The Cosmos head into a packed week with three home matches in seven days, each with massive playoff implications. Since the club’s reboot in 2013, New York has won three of four league titles, hosting – and, of course, winning – the Championship Final (also known as the Soccer Bowl) the past two seasons. The Cosmos have won eight league titles in 18 seasons, and have failed to qualify for the playoffs just twice, 1974 and 1984. 

 

With a record of four wins, two draws and 14 losses, playoffs were never a prospect in 1974 (the season before Pelé joined the club). The Cosmos finished six consecutive Regular Seasons with the most points from 1978-83.

 

A decade passed before the club would miss out on the postseason, and almost like karmic retribution, the last season of the original NASL came to a catastrophic conclusion for the Cosmos. Heading into the final game of the Regular Season at Chicago, the Cosmos hadn’t scored in their last two games, and both the Cosmos and the Sting needed a win to qualify for the 1984 playoffs. The tension showed in the Cosmos’ poor play, inaccurate passes a sign of nerves coming unraveled, but the game was scoreless until Karl-Heinz Granitza scored with just 48 seconds left, delivering a devastating blow to end the season for the Cosmos.

 

Cosmos Country would have to wait until 2013 with the reboot in the new NASL for any postseason hopes. Securing first place in the Fall meant a trip to Atlanta to face the Spring Season winning Silverbacks. Midfielder, Marcos Senna, earned himself a place in the pantheon of Cosmos greats with his performance in the Soccer Bowl, showing the composure of a true champion when he controlled the Silverbacks’ weak clearance of his free kick to slam home a half-volley from eighteen yards out into the upper left corner of the Atlanta goal. With that strike, Senna joined Josef Jelinek, Giorgio Chinaglia and Julio César Romero as a Cosmos player to score winning goals in Soccer Bowls.

 

The NASL unveiled a new Championship postseason format in 2014. The Cosmos finished second in the Spring and sixth in the Fall, but what mattered most was finishing third in the Combined table. Losing in heartbreaking fashion at San Antonio, the Cosmos went down with a fluke own goal in extra time to the eventual champion, Scorpions. Had the Cosmos won, they would have hosted the Championship Final, making the loss to the Scorpions sting all the more. The failure to secure homefield advantage for one of the first round matches seemed a decisive factor in New York’s inability to secure silverware for the year.

 

 

The lesson was learned, and with both Spring and Combined first place finishes, the 2015 Championship Final was the first to be played in Cosmos Country since 1978. Raúl clinched a spot in the Final with his last goal as a professional footballer in a 2-1 win over historic rivals, the Ft. Lauderdale Strikers, in the first ever NASL playoff match played in Brooklyn. A Gastón Cellerino hattrick carried the Cosmos to their seventh title with a 3-2 win over the Ottawa Fury at Hempstead. 

 

Runners-up in the Spring, homefield advantage was secured again in 2016 with Fall and Combined first place finishes. Juan Arango and Yohandry Orozco goals were enough to finish Rayo OKC, 2-1 in the semifinal. And in the Final, Indy Eleven took the Cosmos to penalties after a scoreless two hours of play, but Ryan Richter’s kick from the penalty spot secured the club’s eighth league title in Queens.

 

Heading into this three-match homestand week, the Miami FC have already secured a home playoff match with the Spring first place finish, and are close to locking up the Fall and Combined honors, as well. In such a scenario, the second place team in the Combined Standings earns the right to host a semifinal in The Championship tournament. The highest seeded team advancing will host The Championship Final. 

 

With nine matches left in the regular season (five at home, including the three this week), the Cosmos are ahead of last-place Indy Eleven on goal differential in the Fall table, but just a point behind third place North Carolina and fourth place Jacksonville Armada, and four points behind second place San Francisco in the Combined standings. 

 

So the Cosmos look to secure a place in the postseason and perhaps even the right to host a semifinal as they face the three teams ahead of them in the standings in a seven-day stretch at Coney Island. Rather than suffering a third-ever season without playoffs in the club’s history, the Cosmos continue their quest for an unprecedented three-peat as league Champions, hosting Jacksonville this Sunday, San Francisco on Wednesday, and North Carolina next Saturday. The stakes couldn’t be higher, and the need for a massive show of support from the Cosmos Country faithful has never been greater.