauer here? We don't need him at all!"
'Now he was the third banana.'
Beckenbauer's first game was a 4-2 loss to arch rival, Tampa Bay.
The following week, they beat Toronto at home in front of 31,000 fans.
Steve Ross wanted more.
Steve was what you would call a star-fucker.
Every time, somebody was in New York shooting a film or doing an album,
they got dragged to a Cosmos game.
'Warners owned a movie company and six record companies.'
- You can get celebrities. That's easy. - Actors, actresses, politicians.
You name it, we had them all at the stadium.
I don't know who they were. The locker room was littered with people.
- It was becoming a joke. - Henry Kissinger never missed a game.
I have a passion for what we call soccer.
I remember once Gordon Bradley looked over in the corner and saw this guy
with longish hair, skinny as a rail,
looked like he was on drugs.
He told our security guy, "Get that guy out of here."
"Who is this guy?" Everybody came to him and said, "Mick Jagger."
But he didn't recognize him because he looked so terrible.
Jagger and Kissinger were welcomed on a weekly basis,
while the first two men on the Cosmos team were quietly shown the door.
I came in May '77. After three weeks, Clive Toye, the president, resigned.
'Gordon Bradley, the coach, was fired.'
I said to myself, "Oh, my God, where am I?"
Just weeks before he was fired,
Bradley had dropped Chinaglia from the first team.
They didn't like me, so the only way to get rid of this guy's to drop him.
But they have little minds.
They thought I'd ask for a transfer.
Some people push the buttons.
On Giorgio's recommendation,
Ross hired coach Eddie Firmani away from Tampa Bay.
He brought in Eddie Firmani to coach the team knowing he'd do his bidding.
Just put the balls in front of Giorgio. Giorgio wants the ball in front not behind.
'He flowered under Eddie and scored many goals.'
Knock all those beautiful balls just in front of him.
- They'll go straight in the goal. - I try.
It is unquestionable that Giorgio Chinaglia had a malign influence
'over Steve Ross, and therefore over the Cosmos.'
No question about it. And I say "malign" advisedly.
I can think of stronger words but maybe women and children are watching.
What they don't understand, if you do your job good
I'm going to give you a lot of credit.
I have my credit on the field. Why do I need anything else?
My goal was to have the world's best team,
and it was good for the company, that was my goal, nothing else.
The lunatics took over the asylum.
He was always pleasant to me. You know, he's a suck-up guy.
'When Pelé scored, he never looked at us,
'when Bobby Smith scored, he never looked at us,'
'but every time that Giorgio scored a goal,'
he would run back in front of Steve and bow down and suck up to Steve.
By the last week of June 1977,
Chinaglia had eight goals and the team had ten wins.
They avenged two straight losses to the Rowdies in front of 62,000 fans.
'Pelé scored a hat trick.'
'When I look at games I played in America,'
that would definitely be the top of the heap.
Then they dropped five of their next seven games.
Steve Ross said, "Now we have Pelé, we have Beckenbauer and Chinaglia.
"But the rest, you need more."
I went back to Sao Paolo.
In my opinion, the most important signing
from a team point of view was Carlos Alberto.
As captain of the Brazilian national team,
he had helped Pelé win his third World Cup title in 1970.
With only four games remaining in the '77 season,
Carlos Alberto came to America
to help his old team-mate win one last championship.
'It was unforgettable.'
The day I arrived in New York was the day of the blackout.
'At 9:34 last night, it all went black.'
'... a wild outburst of crime.'
'... a night of no lights, elevators, subway trains, airports,
'air-conditioning, traffic signals, television.'
'... looting, mugging and a thousand false fire alarms.'
In the darkness, July 13th,
it seemed as if the world was turning upside down.
'We had the criminal Son of Sam, a serial murderer.
'Riots in the blackout.'
The major problem was the bankruptcy of the City of New York.
'It was really quite a year.'
When the power returned, the lights came up on soccer in America.
'Soccer is fast becoming as popular here as it's been in the rest of the world.'
It was like an explosion.
