The rest of the footballing world took notice of the crowds, and the media exposure. Fuelled by the Cosmos using Warner Communication’s money, prestige and aeroplane, players came in from all over the world. The movie Once in a Lifetime, shows what the NASL would do to get anyone to join. However, this was not a new idea, just bigger, more expensive and on a bigger scale than the old Bethlehem Steel teams. And no one other than the NASL and the Cosmos showed this more. There is a general thesis of the work here - if you can bring in talent, the money and the fans will come. That is what is so key about the Cosmos and what the NASL showed was take these top players, and watch the success and money come in. Try as they might to reinvent the wheel and be a revolutionary, everything in the sport is based on what happened in the past. What this proves is that people are influenced by the past in the sport. And of course Chelski is the Russian slang for Chelsea. Galacticos means the super group that played at Real Madrid in the 1990’s. Before we get too far on here, let’s gloss the nicknames on those two teams. That article was given to me by Cesar Diaz, a New York City based soccer writer for various publications, and one of the emerging experts on the old Cosmos. “Franz Beckenbauer, Carlos Alberto, Giorgio Chinagalia, and Johan Neeskens, joined Pele at the Cosmos to create the world’s first soccer supergroup decades before Galacticos and Chelski”. It is also very good that a big time magazine like +FourFourTwo talks about the NASL. There are countless soccer magazines out there, and I’ve read or bought pretty much all of the ones in America at some point. Could this have been the start of the Real Madrid teams of the 90’s, Johan Cruyff’s Barcelona’s “Dream Team”, or the AC Milan teams with Gullit, Rijkaard, Van Basten? Or would have Blackburn in the 90’s bought every top player (and missed on some) to win their league? Could this explain why Manchester City was taken-over by oil barons? Which, looking back at it now, wasn’t that bad. Then Steven Ross goes crazy, and tries to buy every player who has thought of soccer. In his many autobiographies Pele mentions that European clubs were always after him to play. The New York Cosmos have just brought Pele out of retirement, the soccer world takes notice.
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