After reading and watching
Once In A Lifetime very recently, I’m stunned by the co-incidence that Pelé is helping to re-launch the New York Cosmos.
From the New York Times;
“The title of the film about perhaps the world’s most famous defunct soccer team was “Once in a Lifetime.” Anyone for “Twice in a Lifetime”?
The team in question was the New York Cosmos, the flagship team in the North American Soccer League, which ceased operations in the mid-1980s. Now a group led by the English businessman Paul Kemsley, with Pelé as honorary president, has acquired the club’s globally recognized name and announced its restart Sunday. The announcement was made at halftime of the final of Copa N.Y.C. at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
“This is fantastic,” Pelé said by telephone. “We are working very hard to bring the beautiful game back to New York, and now we finally have people who support us.”
He added, “One day, I hope to be happy to see the New York Cosmos playing the Red Bulls in the championship game.”
That might be a few years down the road, but it is clear that the people running the Cosmos have a goal of playing in Major League Soccer.
“Our plan has several phases, but if you fast-forward, it’s our aspiration to play at the highest level in this country and that’s M.L.S.,” said Joe Fraga, the executive director of the Cosmos. “And we are serious. We want to make it relevant again, we want kids to know what the Cosmos were and are, to bring the soccer dream back to the city.”
Kemsley purchased the Cosmos name from G. Peppe Pinton, a former general manager of the team.
“This is a new era,” Pinton said by telephone. “It took a long time, but I’ve found a man with the vision of Steve Ross to carry on the Cosmos name.” Ross, who died in 1992, was the chairman of Warner Communications, which owned the original Cosmos.
Full story here;
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/sports/soccer/02cosmos.html Paul Kemsley was a former director of Tottenham
