Former Cosmos Owner?

Thanks for the link.

Cosmos . . . those were the days!

 

They were owned by Warner Bros. until the league when under. They even had Bugs Bunny as a mascot for some years.

 

The name " Cosmos " is more or less being held for ransom by the former owner of the Cosmos....his name slips my mind but he works out of a small college in northern NJ called Ramapo College...he hold summer soccer camps using the Cosmos name and symbol to attract more attention.....last time I checked , when NYC was talking about a second MLS team,,,the Cosmos situation was brought up, only to have that guy claim he would " sell " the name to MLS for around 2-3 million dollars.

Bringing the cosmos back would be sweet and it would be nice to see but paying or at least giving in this guy's ransom of the name , especially for the price tag he has set...is just riduclous.

 

Peppe Pinton has the name.

He sort of stumbled into it; at the end of the 1984 season, Warners announced it had had enough of soccer, and wanted to sell the Cosmos. Former Cosmos star Giorgio Chinaglia put together a group, including Pinton. They bought the team, and promptly ran it into the ground--it folded midway through the 1984-85 MISL season.

Pinton has been especially weasel-ly about the Cosmos logo. He once sent a letter to soccernova, threatening to sue over Mike's use of the logo at his site. One letter from a good lawyer Mike retained and the punk backed right down.

The Cosmos will be back.

For more info, go to www.soccernova.com and click on the Cosmos history link. There's a nice year-to-year summary of their history...but I'm biased, because I wrote it!

 

Unfortunately I think that was just a case of lightning in a bottle. Although I'm not giving up hope just yet.

 

The magic was done with mirrors. No matter how critical anyone can be of how MLS is run, it is exponentially more stable than the NASL ever was. The signing of Pele by the Cosmos propelled the NASL of the early 70s from a league comparable to today's A-League to a league that was sometimes great (real world class players), sometimes good (media coverage and general publicity), sometimes bad (35yd offsides and 70s style cheerleaders) and sometimes ugly (astroturf, shootouts). Some teams averaged in the tens of thousands; others less that 5K... MLS before this year had no teams move/fold in it's 6 yr history. NASL couldn't keep teams from moving/folding for 2 years in a row-- there was no need for an "expansion thread" Get on board as the NASL train leaves for: San Antonio, Honolulu, Tulsa, Hartford, Las Vegas, San Diego, Jacksonville, Memphis, Oakland, round trip from Minnesota to Ft Lauderdale, from Detroit to DC only to "fold up" in a phone booth and come out as Team America!

The worst problem seemed to be that the league owed nothing to the development of an "American style of play." Our undeveloped small pool of native players at the time were stuck in non-playmaking roles on teams dominated by-and-large by european coaches who used their own players and coached their own style of play.

NASL commissioners/owners felt the need to "Americanize" the game with shootouts, astroturf, crazy point-systems and cheerleaders while the real problems of over ambitious salaries and the development of North American players were addressed too little and too late.

The NASL was a wild ride on a rickety roller coaster.

MLS is... well, I can't think of the right matching metaphor... so, I guess, in a word: stable.

Keep in mind many of the same coaches and players who've droned on and on about the superiority of play in the NASL to today's MLS are the same ones who wouldn't give the time of day to our American players... a potentially talented Landon Donovan-type would have sat the bench on Alan Hinton's NASL Seattle club as assuredly as Landon himself did at Bayer Leverkusen...

Europe's soccer elite and America's soccer idiots may deride MLS as minor league but the NASL had truly earned a reputation as a bush-league where old washed up stars go to play before they retire.

I'll take young up-and-coming Americans over past-their-prime Euros ANY DAY!

 

The shootout was pandering to the American disdain for ties, but the point system had been theorized before. It had gained proponents because defense had become dominant in European soccer. When the NPSL was founded to rival the USA, one of its innovations was the bonus-points-for-goals system. Some journalists in England even lauded the NPSL for treading the path that Europe feared. The cheerleaders were not only to be found in the NASL. Many South American sides introduced them in the late 1970's. As for Astroturf, it wasn't that they deliberately used it. They simply sought out the largest venues, and many of them happened to have turf. I suppose the Cosmos could have continued playing at Yankee Stadium, but they figured they could fill Giants Stadium.

