August 1 – A new group led by English businessman Paul Kemsley has acquired the name of the old Cosmos soccer team of the North American Soccer League (NASL) and made Pele its honorary President.
The Cosmos revealed that their goal is to re-establish the team as “a part of Major League Soccer”.
The Cosmos had Pele, Franz Beckenbauer and Carlos Alberto in their most popular years but folded in 1985, a year after the NASL.
MLS commissioner Don Garber said a goal of his league is to have a second team in the New York area to form a rivalry with the Red Bulls, who play in New Jersey.
Garber has held talks with the Wilpon family, owner of baseball’s New York Mets.
The Cosmos ceased operations in the 1980s as ownership fluctuated and the NASL crumbled.
Since then, G. Peppe Pinton had held the rights to the name, until a group led by Kemsley, who previously held an interest in Tottenham Hotspur, bought it.
The new Cosmos has already partnered with Queens-based youth club BW Gottschee.
Together they will field youth teams called the Cosmos Academy in the US Soccer Development Academy.
The Cosmos also bought the Copa NYC tournament, an competition in New York which has a 16-year history.
“Our plan has several phases, but if you fast-forward, it’s our aspiration to play at the highest level in this country, and that’s MLS,” said Joe Fraga, executive director of the new Cosmos, told the New York Times.
“And we are serious.
“We want to make it relevant again; we want kids to know what the Cosmos were and are, to bring the soccer dream back to the city.
“Pelé is our face, and you couldn’t do better than that, not just for the Cosmos, but for soccer in general.
“Our goal is to respect history and the legacy, and make it relevant now.”
The Brazilian legend played for the New York Cosmos in its glory days in the 1970s.
“This is fantastic,” Pelé said.
“We are working very hard to bring the beautiful game back to New York, and now we finally have people who support us.
“Looking back, we know mistakes were made in the league, but that happens everywhere in the world.
“But the football is the reality, and one day I hope to be happy to see the New York Cosmos playing the Red Bulls in the championship game.”
Since reclaiming the territorial rights to a second New York team when AEG sold the MetroStars to Red Bull, MLS has never tried to hide its desire to put a club in the city proper, as opposed to in New Jersey, where the Red Bulls are based.
“This is a new era,” Pinton told the New York Times.
“It took a long time, but I’ve found a man with the vision of Steve Ross to carry on the Cosmos name.”
Ross, who died in 1992, was the chairman of Warner Communications, which owned the original Cosmos.
Kemsley hosted a dinner Saturday at Per Se, a restaurant in the Time Warner Center in Manhattan.
Nearly a dozen former Cosmos attended.
“The Cosmos name is still a brand name, still after so many years,” the team’s former star Giorgio Chinaglia said.
“People still recognise it in Europe.
“I think this is a good idea, if they can achieve what they say they want to achieve.
“There’s no question these are serious people.
“Of course there are going to be expectations, but if they get another team in New York, it would be good, it would be a rivalry and people will be interested.”