Directors: Paul Crowder, John Dower.
Narrator: Matt Dillon
Country of Origin: USA
A packed Giants stadium. Over 70,000 fans enthusiastically anticipate another big game. Yet this is not American football, it’s a scene from a New York Cosmos soccer match in the 1970s. It’s both a thrilling and bewildering image.
How did the Cosmos attract such a huge following? And how did they lose it all so quickly?
Paul Crowder and John Dower’s documentary tracks the success and downfall of the North American Soccer League’s (NASL) biggest and most recognisable team, answering both those questions and more along the way.
From their early days as an amateur side watched by a few hundred people, if that, to their peak (from 1975-1982) when they played in front of packed stadiums across America, the tale of the Cosmos is as fascinating as it is remarkable.
Although there seems to be confusion amongst the many interviewees who detail the team’s rise, it is established that Warner Communications head Steve Ross was largely responsible for financing the Cosmos revolution.
It is estimated that anywhere between $2-5 million was splashed out on acquiring the services of Pele, the most famous player in the world, to bring soccer to the consciousness of a city, and a nation, more preoccupied with baseball, American football, basketball and ice hockey.
Before Pele’s arrival, the ragtag bunch of amateurs that made up the Cosmos, attracted little, if any, media attention. In the pre-Pele days, goalkeeper Shep Messing even posed nude for a (dodgy looking) magazine to generate interest in the team. All that changed when the Brazilian legend arrived in 1975.
A previously uninterested media began to cover the sport en masse and Pele’s introduction to the league – his first game was a sell-out on a patchy public park littered with glass and rubbish – began its steady growth in popularity.
Initially Brazil didn’t want to let their most famous son leave for America, yet after the intervention of then US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, he was allowed to bring the beautiful game to the American people.
After Pele, German legend Franz Beckenbauer, his Brazilian World Cup winning team-mate Carlos Alberto and Italian centre-forward Giorgio Chinaglia all joined the Cosmos. It was the monstrously egotistical, opinionated Italian, who forged an intimate and ultimately debilitating bond with Ross that signalled the end of both the Cosmos and the NASL. Chinaglia, it is implied (although predictably he denies it), started to run the team and as the league’s flagship franchise steadily sank, the rest quickly followed. Of course it wasn’t solely Chinaglia’s fault that the Cosmos collapsed.
Large amounts of money invested in the team were never recouped and it quickly went into financial free fall. It was a similar story for clubs set up across the US and Canada that tried to emulate the Cosmos’ success.
No sooner had teams been established by eager opportunist owners ready to make a quick buck – many in unlikely destinations like Montreal (ice hockey country), Fort Lauderdale and Hawaii – than they disbanded. The fact that the NASL didn’t secure sufficient ratings to merit more than one season on network US television didn’t exactly help either.
Although the documentary focuses more on the ascent of the Cosmos, rather than their demise, it’s still a gripping, if slightly unbelievable yarn. The procession of talking heads that describe the team’s heady journey to the top pinpoint Pele’s arrival and subsequent on-field exploits as the primary catalyst in the explosion of soccer’s popularity. Unfortunately we only see and hear Pele in archive footage on and off the pitch, including at Studio 54, which was the team’s favourite haunt after matches. This is a major down point in an otherwise engrossing film. Yes we hear from Beckenbauer, Carlos Alberto, Chinaglia and even Rodney Marsh, but not Pele.
Marsh, a talented English forward who played for the Tampa Bay Rowdies, facetiously told the media upon arriving in Florida that Pele was the black Rodney Marsh. Then in a classic clip, we see Pele go through the outspoken Marsh, sending him sprawling to the turf before giving the former Fulham man a patronising pat on the head and trotting away.
In a wonderful early segment, an admittedly selective pro-soccer group of interviewees deride and mock traditional American sports fans for their lack of intelligence and concentration. Indeed, one contributor even goes as far to say that soccer is a fast flowing game almost like an opera that demands to be fully focused on in its entirety. The popular American sports are broken into easy to digest chunks so that spectators can eat fast food and drink beer, it is suggested.
Another wonderful montage section – there are several great montages – combines footage of classic NASL moments, involving Pele and Marsh amongst others, with Puccini’s Nessun Dorma. A funky soundtrack also runs smoothly through an enthusiastically told film, sometimes told in retro-style split screen interviews.
Predictably the failure of the Cosmos and the league itself is rather sketchily detailed, yet just watching Pele and co during the team’s glory years is enthralling in itself.
It’s just a pity that the great man was too busy advertising Viagra to take part.
Stephen Kasiewicz 