New York Cosmos: USA's 'rock 'n roll' football story & its latest new chapter

Clive Toye eventually got his man in a motel outside Brussels airport.

After a four-year pursuit, Pele put pen to a sheet of hotel notepaper to become the highest-paid athlete on the planet.

When the world's greatest footballer touched down in New York in 1975, the team he ed was a rabble of students and semi-professionals playing on dirt fields littered with shards of glass.

By the time the New York Cosmos won the 1977 Soccer Bowl - in Brazil forward Pele's last competitive game - they boasted World Cup winners and record crowds, partied with celebrities and lunched with presidents.

Backed by media mogul Steve Ross' Warner Communications, owners of Warner Bros and Atlantic Records, the Galacticos in the Big Apple were treated like rock stars and behaved like them too.

It was a champagne era that saw the franchise, like American soccer, go from boom to bust within a decade.

The Cosmos, as one former PR guru put it, were one huge aphrodisiac. Now, a new chapter in their story is about to begin.

It was always going to take something special to bring the North American Soccer League (NASL) into the spotlight. Viewing figures were so bad after its debut 1967 season that CBS cancelled its TV deal. The Cosmos, founded in 1970, were far from a household name. Their most significant media exposure was when goalkeeper Shep Messing posed naked in Viva magazine.

"The state of soccer in the US in the 1960s and 70s was quite pathetic," Toye, former general manager at the Cosmos, told the BBC World Service in 2015.

"No-one was interested and no-one knew what soccer was. The only player in the entire universe average Americans had heard of was the fella in Brazil."

Toye, the New York Cosmos and the NASL all needed Pele.

A former Daily Express sports writer, Toye had first met the Santos forward in 1971, fresh from his third World Cup win with Brazil the previous summer. Three years later, and with Pele having hung up his boots, he sensed an opportunity.

Juventus and Real Madrid were attempting to lure the superstar out of retirement, but the Englishman's unique sales pitch piqued Pele's interest.

"I said 'OK, if you go there you can win a championship. If you come with us you can win a country'," he recalled.

Toye chased Pele via Jamaica, Frankfurt, Brussels and Rome. They lunched in Guaruja and held more meetings in Rio and Sao Paulo. Finally the 34-year-old football legend ed a medical and signed up to a three-year package that included marketing, PR rights and a music contract worth a reported total of $4m (roughly $20m in today's ).

The deal was nudged over the line by US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who sent a telegram saying the striker's arrival would "substantially contribute to closer ties between Brazil and the United States in the field of sports", with a similar call coming from Brazil's foreign minister.

On 10 June 1975, Pele was unveiled as a Cosmos player at Manhattan's iconic 21 Club.

Football, or soccer, barely got a mention in the media at the time. The Cosmos' first title in 1972 had hardly made a splash. Now there were hundreds of reporters bundled into the news conference for a glimpse of a star.

"You can spread the news around the world that soccer arrived finally in the USA," proclaimed 'the King', two hours late for his own unveiling.

Pele scored on his debut, a 2-2 draw in a friendly against Dallas Tornado on 15 June 1975. A capacity crowd of 21,000 fans watched at Downing Stadium, the Cosmos' home ground on Randall's Island, where the threadbare pitch was spray painted green for the television cameras.

Five days later, Pele and the Cosmos went to Boston. Almost double Nickerson Field's 12,000-capacity crammed into the college stadium. Spectators huddled along the touchline and behind the goals to witness the Brazilian face Portugal great Eusebio, who had signed for Boston on loan.

With 11 minutes remaining, fans rushed on to the artificial pitch to mob Pele. "They swarmed him, burying him for several minutes," wrote John Powers of the Boston Globe.

The Cosmos star had to be rescued by his personal bodyguard and taken away on a stretcher. Soccer mania had landed in the United States.

New York was dubbed 'Cosmos Country', and although Pele's arrival was not enough to help the franchise reach the 1975 play-offs, record crowds would turn out to watch him play in different cities.

For Warner chief Ross, it was a marketing dream. Pele was pictured having a kickabout at the White House with President Gerald Ford, the globe-trotting Cosmos went on two exhibition tours in seven months and the players were treated to five-star travel, all expenses paid.

The knock-on effect was the arrival of stars at other franchises - George Best ed the LA Aztecs, part-owned by Elton John, Geoff Hurst moved to the Seattle Sounders and Rodney Marsh was snapped up by the Tampa Bay Rowdies.

When introduced as 'the white Pele', Marsh jokingly responded: "No, Pele is known as the black Rodney Marsh." It earned him a kick from the Brazilian during their first meeting.

Flamboyant Englishman Marsh and his Tampa team-mates had another trick up their sleeve to keep Pele and strike partner Giorgio Chinaglia quiet when they met again in the 1976 Conference semi-finals.

"We had a limo that met them off the plane with two girls in and two bottles of Chivas Regal," he told the documentary 'Once in a Lifetime: The Incredible Story of the New York Cosmos'.

"Twenty-four hours later they both came on to the pitch looking very much worse for wear."

Tampa won 3-1. But that first taste of real success wasn't far away.

The offer came out of the blue. Steve Hunt walked into training at Aston Villa in November 1976 and was told the club had accepted a bid for him.

Hunt, then aged 20, had never even heard of the Cosmos. When he found out he'd be doing pre-season training with Pele in Bermuda, he took all of 10 seconds to agree.

"It sounds a bit of a fairytale now," Hunt tells BBC Sport. "I was probably going to play against Preston reserves that weekend and I ended up flying to Bermuda."

The winger, who'd only got married a month earlier, next faced away games in Hawaii and Las Vegas. As the homesickness wore off he settled in New Jersey, away from the hustle and bustle of Manhattan, mixing more with the Cosmos' other British and American players.

"I was surprised by the standard," he says. "I came to understand the brand of the Cosmos and how global it was."

The franchise, playing in shirts designed by Ralph Lauren, moved into the 80,000-seat, newly opened Giants Stadium for the 1977 season. It was a fully Americanised experience - Bugs Bunny as mascot, half-time bands and the Cosmos Girls cheerleading squad.

Warner supremo Ross would host an endless list of celebrities: Barbara Streisand, Robert Redford and Steven Spielberg were all there. Cosmos games became a paparazzi dream.

"I've always likened it to being a rock 'n' roll football team," says Hunt, whose highlights include being introduced to Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger and witnessing the iconic meeting of Pele and Muhammad Ali.

"The doors would open in the changing rooms 10 minutes after a game and all of a sudden an entourage would come in and you never knew who you were going to see.

"I heard someone shout: 'Where's the Englishman">