As the founding general manager of the Cosmos, Clive Toye built the club from scratch in 1971. The National Soccer Hall of Famer spoke with Club Historian David Kilpatrick to reflect on those early days and contemplate the parallels as the club prepares for another rebirth. The Cosmos are resuming team operations ahead of the 2026 USL League One season at Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson, NJ.
What do you recall about the birth of the Cosmos?
Remember that the Cosmos came into existence in January 1971, and our first game was April 15, away at St. Louis, so there wasnt like a huge time of luxury to think about things. At that time when I came here in January of ’71, the Cosmos didnt have a name. I had to create that over the next few weeks!
How did you decide on the name?
I wanted a name which was different. I wanted a name which was big. I went through the list of names in my own mind of the New York sports franchises, and didnt think too much of any of them, but looked to see where I could follow on and be bigger. The most recent—in terms of history—club to come into existence was the Mets, and the Mets was short for Metropolitan.
And I thought, “ can I come up with something which is bigger than that,” and came up with Cosmopolitan. Some other people came up … the Erteguns wanted to call it the New York Blues and somebody else wanted to have the team wear pink uniforms and call it the New York Lovers.
Really? Oh my God!
Oh yes. So I thought Cosmopolitan, no good. Cosmopolites, thats no good. But Cosmos, that is great. Its a derivation of Cosmopolitan and what is New York other than cosmopolitan? And what is bigger than the cosmos? Nothing, so thats what well be. And then I had the problem of convincing the ownership that that was the name so I got a competition going, and at that time I had certain relationships with people at Swissair and got them to come up with two free tickets from New York to Switzerland for the winners of the competition for the name of New Yorks newest professional soccer club.
Then, [we] had the competition and you can imagine, you know, we didnt get that many entries cause we didnt get that much publicity. This was January of 1971. So I wrote a lot of letters to myself with different names and addresses proposing the name the Cosmos and then, thank God, I remember the mail, opening a piece of mail, and I was at a board meeting of the [U.S. Soccer] Federation in New York and I picked up the mail and went into the meeting. It was the opening of the meeting and there, I remember Gene Edwards looking at me and saying to me, “ chance of you paying attention to the meeting now?”
Opened the mail and there were two high school teachers in Queens who came up with the name the Cosmos. So now I had two real people to whom I could give the trip to Switzerland, and another 20-30 people—whose handwriting looked suspiciously like my own—proposing the Cosmos and could therefore could go to the ownership and say, look, this is it, the Cosmos. So that is how the name the Cosmos came about.
And voila, the greatest name in the history of sport was born.
How do you feel about the Cosmos rebirth in Paterson?
It is truly wonderful to see what is being done to bring the Cosmos back to life again. We were astonishingly good in the early days. … But now the effort is being done to build it back, and build soccer back in the same way. And so, my encouragement for them is more as it can be. If I wasn’t quite so past it, I’d be applying for a job to go back and start running the place to help them build the whole thing again.