Thursday, September 21, 2023

Nasl 1975 Dallas Tornado Cosmos New York Debut Pelé

Exhibition Game
15 Juin 1975
Downing Stadium
Randalls Island 

Pele’s debut for the Cosmos on the 10th of June 1975 was seen by millions of sports fans around the world, with a last minute panic from the grounds man that  his pitch didn’t look too green so he spray painted the pitch to give a grass  effect. 

Everyone was lifted by the presence of Pele both on and off the pitch and a regular change of strips, some including mid season, kept with the publicperception that the team were ahead of their time both on the field and in terms  of style with none other than Ralph Lauren even designing the strips in the  later years of the NY Cosmos’ existence. Pele even asked that the colours of the  strip be changed to mirror his previous club Santos, therefore the Green and  white was switched to an away strip and an all white home kit was born.Five NASL championships were won in the fourteen years that the team competed in the league, with the most significant coming in the last year that Pele played.A further five conference title wins and seven divisional titles were also obtained. Johan Cruyff nearly signed for the Cosmos alongside the legends that were plying their trade for the team; however a last minute offer from the Los Angeles Aztecs took him there. Cruyff did play a number of exhibition games in the famous white, green and yellow strip.



Football being televised in America was a rare occurrence back then to say the least but Pele’s debut against Dallas was aired by CBS with Downing Stadium completely sold-out. The club beforehand had struggled to draw in any more than a couple hundred spectators, now they were turning people away due to a sell-out. People who had never seen a football game in their life were turning up just to see Pele out of curiosity. His arrival had already drawn in new fans and he hadn’t even kicked a ball. He played the full ninety minutes in which he made an assist and headed in an equaliser to earn a 2-2 draw. It couldn’t have gone any better. However, Pele started to think twice about the move whilst in the changing room after seeing his feet covered in green marks. He called over Raphael de la Sierra whilst he was showering and told him he didn’t want to play for the club again because his prized feet had contracted a fungus from playing on the pitch. Little did Pele know that prior to his arrival the groundsman had spray painted the pitch green to cover large parts of the dead turf to make him feel at home. As soon as Raphael had told him that it was actually paint Pele burst into laughter and rejoiced with his peers.



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1 comment:

  1. Thanks !
    Pele photo of Cosmos NY (clipping from the newspaper :)
    http://uppix.net/8/b/8/d761325502339a6a478a7e4684481.jpg

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