Just for kicks: Team USA, and America’s brush with greatness

There are 50,000 people waiting outside the gates, trying desperately to get in and join the 25,000 who’ve already made it. This was the USA of the 1970s, and this was all for a sport they call soccer.

There are 50,000 people waiting outside the gates, trying desperately to get in and join the 25,000 who’ve already made it. The press and the photographers are there in full force. The stadium is noisy, and the buzz is electric. This wasn’t happening in Europe or in South America, or even Asia. This was the USA of the 1970s, and this was all for a sport they call soccer.

Pelé celebrates after a win with the New York Cosmos in 1978. (Getty Images)

The scenes, as described by Cosmos coach Gordon Bradley in Once in a Lifetime: The Incredible Story of the New York Cosmos, were real. And they were mad.

The trigger, though, was a man we simply know as Pelé. The Brazilian legend, who wasn’t allowed to play outside his country in his prime as the government declared him a national treasure, signed a three-year contract in 1975 with the New York Cosmos (a team in the North American Soccer League). Suddenly, the world and the United States took notice.

Soccer, not football

Mention football to anyone in the US and they first think about the National Football League (or American Football, as the outsiders call it). That is evident now and was clearly evident back then.

Clive Toye, a former journalist who was the president and general manager of the Cosmos, knew what the challenges were first hand. He and NASL commissioner Phil Woosnam bought the American TV rights for the 1970 World Cup for $1,500, but they couldn’t find anyone willing to televise the event.

Toye knew that the only way to make football popular was to recruit the most popular star on the planet — Pelé; a player that even people in the US had heard of.

But that was easier said than done.

The first time they approached Pelé about playing for the New York Cosmos, he dismissed them: “Prof, tell them that they are crazy! I’ll never play for anybody after Santos!” he told his confidante and advisor, Professor Julio Mazzei.

Toye kept at it. The first approach was made in January 1971 – a year after Brazil’s third World Cup win – and Pele finally agreed in principle in March 1975. The Brazilian wrote on a piece of paper and signed it. Nothing official about it, but it became real on June 3 when a $2.8 million contract was signed in Hamilton.

Following Pelé came Italian Giorgio Chinaglia, German Franz Beckenbauer, Brazilian Carlos Alberto, and Dutchman Johan Neeskens. The captain, Werner Roth, later said about Pelé: “The biggest challenge for us was not stopping and watching him play.”

It might not be wrong to say that the most glamourous team in the world in 1977 was not playing in Europe. They had been brought together to put the US on the football, er soccer, map; to ignite interest in the world’s most popular sport and some Indians might even remember when Mohun Bagan, coached by PK Banerjee, held the fancied Cosmos to a 2-2 draw in an exhibition match in 1977.

Cosmos had a great deal of success, becoming champions in 1972, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1982. The move worked for NASL, too, with average crowds going up by around 80% from 1975 to 1977. By 1985, NASL was dead but many would argue it achieved its goal.

They were an iconic, glamourous and ultimately short-lived dream but they kick-started a boom that helped bring the World Cup to USA in 1994.

A long and strange bond

The US are now one of the best women’s teams in the world, and the men’s team aren’t doing too badly either.

The average attendance of Major League Soccer (MLS), the top football competition in the US, ranks as the third highest in North American sports leagues. It is behind only the National Football League and Major League Baseball, but television numbers still remain underwhelming.

Success at the international level always helps though. After finishing second in Group B of the 2022 World Cup with five points, two behind England, the US will now play Netherlands on Saturday with the chance to reach the quarterfinals for the first time since 2002.

Indeed, given their strange relationship with the game, it might surprise many that USA have appeared in half of all the World Cups. Of the 22 competitions that have been held to date, they have qualified for 11 – including all since 1994 with the exception of 2018.

“I always say it’s us against the world,” winger Tim Weah said after the team made it to the Round of 16, “’cause no one believed that US could play good football.”

That feeling could arise from how the sport itself is looked at in the US but sometimes, as Cosmos had shown, all it takes is some star power to shake the fans out of their stupor. They might not have Pelé to do that now, but a good run at the World Cup will work just as well.