Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos Page #2

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 Pel,

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."

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