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

'Goal!'

The New York Cosmos

were the best and worst

'of what soccer in America was.'

We were the first big pioneers where

big stars came to the United States.

'Pel, Giorgio Chinaglia,

Franz Beckenbauer, Johann Cruyff...'

It was my dream at that time

to go to play for the New York Cosmos.

I think it was one of the best decisions

I ever made.

'Goal!'

All of a sudden in that one summer,

summer 1977, the Cosmos took over.

When you saw that stadium

with 80,000 people

'you almost had an orgasm... really!'

It was a happening.

It was an event. It was unprecedented.

'The Cosmos were North America's

soccer ambassadors to the world.'

'We sensed

we were in on something special.'

The world's sport is finally being berthed

right here, right in our midst.

Soccer will be the biggest

big league of all.

'Goal number three!'

We transcended everything.

We were international. We were cool.

We were everything to everybody.

The world's most popular sport

came to its most powerful nation

in the same way the United States

imported many of its people

through the gates at Ellis Island,

imported from almost

every corner of the world.

'This is the cradle

of New York soccer in the early days.'

Ethnic communities playing soccer

on fields like this,

in and around New York

for decades, really.

"Hyphenated Americans"

we used to call them,

German-Americans, Greek-Americans,

but never American-Americans.

From the melting pot came

America's first great soccer team.

'In 1950, a free-spirited band of Yanks'

pulled off one of the most stunning

upsets in World Cup history.

The World Cup,

the Tournament of Nations

held every four years since 1930

is the global game's ultimate event.

The American's second match

in 1950 was against mighty England,

the country where the modern sport

was born.

I was just a teenager at that time,

but it was a great shock to wake up

'to find England had been knocked out

by the United States.'

We just couldn't believe it.

The winning goal was headed home

by Joe Gaetjens,

a Haitian living in New York City

who made his living as a dishwasher.

On the day he became an American

hero, he wasn't even a US citizen.

It would be 40 years before the US

fielded a World Cup team again.

'Americans don't have

the attention span that other people do'

for watching a sport that is

free-flowing and continuous.

'Hot smash! Burleson's

gonna have a long throw. He makes it.'

'That ends the inning.

Bottom of the 7th, 5-3, Cincinnati.'

In our sports there are all these

artificial stops and starts,

'which we use to indulge ourselves in

beer and Cracker Jacks and whatever.'

'Football, baseball,

basketball, hockey,

'all have natural breaks.'

I think that people watching soccer

for the first time wonder what's going on.

It's just up and down, up and down.

'Our football is a game

without stopping,

'where you've got to think for yourself.

'A game that you do with your feet

and not with your hands.'

All these things are totally different

for the American public.

'If you really want to get soccer,

'you have to concentrate on it

for the entire 45 minutes.'

I have sometimes likened it to a play.

If you go to a play in the theatre,

'you are going to pay attention to it

until the intermission.'

'Then you take a break and talk about it,

'then sit down again

and watch the entire second act.'

Soccer's like that.

It's not like the other American sports.

'It's about tradition.

'People in the rest of the world

'are passionate about soccer.'

There's no passion in America about

soccer.

By the 1960s, there was no passion

because there was no soccer.

It was just a country where 99.9%

of the population never heard of it.

No youth leagues.

No amateur teams, nothing.

It was an absolute barren country

in terms of soccer.

And yet the next great

American football club

would change the world's game forever.

The phenomenon known

as the New York Cosmos

would not have happened

without the passion of one man.

My father was a big sports fan.

He loved watching football.

We went to basketball games

and hockey games all the time.

'And I think the idea

of developing a sport'

from basically scratch in

the United States really turned him on.

He was a traveling salesman who

became the world's first media titan.

Long before Ted Turner

and Rupert Murdoch,

there was Steve Ross,

creator of Warner Communications.

'They owned

Warner Brothers Studio which boasted

'some of the great film stars of the day:

'Redford, Streisand, Dustin Hoffman.'

They owned record companies

that featured musicians

like Dylan and the Rolling Stones,

Ray Charles.

He started the first true entertainment

empire with comic books,

and ended up igniting

the cable television revolution.

He also bought

an arcade game company,

and helped create the first name

in home computing.

He was a genius. In the financial world

he was really unbelievable.

And he was also close

to Frank Sinatra, by the way.

He was somebody.

He was fantastic. He was not only

a big businessman.

He was very charming.

He was like a father to us.

He had transformed his father-in-law's

funeral parlor

and a collection of parking lots

into a media empire.

For Steve Ross, anything seemed

possible, even soccer.

It captivated him.

The man owned movie studios.

The man owned six record companies,

cable, you know.

'Company doing $6 billion a year,'

and he's enamored

with going into a locker room.

'But for what reason?

What purpose was he obsessed with it?

'What was that all about?'

The big bang of the Cosmos

began with a backbeat.

And two brothers from Istanbul.

Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun are

responsible for more classic vinyl

than Elvis and the Beatles put together.

Ahmet founded Atlantic Records

in 1947.

Warner Communications

bought Atlantic 20 years later,

and the Erteguns went to work

for Steve Ross.

Here we were,

two New York businessmen,

who had this love of soccer.

'My brother decided

to leave Atlantic Records.'

And Steve Ross said, "If you'll stay,

I'll do anything that you like."

So my brother said to Steve Ross,

"What I really would like is

a professional soccer/football team."

Nesuhi Ertegun came to me

and Steve actually and said,

"Soccer is going to be the biggest sport.

It is the biggest sport in the world.

"Clearly it's going to overtake America."

Television viewers in the US

had got their first taste

of world football's potential in 1966.

They saw almost 100,000 fans

pack Wembley Stadium

for the final between

England and West Germany,

as the BBC broadcast

was carried live in America.

In one of the most thrilling matches

ever played,

young Beckenbauer and his team-mates

could not stop England's Geoff Hurst.

'England... it's a goal!'

'Some people are on the pitch,

they think it's all over...

'It is now!'

In the UK alone, 32 million viewers

tuned in to the extra time thriller.

Still the biggest audience

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes