If he's not a quality player it's not adding depth. I think that illusion is breaking down with the US Open Cup, increasingly year over year. Speculation.
It would (maybe) be special to Americans, but not to Brazilians. Brazilians wouldn't get a hard-on because Pele played for the club. It would give the club more appeal that if it had been any other tier 2 club, but Cosmos were not a giant of the world game. They were a curious novelty, but little more than that. I think you are seriously over-estimating the lure of the Cosmos. Take the "prestige" friendly against Leyton Orient. Ticket prices have been dropped to be lower than the following friendly against Arsenal Reserves a few days later. Contrast that to Bournemouth, who somehow got a friendly with Real Madrid, and saw their bigger ground sell out in three hours despite tickets being a daft £60 each. It's not the world this new Cosmos lives in either. In fact they are further away. The name will be good for publicity (in New York) and will no doubt attract a fair few who like the idea of creating the old days. Unfortunately they'll turn up and watch a team with no stars at all playing in a 2nd tier league, out of a high school stadium, and it won't exactly be the same as watching Pele in front of 70,000.
I disagree with your assessment. If you think Pele has no influence in the heart of Brazilian soccer I have nothing to say except you are wrong. Then why does this matter to you? Well, these are the first few games in England. I am not worried. Ok, seriously? I am not an idiot-- of course if they're playing Real Madrid, as it stands, that's a bigger deal. Do you think they could sell out like that if it were the LA Galaxy playing? Honestly? Or the New England Revs? Or Real Salt Lake? (It even has a "Real" in it!) Come on. The fact that you have to compare it to Real Madrid is telling. Ok. The Cosmos' numbers remained high after Pele retired. And it's a university stadium. If the Belmont Stadium plan gets approved, we'll see how it works out.
They are sorry. At least those teams aren't using history of a team they have no connection to but name
after that tie in Toronto I'm hot...no more mister nice guy... Do you realize that some 30 hours after their game against Watford was cancelled there's still no acknowledgement from F.cosmos land. No mention on the website/Facebook/twitter. This "revival" has the feel of a movie with scripting so tightly controlled there's no ability to deal with off script "bad" news. With a couple of notable exceptions F.cosmos fans are laying low on the internet and who knows even if they were talking they'd probably be taking the same every move is golden approach that Stover and the gang are. And virtually every interview with those guys just reports the script with no effort to push for "real" information. What exactly is that team doing in London two weeks before their first game anyway? One would think staying home practicing and getting their act together with a couple of local preseaon games would be the more prudent move instead of taking the hugest of road trips before they've even played. But to true believers there's apparently no space for critical thinking and analysis. This thing exists on some sort of metaphysical platform for them...and to think that back in the day the real Cosmos were just our hometown team. I think that's it, none of the new players in this saga lived through the era and their approach is indeed based in part on a movie and all the extraneous bs that very few actual fans gave a hoot about.
Reply to my second paragraph as well. Yes, Pele is a legend among legends in Brazil. But not necessarily due to his time with the Cosmos. Because we want to educate you and your fellow true believers. I don't think he's comparing the Cosmos to Real Madrid. In fact, I think the more apt comparison is Bournemouth and the Cosmos. Bournemouth got Real Madrid to come over to their backyard to play a friendly. The Cosmos had to fly across the pond to line up friendlies against Watford and Leyton Orient, and Watford has cancelled. In fact, why couldn't the Cosmos get Real Madrid to come to Long Island? I'm sure they could've worked out something through their mutual connection to Emirates. That certainly would've made a much bigger splash than their upcoming match in another country against a third division team.
Pele obviously means a vast amount to Brazilians. Cosmos though? That's where he went at the end of his career, to play in what was widely regarded as a semi-serious exhibition league. You seem to be holding it up as if being at the Cosmos was the pinnacle of his career, where the legend was made. it doesn't. No I don't, but it's not me claiming Cosmos are some giant worldwide brand, far in excess of an other club in the USA. As it happens, a few years back I was in Australia, and the news that LA Galaxy were playing a friendly in Sydney was front page news in the city's main newspaper. OK, a big chunk of that was about Beckham, as well as the very large (in the part of the world) detail that LA Galaxy were playing in Sydney and not Melbourne, made it a bigger story. It is. I was showing there's a rather big difference between being nowhere near selling out (tickets can still be bought in batches of 8 according to the official site) even with reduced prices, and selling out in rapid time despite tickets being almost three times the usual price elsewhere. the fact is though that they'll most probably be playing to the lowest crowds any Cosmos team has seen since the last time they played at the stadium 40 years ago. It's not going to be like the old Cosmos
Is that the one where Shep said that Soda FC was lucky because Toronto was playing at the level of a 14-year old? I read that on Twitter. Pretty funny, that Shep. Actually, a number of people, including the Borough Boys, have been talking about it on Twitter. As to why not more? Probably because of (a) our new signing (b) the Cosmos Copa and (c) the Street Soccer Tournament that many supporters were playing in today. And what really should they be doing? The majority of them are having fun on the weekend and getting excited about the opening game. Not all of them are a middle-aged deacon with a beer and a netbook in their kitchen waiting for the Scorpions/Dorados game to start. I am sure that when they utterly fail as you predict you'll be a shoo-in for the opening for Atheltic director. And the Cosmos will again be the hometown team, because my "hometown" isn't Harrison, NJ, and it isn't Manchester either. I feel for the Metros. I do. If MLS had christened them the Cosmos at the beginning, maybe things would have been different all around. I'm not going to sit here and do the whole "different time, different league, different team" charade that I will put up with from less knowledgeable people. You're a RBNY fan and you obviously know better. But many of our people were around in that time. I was a kid as the NASL fell. When it fell, I believed soccer fell here. I didn't know of any league taking over as D1 until about 2008 or so. It took 12 years and an ad in a free paper to even realize MLS even existed. So no, I didn't even watch "Once in a Lifetime" till like 4 months ago. I was a rare person who was following the NASL since people were disparaging it as the "TOR league" (I became really sick and tired of the whole thing a few years back, maybe 2 or 3), and when the Cosmos began the whole cat-and-mouse with MLS, I was one of the people who wished they could just go to NASL. And when they did, I was happy. So no, please spare me the speech about what you think my views on soccer are. I don't get the impression that you don't know them, even though I've explained them in other parts of the forum. Now, some of the other geniuses here have actually read my explanations. They don't care because they're large rocks. I expect you're smarter than that as a New Yorker, so please. Hate if you want, but don't buy into the narrative some of these terrified idiots have concocted as their beloved "New York is dysfunctional" story of 16 years comes to a bitter end.
