3 hours ago
3
The New York Cosmos soccer team was going nowhere fast.
A disparate assembly of part-timers, students and foreigners, they played their games in the North American Soccer League (NASL) at Downing Stadium, a crumbling wreck of a venue under the Triborough Bridge at Randall’s Island.
Then things changed overnight with the decision to sign Brazilian soccer legend Pele in 1975, made by charismatic chairman Steve Ross and the club’s new owners, Warner Communications, which saw the team’s fortunes change overnight.
It was an early spark in a soccer story that still resonates, especially with the United States co-hosting the World Cup and finally taking its place at the center of the global game.
At the heart of the Cosmos team was their local goalkeeper, Shep Messing.
Born in the Bronx and raised in Roslyn, Long Island, Messing never played soccer as a child but as soon as he started, aged 16, he found his calling.
“Within three years, I was a two time All-American in college. Then I’m playing for the US Olympic team in 1972 and then I’m teammates with the greatest soccer player that ever lived,” he told The Post.
“I had to pinch myself.”
A Harvard graduate, Messing worked during the day as a teacher, travelling from his home in Stamford CT to teach at Westbury High School in Long Island. Once classes were finished, he trained with the Cosmos before heading back, arriving home after midnight each day.
Times were hard and Messing did what he could to get by.
Even when the United States national team came calling, there wasn’t any money to be made. “I’d get a call on a Thursday night from the US Soccer Federation to say: ‘Hey, we’ll pay you $15 per diem’ to drive up and play against Italy,” he recalls.
“We didn’t train at all and this was the national team. They just paid us a few dollars.”
But in 1974 he was offered the chance to pose for a shoot in the women’s magazine “Viva” – and it came with a $5,000 fee.
The only issue was that it a fully nude shoot. “I was broke and not making any money,” he says. “I didn’t think anyone would see it.”
Messing was teaching the day “Viva” hit newsstands. “There I was, the goalkeeper for the Cosmos, laid out there naked, full frontal.”
When the school principal found out, he summoned Messing to his office, firing him on the spot – as did the New York Cosmos.
In 1976, however, the Cosmos needed a goalkeeper and Pele demanded Messing’s return.
The rest is history.
With Pele in the team, the New York Cosmos went stratospheric. They contiuned to recruit and suddenly Messing was playing in a team packed with some of the biggest names in the soccer world, including firebird Italian Giorgio Chinaglia, Brazilian World Cup winning captain Carlos Alberto and German icon Franz Beckenbauer. “It was one of the greatest line-ups in the history of the sport in this country,” he adds.
With a squad of 13 nationalities and some sizeable egos to placate, Messing took on the role of intepreter, shop steward and peacemaker. “There were fights all the time but we always managed to put it behind us when we played.
“What we did on the field was always the most important thing to all of us.”
Now, instead of playing to a few hundred people at Downing Stadium on Randall’s Island, they were darlings of the media, besieged by fans wherever they went and running out at a sold-out Giants Stadium – all thanks to the pull of Pele.
“We went from nothing to playing in front of 77,000 people every weekend,” he laughs. “One day we were nobody and the next there are limos picking us up to take us right to Studio 54 after the game.
“It was just insane. It still is, to be honest.”
Messing took advantage of his new-found celebrity.
He appeared in commercials for Vidal Sassoon, Coca-Cola and Skol chewing tobacco and the Cosmos even made the cover of “Sports illustrated.”
“That was unheard of for a soccer team,” Messing says. “You know, soccer was nowhere in this country and all of a sudden it just caught fire.”
But when Pele called it a day in October 1977, playing a farewell match at Giants Stadium against the only other club he played for, Brazilian team Santos, it signaled the slow decline not just of the New York Cosmos but of the NASL too, both ended in 1985.
The Cosmos were revived between 2013 and 2020 and then again in 2025. They are currently based in Paterson, New Jersey, and compete in the USL League one, which was established in 2019.
Fifty years from the Cosmos’ glory days, with America now hosting the World Cup, the New York team’s story, equal parts chaos and magic, still feels like a pivotal moment that helped kickstart the game in the US.
And for players like Messing, who stood in the middle of it all, wringing every last drop of joy from the experience, it wasn’t just history being made – it was a front-row seat to a revolution that no one quite realised was happening.
“Yeah,” he laughs. “I certainly lived the dream.”
English (US)