'It was a whirlwind. It was like a meteor taking off.'
One day we were nobody, and the next day we're playing at Giants Stadium
and limos picking us up to take us to Studio 54 after the game.
'A big table there was reserved for the Cosmos.'
Not only for the players, also for the bosses.
'The doorman looked me up and down and gave me a hard time,'
until I uttered the four magic words: "I'm with the Cosmos."
'I remember people making out there in full view of you.'
Celebrities walking in and out.
Every Monday night, they had a party at Studio 54.
This was a part of the development of football also in the United States.
Soccer in the United States.
Everybody was invited to the party.
'I was the first one on the field every game and you felt it.'
You walked out there and all of a sudden, one by one,
these giants of soccer, international stars, bigger-than-life players
'were coming out of this tunnel like gladiators coming out to do battle.'
August 14th, four days after police arrested David Berkowitz,
the self-proclaimed Son of Sam,
the Cosmos sold out one of the biggest football stadiums in the world.
It was a playoff against Fort Lauderdale. The first time in history sold out.
Giants Stadium was sold out with 77,000 and something else.
Soccer is a game that everybody is involved with.
It takes stamina, speed, strength.
...something going on all the time.
It'll be right up there with baseball as the national pastime.
Soccer is not only here to stay,
but will be perhaps the ultimate, the biggest big league of all.
It was just unexpected, unbelievable glory.
Basking in the glory high above the masses
sat the king of American soccer, Steve Ross.
He would sit on the second level of Giants Stadium,
which is fairly high up because he thought he'd see the action better,
'he'd see the whole field and what was going on.'
We had to put chains on him because from the mezzanine at Giants Stadium
he was always arguing with the referee and everybody was afraid he'd fall down.
A remarkable sell-out crowd of 76,000 last night at Giants Stadium.
The Cosmos, the new darlings in town, beat Rochester 4-1
'to make their way to the final, the Soccer Bowl in Portland,
'which will be seen here on Channel 4 on Sunday starting at 4:00.'
Ross watched his one-time rag-tag team become champions.
'What I remember most about the championship game in 1977
'was how excited the players were.'
They wanted to win a championship for Pelé.
We all felt responsible. It was Pelé's last game, competitive.
'We wanted to do it for him.'
We'd like Pelé to leave the way he deserves: as a champion.
That was not marketing. That was not PR.
That was genuine and it was very touching.
'It just fell into place on the day for me.'
I scored one of the most memorable goals in Soccer Bowl history.
But the game winner in the 81st minute
belonged to Pelé's locker room rival, Chinaglia.
We had a good year. He left on a winning note - he won the championship.
I think today was one of my best games.
Win the World Cup, but there were eleven Germans on the field.
You win the European Cup, there were nine Germans and two foreigners.
With the New York Cosmos, we had 14 different nations.
So it was like a family. It was fantastic!
It was really an experience I will never forget.
'This was an incredibly fun few years in my father's life.
'It was a big joy for him.
'And in Jay's life and Pelé's life and Giorgio's life. They were having a blast.'
And Warner Communications was in its prime. My father was in his prime.
'It was huge amounts of fun. There was nothing that wasn't fun.'
Pelé left the league with a parting gift, hope for the future.
As he stepped aside, ABC Sports began negotiating
to broadcast NASL regular season games on network television.
'Steve believed that television was the key'
to the Cosmos' or soccer's success.
No professional sport in the US makes it without a television contract.
'We're at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.'
By 1978, the Cosmos were giving network executives
every reason to believe that American soccer had a lucrative future.
'Already it's been filled to its capacity of 77,000
'several times for another sport, for soccer.'
'Every game was like a party.'
Even in Brazil we don't play every game with the stadium full.
People would be arriving three or four hours before kick-off
'with their tailgates open at the back, barbecues going, flags waving.'
Great atmosphere outside the ground long before we started the game.
Steve Ross signed a new slate of international stars for the '78 season.
They won their first seven games and 15 out of 17.
The team got more and more stabilized. The team got better and better.
But the competition had also been diluted due to expansion.