Yawn, don't every get tired of preaching how much you hate MLS and want it and its teams to fold Nodine?
i think one area NY Cosmos will have an advantage over New York Red Bulls is the academy system. They aren't going to be burdened by MLS rules like MLS clubs are. Look what is happening to LA Galaxy. They are losing their academy prospects because they are unable to offer them anything above 35k. MLS only allows teams to sign two homegrown players to Generation Adidas contracts. The Cosmos could pay their homegrown players whatever they please. Lets say for instance, they think they have developed the next Landon Donovan. Well, they will want to pay a little more to keep him and continue to develop him so they can sell him for a profit. They could also poach players from NYRB. If NYRB is at the GA cap then they won't be able to keep their prospects either. This is what we talk about when we say that MLS is over-regulated and it hurts development and quality.
Possibly. The Red Bulls already have an established academy and pretty good youth recruitment. They've also got some great facilities. It's going to take a lot to compete with that. Well, no, they won't, but the rules can change. The homegrown rule has already changed significantly since it started up. The more and more teams are signing homegrown players, the more you're going to see the rule loosened. You can already sign more than 2 per year, it's just that two only count against the cap. Yeah, LA is losing some of its kids to Mexico. It also helps that a lot of the kids are Mexican-American and the Mexican league is pretty damn good. So, they'd essentially be a farm team for the bigger leagues? That one was too easy. Yeah, they could do that. That's assuming they get a kid of that level in their youth academy. Right now, it's still going to be more attractive to play for an MLS team than an NASL team. More European scouts are watching MLS than are watching NASL. Whether people want to admit it or not, MLS is viewed as a better league than the NASL by scouts. If an MLS team had a kid of Landon Donovan's quality, an MLS team would find a way to sign him. Well, yeah, they could. But is it going to be more attractive for a kid to play in the NASL in a college football stadium or in Red Bull Arena? What's going to set a kid up for a move to Europe better? Where will a kid have a better shot at playing for the US national team (assuming he's American)? The answer is still MLS. I agree, there are still problems with MLS player acquirement rules. They're changing and will continue to change. There's already been a drastic change from what the league was, especially with the homegrown player rule. There's nothing to say that the rules will stay the same. If MLS thinks it's going to lose kids, the rules will change.
basically that's how lower division teams operate(and many leagues outside the top 4 in Europe). The Cosmos are a business. If they trained up a Landon Donovan type player the reality is that player will want to move to a bigger league. Thus, their motivation for developing players has to be about getting a return on the investment. If the Cosmos have a good academy the scouts will notice. It's no different than some lower division clubs in England who are known for developing players. Developing players is about your reputation, not what league you are in.
Sorry, that comment wasn't really directed at you. The NASL is just adamant that it's not going to be a farm league for anyone. Well, yeah, scouts will notice, but it's going to take a lot of time and effort to get the kids to play for the Cosmos. It does matter that they're not at the highest level of soccer. The league you play in does impact your reputation.
You can read yourself in as you like but my post wasn't directed at any particular person so consider yourself spared. And when I stated F.cosmos hadn't (and maybe still haven't) mentioned the Watford cancellation I was referring to the club. But they did have time to mention a new signing and the latest exploits of the F.cosmos Girls.
Of course I do. (And I don't hate MLS. I think they'd make a fabulous second division). I am tired of it now. But I remain motivated by the sheer volume of "Cosmos are gonna suck" posts from people who barely cared about the NASL before the deal was announced and now suddenly it's their life's passion. If we suck in two weeks, then we will do so without any help from naysayers. If we succeed, you'll probably not hear from me here a while yet. After all, proving it can be better than MLS is a lot more fun than arguing the point among the converted here.
So, wait, you've gone from knowing nothing about MLS in 2008 to now being able to confidently predict its imminent collapse on the basis of just two years' worth of attendance numbers, and being absolutely certain that the Cosmos has a better TV deal? I don't buy that. You're sounding more like someone who willfully ignored MLS just because it wasn't the old NASL.
I'll take it a step further. I really don't think he even knew USL or the new NASL where a thing until the Cosmos came along and said they where going to play in NASL.
and Rutherford, NJ, was? So you're a long-term soccer fan, yet somehow managed to avoid any mention at all of MLS' existence for 12 years? Were you in a coma, or did you maybe live in an Amish community for a while?
I can honestly say I didn't know MLS existed. But I do know how business works. I've been in sales and marketing all my life. You can believe I'm a liar, but that's too bad, because I've even given helpful suggestions to MLS.