Cosmos Have Gone From the Top of Soccer World to Near Extinction
Less than a decade ago, the Cosmos and their stable of international soccer superstars were not only America’s team, they were the world’s team. Now the Cosmos are a team without a league and perhaps without a future.
“When you say soccer you hear the Cosmos name,” Cosmos General Manager Peppe Pinton said. “No matter where you go, Europe, China, you say the Cosmos name and people have a big smile.”
The Cosmos attained that recognition by winning five North American Soccer League titles, including their celebrated 1978 championship with Brazil’s Pele, Italy’s Giorgio Chinaglia, West Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer and America’s own Shep Messing.
The club was the flagship franchise when the league had 24 teams, with some games drawing upwards of 70,000 fans.
But according to some of those familiar with the situation, the name and reputation the Cosmos were so proud of eventually caused their financial difficulties and forced the organization to withdraw from the Major Indoor Soccer League and be kicked out the NASL.
“You recognize the Cosmos’ name,” said Chico Borja, now a member of the Las Vegas Americans who left the Cosmos after last summer. “The Cosmos are committed to that, and now, that’s what carries them.”
It is a sentiment echoed by owners as well.
“I think the new owners (a group headed by Chinaglia who purchased a controlling interest in the club last August), although they had good intentions, were naive in many areas,” said Bob Bell, the San Diego Sockers’ owner who was granted a two-year leave of absence from the NASL. “They lacked the necessary capital and expertise, especially in the marketing area.”
Marketing indoor soccer in the New York metropolitan area has been a problem. Two other franchises, the New Jersey Rockets and the four-time MISL-champion New York Arrows, both folded.
“New York metro people don’t go for indoor soccer,” Borja said. “There are so many ethnic backgrounds and they were born with outdoor soccer. The Cosmos should have realized this when they went to the (1984 NASL indoor season) finals and drew only 3,-000-4,000.”
Warner Communications still owned the Cosmos when the club lost the NASL indoor title to San Diego in the spring of 1984. When Chinaglia bought 60 percent of the team last summer, he wanted indoor soccer badly enough to petition his NASL friends with MISL contacts for help at getting into the all-indoor league.
“Giorgio Chinaglia told me personally many months ago they could not survive without indoor soccer,” Chicago Sting owner Lee Stern said. “We worked to get them in.”
The Cosmos dedication to high-caliber soccer allowed them to have six U.S. National team members, the best outdoor soccer players available.
Although the Cosmos also had players with NASL indoor soccer experience, only one had played in the MISL, generally considered a much faster game.
The lack of preparedness showed early, when the Cosmos dropped eight of their first 11 games and went on to an 11-22 record. Despite drawing an averge of more than 9,000 fans on the road, they averaged less than 4,200 at home.
A high payroll and low attendance combined for $1.5 million in losses before Pinton announced the withdrawl from the MISL on Feb. 22.
“New York fans do not accept indoor soccer,” Pinton said. “We were in the wrong business. What the fans want is good, world-class soccer. Unfortunately it took us six months to find that out.”
The Cosmos still intend to play international exhibition matches. But because they failed to post a letter of credit with the NASL, the Cosmos were expelled from the league.
The letter-of-credit issue has become somewhat moot with the NASL’s announcement that it was suspending operations for 1985.
The expulsion and subsequent suspension of NASL operations leaves the Cosmos without a league in good standing with the U.S. Soccer Federation and the Federation Internationale de Football Association. An affiliation is necessary to bring foreign teams to play in America.
To meet the requirements, the Cosmos will join another “professional league in the United States” this summer, according to Pinton. One possiblity is the Italian-American league, a league known almost solely to its members based in northern New Jersey.
“There is no Cosmos as far as we’re concerned,” Stern said. “All it means is a word in the dictionary referring to astronomy.”
Whatever it is, Cosmos doesn’t mean what it used to.
