Chinaglia dead at 65
Helped Cosmos rule N.Y.
SOCCER STAR Giorgio Chinaglia died of complications from a heart attack Sunday at the age of 65, and in order to understand what he meant around here 30 years ago you really had to be there, along with 77,000 other chanting fans packed inside Giants Stadium.
Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League were a hot ticket and a story of unique proportion for soccer in America. They were the pioneers who broke through the stubborn commercial barrier separating the sport from its starving public.
Their surreal locker room was jammed with international superstars, walking about in towel and flip-flops and extraordinarily accommodating to reporters. Pele arrived first, in 1975, and then he was paired up front with Chinaglia the next season. Chinaglia didn’t own the style or reputation of the Brazilian star, but the former Lazio player was in his prime and proved an incredibly effective striker – plus, a man of considerable charisma, impatience and pride. He also became a close associate of Warner Brothers president Steve Ross, partowner of the franchise, and was known to thoroughly enjoy the cultural diversions that New York provided.
While others might have been deferential to superstars like Pele and Franz Beckenbauer, China- glia more than held his ground on and off the pitch. He told Pele to play wider to draw defenders outside and allow him to lurk more efficiently in and around the box.
There was method to his madness. Chinaglia, born in Tuscany and raised in Wales, was the supreme poacher. He scored 193 goals in 213 official matches with the Cosmos, leading the team to four titles, and was inducted into the U.S. Soccer Hall of Fame in 2000.
“I am a finisher,” Chinaglia once said. “That means when I finish with the ball, it is in the back of the net.” He also totaled 98 goals for Lazio — which named him its greatest player of all time — and scored four goals for the Italian national team, but sabotaged his own standing with the Azzurri by throwing a temper tantrum when he was pulled during a 1974 World Cup victory over Haiti and then insulting coach Ferruccio Valcareggi.
The Cosmos faded into oblivion by 1985. After his retirement, Chinaglia found himself embroiled in controversy again. His attempts to buy his former club, Lazio, led to a probe by Italian authorities and to an arrest warrant in 2006 that prevented him from returning to his home and made him something of a permanent exile in America. He and eight other buyers allegedly attempted to fix the price of Lazio shares, in part by making a false claim that a Hungarian ownership group was interested in buying the team.
“It’s incredible,” Chinaglia said at the time. “I don’t know where (the charges) come from. I have never committed extortion. I have nothing to prove because I haven’t done anything.”
Recently, Chinaglia was co-host of “The Football Show” on Siriusxm radio with former Metrostars GM Charlie Stillitano and would occasionally campaign for the resurrection in some form of the Cosmos in New York, perhaps as part of MLS. It was Stillitano who announced that Chinaglia’s son, Anthony, had said his father had died T at his home in Naples, Fla. he mayor of Rome, home to Lazio — which also announced the death — issued a statement on Sunday expressing “profound condolences” on behalf of himself and the city.
“For Lazio fans, Chinaglia was more than a symbol,” Mayor Gianni Alemanno said. “He was a banner player that carried along an entire generation of fans and the emblem of (Lazio’s) first title in 1974. That’s how we remember him. We know for years he was no longer a resident of Italy, but we’re available for the family for any type of initiative they want to organize to remember him.”