Pele, the face of world football, dies at the age of 82

The hype continued when Pele played his first North American Soccer League game, on June 15 at Downing Stadium on East River’s Randalls Island. It was a run-down house. Workers hastily painted its dirt patches green because CBS had come to air its big television debut. Over 18,000 fans, triple the previous largest crowd, made their way to watch.

At every road game during Pelé’s three seasons in North America, the Cosmos drew massive crowds and a larger press contingent than any other New York team, with many journalists representing foreign networks, newspapers and wire services. Movie and music stars—including Mick Jagger, Robert Redford, and Rod Stewart—appeared at home games, drawn by the Warner executives’ enthusiasm for their hot new talent.

The Cosmos moved to Giants Stadium in Pelé’s final season, 1977, and there, at the Meadowlands, he reached the peak of his popularity—and that of the league. For the home elimination game on August 14, the crowd of 77,691 not only exceeded expectations but also exceeded capacity, squeezing into a 76,000-seat stadium.

That season, the Cosmos added two more international stars, Franz Beckenbauer West Germany and Carlos Alberto from Brazil. (Later, in 1979, the Los Angeles Aztecs took out a third, Johan Cruyff From the Netherlands to the league). Football seemed poised to enter the American mainstream.

But as it turned out, professional soccer was not yet ready to flourish in America, not even after the Cosmos won the league championship in 1977, in Seattle, or after Pele’s celebratory farewell game in October, when he commanded a “Love!” He cheered and played the first half for the Cosmos and the other half for the visiting team, his beloved Santos.

The league has expanded to 24 teams, from 18, and lacks the financial footing to sustain that many games and that’s a lot of travel. No other teams can match the Cosmos’ spending on quality players. The league ceased operations after the 1984 season.

But at the grassroots level, and in schools and colleges, soccer has really taken off. In 1991, the United States national team won the Women’s World Cup for the first time. (The USA has won the title three times since then.) In 2002, the men’s national team reached the quarter-finals of the World Cup. And the AFL has established itself as a strong successor to the NASL (in 2011, the inaugural season of a new minor league named the NASL included the New York Cosmos, of which Pele was named honorary president.)