I'll get the book thrown at me for this, but I like the shootout's execution. The striker would start from the 35 yard line, the keeper would charge off his line to cut down the angle, and the striker had five seconds to shoot. I'd like to see someone experiment with this as the penalty kick format. Level the playing field. Problem is, if a European league tried it, people would probably bite their tongue. But if MLS tried it, grab your umbrella because here comes the shitstorm.

 

You're right about a lot of what you said (although there were some of the younger guys who came over here to "prove themselves," and later went back to their home leagues and became stars; Bruce Grobbelar (Vancouver/Liverpool) comes to mind...). But the fact is, at that time, those "name" players were what got people in the stands. True, most were past their prime, but it was the name that counted. They "had" to have the George Bests, Johan Cruyffs, Bobby Moores, Gerd Muellers, Franz Beckenbauers, and the like, or no one would have shown up. At that time, guys like Al Trost, Pat McBride, et al, were good players, by US standard, but they were nowhere near the quality or name recognition the foreign "stars" were. Whereas now, our national team makes it to the quarterfinals of the WC, I can remember when they would lose 10-0 to Poland in a friendly. That would have never flown in the NASL, a league made up of the so-called "best" American and Canadian stars. We had the old ASL for that, and they were struggling, to say the least. We've come a long way, baby (oops, sorry ).

Not only are the American players better, they carry more name recognition because of their international success. The first American player who made real national headlines was Kyle Rote Jr., partially because of his dad (big-time football player), and the fact the he won Rookie of the Year in the NASL, and actually did something (lead the league in scoring).

It would have been great to have showcased the best America had to offer, but it wouldn't have sold any tickets.

 

The Mls did do this (hockey style shootouts) when it first started. I liked it but the old school soccer fans hated it.

 

The "Cosmos Mystique" is the biggest obstacle to a proper NY MLS team. I have reluctantly come to that conclusion after reading everything surrounding the issue.

I'd rather have a proper NY MLS club with a new name for a new time.

 

I'm not sure. I think it depends on the city. I heard Philly did okay with a mostly american team as the Atoms but were a bust as the Fury in '78 (winning I'm sure makes a difference). I just wonder if growing year by year woulda been better (my 20/20 hindsight is in working order today).

Tulsa didn't have a "name" player until their last season (Jurgen Kristensen)... I doubt a lot of non-ethnic north american soccer fans could name the great world players at the time. I think Pele was a double edged sword. He was a great ambassador in an effort that dramatically increased youth participation but I'm afraid he opened a "pandora's box" of budget busting "names" that brought some fans out but ultimately killed the league.

My first MLS game I saw was Colorado/KC the first season. A lot of it really wasn't very good but I thought about the great playmaker Colorado had (Balboa) and thought: finally, a league that'll take it's lumps for awhile that'll use our guys as playmakers. And these guys don't have to have 2nd and 3rd jobs to keep playing the game.

Which brings me to this: If the NASL hadn't overexpanded and kept to a dozen or so successful teams, would the league have stayed alive and could the north american players have developed better?

 

Mostly American, mostly local team--I think that was the key distinction. Winning was nice, but they were mediocre in 1974 and still drew well. The Fury had a few token locals, but never really appealed to the community.

Philadelphia is unique that way; it supports a team made up of local players win or lose, but doesn't support a team that wins without locals. Cases in point: the 1978-79 MISL Fever was basically the local men's league all-star team, and had about double the league average for attendance. A year later, those local kids were replaced with NASL pros, and people stopped coming. The current MISL team, the Kixx, drew very well for years with a team made up of local players. Slowly, the locals were jettisoned for "better" players. Well, the Kixx won the championship last year, but only about half the number of people who used to see them came.

If the NASL had not lunged for the brass ring in 1978, and kept to a stable core number of franchises, then, yes, we'd be ahead of the curve as far as producing quality American players. Going into the 1984 season, the league had slowly but surely increased the number of Americans who had to be on the field at all times; Americans would have been represented.