Shep Messing

Goalie of the Cosmos 

 

No sport in the United States during the 1970's enjoyed a more phenomenal rise than soccer. The North American Soccer League, a pro circuit formed by sports entrepreneurs hopeful that their pastime might eventually make a major impression on the public consciousness, struggled through the early 1970's with minimal attention and straggling attendance. The American teams imported talented foreign stars, but the sports public greeted them with massive indifference. Even when the New York Cosmos team signed Pele, the greatest player in the game's history and the most famous athlete in the world, there was no immediate rush to the stadium; indeed, the team still struggled to fill Randall's Stadium on the outskirts of the city, a strangely tacky setting in which to display Pele, the crown jewel of the sports world.

Then, in 1977, something happened. Seemingly overnight, soccer was a booming, major sport, drawing huge crowds and national television exposure. The presence of Pele was certainly a factor, as was the rising popularity of the game among youngsters, who could play anywhere with only a soccer ball (needing no equipment, baskets, bats, sticks or arenas), and the hunger of television for another sports product to present to a willing public. But the truth is, no one really knows why tens of thousands of