In '78, the NASL added six more teams for a league high of 24.
All of them chasing Steve Ross and the Cosmos.
It was a negative impact. People owned teams that couldn't afford it.
'Players that should not have been playing a professional sport'
'were playing professional soccer.'
And the quality itself wasn't what it was.
We had no business being in San Antonio, Texas,
Jacksonville, Florida, Memphis, Tennessee, Las Vegas,
'Hawaii, Calgary, Edmonton.'
All became stops on the Cosmos' traveling circus.
It was like traveling with the Rolling Stones. I mean, it was big.
The whole thing was lightning in a bottle. It was a huge, huge aphrodisiac.
'It wasn't even behind closed doors.
'On the flight out to the Cosmos' championship game in 1977,'
there were two sex acts performed right on the plane,
headed for the championship game.
I was 27 years old and my editor said, "Would you like to cover the Yankees?"
The most coveted beat in this country.
I said, "No, thank you. I'll stick here with the Cosmos.
"I'm having too good a time. Just too good a time."
The Cosmos' entourage included a huge press contingent,
translators for more than a dozen languages, even personal assistants.
All on the road at Warner Communications' expense.
Giorgio's philosophy of life is that he needs people to do things for him.
He doesn't have to do anything for them. He's allowing them to be with him.
So Giorgio befriended Peppe.
'I wanted success. I wanted to be there, on top.'
I wanted to succeed, and most of all I wanted him to succeed.
'I felt that his success was my success.'
He became like the rug of Chinaglia. Chinaglia stepped on him all day.
"Peppe, get me a pack of cigarettes! Peppe, get me a lighter!"
That was Peppe Pinton.
'We were in the hotel and heard some noise at 4:00 A.M..'
And it's Peppe carrying a television set wearing a woman's pink nightgown.
So after we stopped laughing, we said, "Peppe, what are you doing, man?"
And Peppe starts cursing. He goes, "I'm busy. I'm in my room having a party.
"Giorgio called me, the reception was no good on his TV.
- "He wanted me to bring his TV up." - I wanted to watch television.
I had a bad one. He got to give me his TV! What's the big deal?
The '78 Cosmos rolled into the playoffs with a record of 24 wins and 6 losses.
They shattered league records for points, goals and average attendance.
And in the first game of a two-game playoff series against Minnesota,
they were stunned, 9-2.
'When we came back to New York, Firmani our coach said,
"'After lunch just wait. Steve Ross is coming to say a few words."'
He said, "I was on the West Coast when we played Minnesota
"with 750 of our delegates,
"'and they didn't want to talk about our latest project.
"'All they wanted to talk about was that the Cosmos had lost 9-2."'
He said, "I felt a little bit embarrassed. And I don't like to feel embarrassed."
And then he went on to say virtually, "We are the best.
"We pay the best for the best. We want the best performances.
"'If you don't want to be a part of that, see the coach and you can go now."'
It was a fantastic motivational speech.
The 4-0 victory tied the series and forced a sudden death mini-game.
'The Cosmos have but one last chance.
'Five seconds and 35 yards separate the Cosmos from elimination.
'The shooter, number 5, Carlos Alberto,
'has never before participated in a shoot-out.'
'It was so tense. Talk about excitement and build-up.'
That matched anything I've been involved with in the whole of my career.
'If he misses, the season's over.
'Lettieri out. Shot! Goal!
'The Cosmos have won it! An incredible comeback!
'The Cosmos are going to Portland!"
The win would carry the Cosmos to a second straight NASL championship.
And the league to the Promised Land.
'ABC Sports presents...
'the North American Soccer League.'
We put a tremendous effort behind the NASL package in 1979.
We had top-flight production. We had tremendous promotion.
'And we assigned Jim McKay.'
'I'm Jim McKay and this is a moment that I will remember
'because we're about to do something we've done many times at ABC Sports.
'We're going to begin something brand new to us.'
We wanted to give it our best shot and I think we put everything behind it.
'I was the television expert.
'I had a very different view of our television potential.'
