Pel
Kicked around for years, U.S. soccer comes into its own
It was a turnout worthy of champions --some 5,000 boisterous fans waiting for hours at New York City's Kennedy Airport for the triumphant return of their team and their hero. Was it for the first-place Yankees that the crowd had gathered? The football Giants or Jets? No, it was for a team whose name is still strange to many Americans, but one that should become increasingly familiar: the Cosmos, newly crowned champions of the North American Soccer League. And above all it was for their star, Pele, the man who more than anyone else has, in the space of a single season, turned soccer into a major sport in the U.S.
The Cosmos were returning from the West Coast, where before an S.R.O. crowd of 35,548 in Portland, Ore., they had won the N.A.S.L. title by beating the Seattle Sounders, 2-1. The size of the crowd had been limited only by the capacity of the Portland stadium; millions watched on television in the U.S. and around the world. Reflecting the popularity of soccer outside the U.S., the game had been beamed to ten countries. Though only a few years ago, soccer attendance in the U.S. seldom exceeded a few thousand, during the just completed N.A.S.L. season, soccer fans flocked to the turnstiles. In their play-off game against the Fort Lauderdale Strikers last month at Giants Stadium in the New Jersey Meadowlands, for example, the Cosmos drew a whopping 77,691. The New York team averaged 34,142 for its 13 home games this season, and the also-ran Minnesota Kicks drew an amazing 32,771 per contest.
How did Americans suddenly discover the joy in soccer that most of the rest of the world has long known? Look no further than the foot of Brazilian Pele, who will retire this season after two decades as the world's premier player (and the world's highest-paid athlete). Although the N.A.S.L. was founded nine years ago, soccer as an American spectator sport was really born in 1975 when the Cosmos persuaded Pele to come out of retirement with a $4.75 million, three-year contract to evangelize Americans for soccer. His arrival brought instant respectability to American soccer and helped lure to the U.S. such international stars as Giorgio Chinaglia and Franz Beckenbauer of the Cosmos and George Best of the Los Angeles Aztecs. Attendance figures soared wherever Pele and the Cosmos played, and his very presence in a league city was enough to push soccer to the top of local sports pages.
The current U.S. soccer boom contrasts sharply with the state of the sport in 1969, when the N.A.S.L. was down to five teams and on the brink of bankruptcy. Then Phil Woosnam took charge as league commissioner and rebuilt the sport. The N.A.S.L. now consists of 18 teams in cities from Vancouver to Tampa, and Woosnam expects to expand to 24 by next season. Says he: "It's the best investment in sports. Right now, all you need is $250,000 cash and the ability to cope with some initial losses." He seems to be right; half a dozen owners may have turned a profit for the first time this past season, pushed into the black by the sport's growing audience. No longer confined solely to ethnic groups nostalgic for the old country, U.S. soccer crowds now include large numbers of women (40% of fans are female) and suburban, upper-middle-class executives and professionals.
More fans are also being attracted by the better quality of play, on the part not only of the European imports but also of Americans. The Cosmos, who field players of eleven different nationalities, have a Brooklyn-born Harvard graduate in goal named Shep Messing (each team is required to start one American and have at least five others on the roster). Indeed, after the championship game, Pele symbolically acknowledged the improvement of the U.S. players by giving Jim McAlister, Sounder defender and Seattle native, and the league's rookie of the year, a souvenir that any soccer fan or player would treasure--the Great One's jersey. Said Pele: "Now I know I have accomplished what I came here for--to make soccer a reality in the U.S."
Pele's other accomplishment--leading the Cosmos to a title--was no small task either. After a four-month, 26-game schedule, the Cosmos made the play-offs along with eleven other teams in a wide-open battle for the championship. All four division races had been close, and the Cosmos were rated a slight favorite, more on the basis of potential than proven ability (they had finished second to the Fort Lauderdale Strikers in the Eastern Division). The New Yorkers kicked and clawed their way through four play-off rounds en route to the championship. In the end, it was an unheralded Briton named Steve Hunt--not Pele--who led the Cosmos to victory in Soccer Bowl-77 with a goal and an assist.
The next venture for the champion Cosmos will be a demonstration of American soccer on a worldwide tour this month that includes stops in Caracas, Tokyo and Peking. Then Pele will play the final game of his career in an October exhibition in New Jersey that will pit the Cosmos against Brazil's Santos team, his former squad (he will play the first half for the Cosmos, the second half for the Brazilians). Meanwhile, the soccer players are learning fast some of the more rewarding nuances of U.S. sports. They are in the process of forming a players' union to bargain for a bigger share of the gate receipts. Can soccer bubble-gum cards be far behind?
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.