Team USA, and America’s brush with greatness
There are 50,000 people waiting outside the gates, trying desperately to get in and join the 25,000 who’ve already made it. The press and the photographers are there in full force. The stadium is noisy, and the buzz is electric. This wasn’t happening in Europe or in South America, or even Asia. This was the USA of the 1970s, and this was all for a sport they call soccer.
The scenes, as described by Cosmos coach Gordon Bradley in Once in a Lifetime: The Incredible Story of the New York Cosmos, were real. And they were mad.
The trigger, though, was a man we simply know as Pele. The Brazilian legend, who wasn’t allowed to play outside his country in his prime as the government declared him a national treasure, signed a three-year contract in 1975 with the New York Cosmos (a team in the North American Soccer League). Suddenly, the world and the United States took notice.
Soccer, not football