Rather, I wanted us on anthology shows like the "Wide World of Sports",
with standings, players, saves, goals, player of the week,
to build all the extrinsics of the sport
and only put the championship game on television.
- 'That was a marvelous half of soccer.' - 'Beautiful half indeed. Wonderful play.'
'And I said we will go on television and fail.'
Then they will blame soccer. I got out-voted.
The Cosmos would be the cornerstone of ABC's coverage.
With the team's success under Chinaglia's handpicked coach Firmani
and without the guidance of Clive Toye,
the Cosmos' brash leading scorer began calling the shots.
'When Giorgio said, "I can put together this team better than you,"'
everybody said OK, because they didn't know what to do.
'Giorgio ran a shadow government on the Cosmos.'
He was the man behind the curtain.
In 1979, the team matched its own league record
of 24 wins and 6 losses.
They'd again be pushed to the brink of elimination
in the conference finals, this time by upstart Vancouver.
Like the year before, it would come down to a beat-the-clock shoot-out.
'The Cosmos have one final chance to tie the shoot-out.
'Morais' shot... is in! It's in!
'But it's too late. The goal does not count. The five seconds is up.
'The Cosmos' reign is over!'
Time ran out for the Cosmos.
Little did they know the clock was also ticking down on the league.
After just one year, ABC had seen enough.
'We did everything possible to make it work.'
And unfortunately we had a 2.7 rating in 1979,
'and roughly that was about on average 2 million American homes.'
Television was handled very poorly by ABC
and certainly by the league itself.
Nobody wanted to watch it on TV. Absolutely nobody.
'I remember a very important game,'
nationally televised at 12:00 in the middle of July,
and they wondered why the ratings weren't there.
Unnecessary to say it failed.
Soccer failed. It didn't have to.
League attendance would peak in 1980.
New York would win its third title in four years.
But without a network television deal,
the dream of soccer as a national sport was all but gone.
'1980 came and Chinaglia started to mingle with things.'
And I didn't want to put up with it.
'I resigned.'
Ultimately Giorgio became the president of the New York Cosmos.
He wasn't loyal to us. He wasn't loyal to the game.
'He was loyal to himself.'
Just because you are a carpenter doesn't mean that you are an architect.
Giorgio was almost single-handedly responsible for the death of the Cosmos.
He didn't run it to the ground. It was running to the ground before that.
I heard that Giorgio started to pay high salaries to his friends.
And I heard that he ran the losses of the team in the millions of dollars.
High millions.
What are you talking about, millions? No, I don't think so.
'You don't believe that Giorgio Chinaglia ran the Cosmos?'
I can tell you, when I was there from 1970 to '81,
Giorgio Chinaglia didn't run anything.
That's why we got rid of him, too.
Maybe he fired me and I didn't even know it. Wait a minute, maybe...
Does everybody substantiate all of these nonsensical quotes of his?
He didn't like the Cosmos. I know that because... it's a very simple reason.
Because Steve loved the Cosmos and he became involved.
He thought that was distracting Steve from other major issues of the company.
Now this is going to shock you and maybe the audience.
I was probably closer to Steve than maybe even Giorgio.
I'm not sure about Peppe. Was that his name? Pinton?
But maybe even Peppe Pinton.
Peppe Pinton would become vice president.
The Cosmos won their fifth Soccer Bowl in 1982
as the league began to collapse.
Every time you would walk into the NASL headquarters,
this guy would be there with his head in his hand and saying,
"Does somebody want to buy Seattle? Does somebody want to buy LA?"
'The Cosmos were the best thing that happened to the league.'
But in another sense they were the worst thing,
because they scared other owners with soaring costs of operating.
'They just wanted to win things.'
There's nothing wrong with that, but the aftermath was complete devastation.
Cosmos. Good afternoon.
But the Cosmos bloated budget was only part of the equation.
'Now it's Pacman's turn to get eaten up.'
Atari, once the fastest-growing business in American history,
came crashing down under Warner Communications,
nearly crippling Ross' empire.
'For investors in Warner, zonk!
