Sue Mott publishes a piece "Chelsea be warned - Cosmos were proof of perils of excess"
in Tuesday's London Daily Telegraph in which she compares Chelsea Football club to the late New York Cosmos. What a load of tripe! As someone who is both a Chelsea Fan today and was both a Chelsea Fan and a New York Cosmos fan as a child I think I can speak with some authority.
I became a Chelsea fan and football fan when I was 8 1/2 years old having watched the FA Cup Final replay against Leeds shortly after we moved to London from America and later that summer watching the 1970 World Cup from Mexico City with my Dad on the telly. I was drawn to the passion of the English football game, the community singing, the swaying scarves, the bad tasting soup, the terraces, the waving flags, the Wembley Stadium experience in the days of 100,000 crowds . Even the "bloody 'ooligans" had character back then. We didn't have any of that in any American professional sport I knew at the time.
When we moved back to the States in 1975 there was virtually no coverage of football. There was no Match of The Day, No Big Match, no Internet, scant coverage in the news and the best one could hope for was to find a soccer magazine that had results from weeks earlier. Then there was the New York Cosmos. I somehow convinced my Dad to get season tickets for the Cosmos. We went to a game at Yankee Stadium in 1976 and saw Pele score with a magnificent bicycle kick. Later the Cosmos moved to the then new Giants Stadium in New Jersey and we enjoyed being part of crowds of over 70,000 to watch a club match. It may have been a joke to Sue Mott but to the melting pot that is the New York metropolitan area it was a chance to fantasize , to live a dream, for immigrants and expats to fill a void missing from their home countries and for me to have just a little piece of what I lost (in terms of fuel for my football passion) when we moved back to the States. I even entered a contest in super market and won the opportunity to be a Cosmos Ball Boy for a day. After the match I got to meet Der Kaiser, Franz Beckenbauer and a number of the other luminaries who played for the Cosmos.
So what if those players were mercenaries and the North American Soccer League didn't satisfy the purists. Those players had the chance to extend their careers and give joy to alot of people. Pele, Chinaglia, Tueart, Wim Rijsbergen, Neeskens for the New York Cosmos as well as Marsh, Osgood, Best and others for other teams. As far as the partying, one has to understand that partying at Studio 54 was something that one did in the 1970s , regardless of the sport. It was unique and the simply best disco in town! If you pick up any of the books written by English stars of the 1960s and 1970s about their playing days in England there was alot of partying going on there too. The end of the New York Cosmos and the NASL came because there wasn't the grass roots interest in football that there is today. Now on every weekend morning there are teams of all ages of boys and girls playing in the park all over the United States. There are American born players playing in top European leagues and the United States has been to consecutive World Cups since 1990. The point is that the Cosmos didn't fail because of excessive spending. The spent excessively but that wasn't the cause of the failure of the league.
The Chelsea of today bears absolutely no resemblance to the New York Cosmos. The Premier League is strong and boasts some of the greatest talents in the game outside of the 24 players in the Chelsea squad (they cant buy every player!). Chelsea seems to be well managed both on the field, with Jose Mourinho, his coaching staff and with the current management team in place. The recruitment of young talent and the building of the first class facility at Cobham will ensure long term success. I have no problem with the recruitment of a Ballack or Schevchenko. Why not? In 1999 the New York Yankees baseball team signed Roger Clemens who previously toiled for the hated rival Boston Red Sox. As a champion pitcher why did he want to come to New York ...because he wanted to win the Championship. They paid big bucks for him because they wanted to win and entertain their fans.. and win and entertain they did.
What father wouldn't want to take his son to see one of the greatest of all time play on the biggest baseball team in pinstripes at Yankee Stadium? The same way a British father might want to see a team with Cech, Terry, Shevchenko, Ballack, Joe Cole, Makelele, Lampard, Robben, Duff, Drogba, Carvalho, Gallas play against the best that Arsenal, ManU or Liverpool , Spurs, Barca or AC Milan have got to offer. Look at the inspiring performances of teams with more limited resources who have pumped up their game as a result of playing against the top stars. Roman Abramovich seems a committed owner and his youthful passion for the game and the team is evident. Jose Mourinho has the right managerial acumen to deal with egos and to foster a team approach as has been proven. Even if he leaves at the end of his contract the ground work will have been laid for the future.
