AUGUST 26, 1972 | NY COSMOS 2, ST. LOUIS STARS 1 (HEMPSTEAD, N.Y.)

Randy Horton and Stan Startzell lift the Cosmos' first trophy at Hofstra Stadium in 1972.

The Cosmos’ first North American Soccer League (NASL) Championship Game was at Hempstead, the club’s first regular season playing at Hofstra, where an unbeaten home regular season record of six wins and one draw propelled the club into a first-place finish and home field advantage throughout the playoffs.  The Cosmos had a somewhat mediocre record of one win, three losses and three draws on the road, but Hofstra Stadium (now Shuart Stadium) had become a fortress for the Cosmos, and that advantage carried over in the semifinal defeat of the Dallas Tornado to set up the Final against the St. Louis Stars on August 26, 1972.

A crowd of 6,102 fans braved a downpour to cheer the Cosmos against the St. Louis Stars at Hofstra. Cosmos forward Josef Jelinek still savors the vivid memory of the championship game.

“That’s never going to go away,” says Jelinek. “I remember the St. Louis Stars. Mike Winter was the goalie.”

Winter, who was left out of the U.S. Olympic squad in Munich that featured Shep Messing in goal, had finished the 1972 season as the NASL Rookie of the Year. He faced an attacking Cosmos side that took 28 shots throughout the contest. The Cosmos were the NASL scoring leaders in each of their first two seasons, and that commitment to attacking play was rewarded in the fifth minute, when Israeli winger Roby Young sent a corner kick towards Randy Horton, the towering striker from Bermuda. Horton rose above the St. Louis defense and headed the ball off the crossbar and past the diving Winter.

The Cosmos dominated with a persistent attack throughout the first half but relaxed the pressure somewhat after intermission.

“We were the better team and deserved to win,” Horton recalls. “I scored the first goal. We had good control of the match, then suddenly…”

Seven minutes into the second half, St. Louis player-coach Casey Frankiewicz scored on a pass from John Sewell that was initially disallowed as offside from referee Roger Schott. But the Stars appealed the verdict and after consulting linesman Bill Maxwell, Schott reversed his decision and allowed the visitors the equalizer.

The adversity reenergized the Cosmos attack, but the score remained level until the 86^th minute when New York’s midfield general, Scotsman Johnny Kerr, was fouled in the penalty area.

“[Cosmos Head Coach] Gordon Bradley pointed to me and pointed to the penalty spot to take the shot,” says Jelinek. “And I did. I was a bit shaky, because everybody says a penalty is easy – particularly in games like this, they expect you to score – but it’s a little bit nerve-wracking, you know! I put it exactly to the right side of the goalkeeper. The ball was already in the net when he dove.”

Still, the Stars didn’t surrender and the game’s dying moments were furious as St. Louis struggled desperately for another equalizer. In the 88^th minute, Werner Roth received a red card, and the Cosmos had to defend their slim lead with ten men. With just 13 seconds left, Willie Roy seemed to have scored the second goal for St. Louis, but referee Schott ruled it offside. This time St. Louis appeals were futile.

The Cosmos had won their first NASL championship game.

“It was no surprise that we won,” insists Horton, now Speaker of the House in his native Bermuda. “We deservingly won that match.” 

Captain Barry Mahy, like Jelinek, still a Long Island resident, lifted the first of six NASL championship game trophies in front of the home fans in Hempstead. Although the Final wasn’t yet billed as the Soccer Bowl (that official designation began in 1975), it was the first of six (and counting) titles for the club that would become the most dominant force in North American soccer history.

AUGUST 28, 1977 | NY COSMOS 2, SEATTLE SOUNDERS 1 (PORTLAND, ORE.)

The seventh season in Cosmos history is by far the most fabled. Inspired to send Pelé into retirement with a North American Soccer League championship, the star-studded New Yorkers overcame behind-the-scenes intrigue in both the locker room and boardroom to emerge as the toast of the town, celebrities flocking to Giants Stadium while the squad enjoyed the Big Apple limelight as fixtures at Studio 54. But the storybook season was almost spoiled by the Seattle Sounders in Portland on August 28. 

 “It was emotional,” remembers goalkeeper Shep Messing, “and it was a tough game.”

Although billed as a battle between an offensive juggernaut and a stalwart defense, the game featured end-to-end action played at a furious pace. The Cosmos began with a 4-2-4 formation while Seattle used a 4-4-2.

And it was Seattle that had the best chances early. In the eighth minute, Seattle’s Jocky Scott fired a shot from 33 yards out, but Shep Messing made a diving save, barely flicking the ball up to the crossbar with his left hand. Mickey Cave tapped in the deflection, but what seemed like a goal was disallowed for offside. Ten minutes later, Scott sent a cross into the Cosmos penalty area and Tommy Ord rose above Roth for a header that seemed to beat Messing but missed by inches.

Then in the 19^th minute, a bizarre play seemed to signal that destiny was on the side of the Cosmos. Giorgio Chinaglia collected the ball at center circle and sent a long ball down the left flank with the outside of his right foot towards winger Stevie Hunt. Sounders goalkeeper Tony Chursky collected the ball before the onrushing Hunt, but then Chursky relaxed, dropped the ball and began to dribble it in his area. Like a fox, Hunt raced from behind the startled keeper to tap the ball into the open goal, a desperate Chursky smashing into Hunt as the ball crossed the line.

But the Sounders stormed right back. Four minutes later, Franz Beckenbauer lost the ball at the Cosmos 35-yard line (marked for the offside line and shootout rules then in place for league play), and intricate, short passing between Cave, Scott and Ord sliced apart the Cosmos defense, the former Cosmos forward Ord slipping the ball under a diving Messing.

The second half was just as frantic. The deadlock was finally broken in the 78^th minute when Chinaglia nodded a Hunt cross over his right shoulder into the upper-right corner of the Sounders goal.

Still, the Sounders refused to surrender. In a play nearly as flukey as his first-half goal, in the 83^rd minute Hunt won the ball by the Cosmos left corner. Inexplicably, he began dribbling the ball into the New York penalty area, where he lost the ball to Steve Buttle. Buttle’s point-blank shot bounced off the left post after a diving fingertip save from Messing to preserve the lead.

 “We could easily have lost the final game,” concedes Cosmos captain Werner Roth. But somehow the Cosmos held on to win, “what was the most important game of our lives.” 

The final whistle brought tears of joy as the Cosmos fulfilled their promise to send off the world’s greatest footballer as a champion in his final competitive game.

“It was incredible,” recalls Roth. “It was euphoria for weeks and weeks. The fear of not winning was totally been taken off your shoulders, and you were left with the kind of euphoric calm that everything is okay. All of this work, all of this effort the last couple of years, now it’s okay, now it is done. We had won the seminal championship that we needed to win in Pelé’s last season.”

“That was just a magical year, and I just can’t imagine how it could have ended any other way other than winning that last game,” adds Messing.

The Cosmos were the first team to win a second NASL championship (the Chicago Sting the only other club to win twice), and the next year they would become the only team to repeat as champions. The 1977 season was the start of the Cosmos Country phenomenon and the beginning of North American soccer’s greatest dynasty. Soccer Bowl ’77 was the fitting, thrilling finish to the Cosmos most mythical season.