'A one-day paper loss of around $1 bn.'
'Steve Ross had doled out millions to make his dream team.'
But in the end he was left with a tsunami of red ink that he couldn't ignore,
'especially when other parts of Warner were hemorrhaging.'
When hard times hit, you have to start cutting fat.
Steve Ross would seize one final unexpected opportunity
to give soccer a permanent foothold in America.
'The World Cup for 1986 had been awarded to Colombia.'
And in 1982, the word was out that Colombia was going to withdraw
and that other countries would have an opportunity to stage it.
Steve Ross, unbelievable... He was like a kid.
'He was very excited to bring the World Cup to the United States.'
They made a plan.
He would call on all his soccer connections to win the bid.
'Steve Ross was working everywhere on our behalf.
'He was a fanatic.'
And when we actually went over there, Steve came to make the presentation.
In May 1983, FIFA, global football's governing body,
awarded the '86 World Cup to Mexico.
Why they give again to Mexico, not to the United States?
And I say, all the time, FIFA killed the best market in the world at that time.
And then Steve Ross, I remember it like today, he said, "Finished."
In 1984, the team was dissolved.
The league disbanded within months.
'It started out as a circus, became a three-ring circus.'
Became a ten-ring circus, then the tent collapsed.
'In effect, mainstream professional soccer here is dead.'
At the end, everybody sort of jumped overboard for one reason or another.
The league folded.
We sold some players, some retired, some did not play any more.
'So I was left pretty much to run the ship all by myself.
'And I went down with the ship.'
Because I went down with the ship, I'm still there, underwater with the ship.
Really. What ship? Is there a ship now that's sailing on the Cosmos' name?
- The Cosmos ship? What is that? - Peppe Pinton was never a big player.
He may have been a big player in the pizza parlor,
but he was never a big player with the Cosmos, trust me.
He took the name, because he worked for the Cosmos.
He worked for Warners which was good.
He deserved it. He wanted it. God bless him, take it.
Have you seen the Cosmos play lately? No, neither have I.
So Peppe owns... What we're saying is, let's be very clear:
Peppe owns the Cosmos. The Cosmos are nothing today.
So Peppe owns nothing.
'Him, like many others, thought they were the Cosmos.'
The Cosmos belong to everyone, the players, the executives,
the managers, you know, the fans.
'That's what made this whole thing so beautiful.'
'The legacy of the Cosmos would be that they laid the seeds'
for every player that plays in this country today.
'There's a wonderful photograph I came across.'
When Franz arrived at JFK, we called up a local youth soccer club and said,
"Can get a bunch of kids with a banner to welcome Franz to New York?"
'Many years later I looked at the photograph again
'and realized that the kid in the center looking up at Franz Beckenbauer'
was in fact Mike Windischmann, who captained the US team
at the '90 World Cup in Italy.
That US team was the first to qualify for the World Cup finals
since Joe Gaetjens shocked England and the world in 1950.
'I mean, there was that clear transference of excitement'
from the Pelé time to the young players that came after.
'You look at global football now,'
and the Cosmos were 20 years ahead of their time.
A team like the Cosmos today, with their talent, would be worth a billion dollars.
'Talk about Real Madrid and Man United. In those days, the Cosmos were it.'
If you continue to talk about that, maybe I cry here.
Because so beautiful memories from that time.
The Cosmos team was something
that no one had ever seen before.
People cried when they went through the turnstile to see the Cosmos.
'And even the American people.'
'If it wasn't for the Cosmos, if it wasn't for the devotion'
of Steve Ross and Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun,
I really don't think soccer would be where it's at today.
The World Cup Finals finally came to the US in Giants Stadium in 1994.
But Steve Ross didn't live long enough to see it.
'It was ambitious to bring in the world's best players
'and to make the game more attractive and to recognize the game.'
When I came in '77 and you take your car and drive to the countryside,
'to Long Island or to New Jersey, no one played the game.'
'Now if you drive there, you see the goal posts of football fields.'
I think that says a name, and that's the Cosmos.
This was the cheer they used to make.
Cosmos.