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Messing recounts return to Cosmos in 1976 and that famous photo
The photo is iconic. It’s probably the most famous image of the 70’s era Cosmos not including Pelé, Chinaglia or Beckenbauer. There’s so much to take in – the colors, the attitude, the backdrop of Yankee Stadium. But, what’s the backstory?
We sat down with Shep Messing to find out.
“I love that picture,” Messing said with a grin.
Messing spent the 1973 and 74 seasons in New York but moved to the Boston Minutemen prior to the 1975 season. That year he led the North American Soccer League with a 1.24 goals-against average. As he was enjoying his time in New England, the Cosmos made huge international news – Pelé was coming to the Big Apple.
“I pick up the paper and Pelé just signed with a Cosmos, so I’m like, ‘You got to be kidding me,'” Messing said. “If I didn’t screw up, I’d be on the team with Pelé.”
Messing would soon join ‘O Rei,’ but it would take one life-altering match to make it happen.
On June 16, 1976, the Cosmos and Pelé would host Messing’s Minutemen at Yankee Stadium. It was a back and forth affair with both Messing and Cosmos keeper Bob Rigby standing tall. With regulation time coming to an end with a score of 2-2, the match went to a penalty shootout to decide the winner.
It went back and forth in the shootout including the total chaos of Minutemen players going out of order with the referee allowing a restart. The ultimate result turned when Pelé lined up for the Cosmos. Messing guessed right and Pelé’s shot caromed off the woodwork. The Cosmos would protest the result to no avail, but the match left a lasting impression on the World’s greatest player. Afterwards, Messing was seen consoling Pelé in another famous Cosmos photograph.
Later that month, Bob Rigby would find himself sidelined for the rest of the season – with notorious, hard-nosed Washington Diplomats striker Paul Cannell barreling into Rigby on a corner kick. Rigby would break his collarbone on the play, and the Cosmos would lose the match, 3-2.
Cannell, who scored twice, told the Passaic Herald-News: “I’m a dirty SOB. I’ll do anything to get the ball in the net. I felt a bit bad when I saw him shaking on the ground but then, I was punched in the first half. I was getting even.”
The news reached Messing quickly. “My brother-in-law was watching the game,” the goalkeeper said. “He calls me in Boston, and he says Bob Rigby just broke his collarbone. I don’t do anything – I’m just pissed off. You feel bad for the guy and goalkeepers stick together.”
The Cosmos, without their starter, needed a goalkeeper, desperately.
The Minutemen – in the middle of a fire sale to steer the club through financial difficulties – needed money, desperately.
So, a deal was struck.
“From what Pelé told me later, he went to Steve Ross and said, ‘get us the guy from Boston’,” said Messing.
“The Minutemen were getting on a flight to go to Seattle, and the owner there was going bankrupt. We used to try and get paid from the hot dog stand guy,” laughs Messing. “So, I’m at Logan Airport with the team ready to fly to Seattle, and [Head Coach] Hubert Vogelsinger sitting there calls me over and he says, ‘You’ve just been traded to the Cosmos for 22 plane tickets, round trip to Seattle.'”
Upon his arrival in New York, Messing met with Rigby – friends before the trade – and made a promise to his fellow member of the “goalkeepers’ union.”
“I’m going to get him for you, pal.”
Messing’s arrival sparked a six-game winning streak for the Cosmos that set-up a rematch at Yankee Stadium with Paul Cannell at center stage. True to his word, Messing found the proper moment to make his presence felt.
“The first time I have an opportunity. I had the ball in front of me,” he said. “Cannell was 10 yards away. So, I held that ball out in front of me. I said, ‘Come get it.’ When he stepped up and he came towards me I put the whole ball behind my back. I drew him to me. I said, I’m gonna [expletive] you up.’ He put his right arm out and said, ‘Well, what are you talking about, mate?’ I said, ‘You did Rigby. I’m going to [expletive] you up.”
And thus, the photo was taken.
“So, you can see why I love that picture,” grinned Messing, again.
Cannell steered clear of Messing the rest of the match, as the Cosmos routed the Diplomats, 5-0.
Cannell would meet the Cosmos one more time that season – warning them in the New York Daily News that “No prisoners will be taken” prior to the first round of the NASL playoffs at Shea Stadium in August. Messing had the last laugh, though – blanking the Diplomats 2-0, and leaving Cannell with only nine fouls to show for his efforts.
“Hey, if he can get other goalkeepers to lose it, that’s cool,” Messing said that season. “But he can’t intimidate me. No way.”
Especially when you’re a card-carrying member of the goalkeepers’ union.
Shep Messing backstopped the New York Cosmos to victory in the 1977 Soccer Bowl, Pele’s last competitive match. You can hear the latest from the American soccer legend on his podcast, The Shep Messing Daily Cast. You also can follow Messing on Twitter.
A kiss, a crest and five decades of Cosmos continuity — tracing the history of one legendary club
The shape of the tarnish on the trophy’s bowl is unmistakable. It’s a pair of lips—a single kiss perfectly preserved—somehow burned or branded onto the shimmering silver.
Tom Larsen was stunned when he saw it. Because of some slight damage to the base, the Soccer Bowl ’77 trophy wasn’t displayed alongside its counterparts at Mediacom’s New York headquarters. It had been carefully preserved, however, and placed in a climate-controlled storage facility, because the importance of the New York Cosmos’ second NASL trophy also was unmistakeable. It was earned in the great Pelé’s last competitive match, a 2-1 victory over the Seattle Sounders in Portland, Ore.
Although that final was played nearly 50 years ago, it still resonates. So much so that FIFA, as it compiled a wish list for the Miami museum it plans to open before the 2026 World Cup, contacted Mediacom and asked to borrow the trophy.
“They said, ‘We would love to do a space on Pelé and that’s the last trophy he ever won,’” recalled Larsen, Mediacom’s senior VP and general counsel. “That just shows you how important the Cosmos still are and how even internationally, they matter to people.”
Mediacom and its founder and chairman, Rocco B. Commisso, had owned the Cosmos since early 2017. But Larsen hadn’t noticed the tarnish until the trophy was retrieved from storage last winter. It quickly brought to mind a widely-circulated, black-and-white photo of Pelé and Cosmos teammate Werner Roth carrying the trophy upon their triumphant return to JFK Airport. Sure enough, there’s El Rey, front and center in what appears to be a stylish white linen suit, planting an enthusiastic kiss on the cup.
“Clearly, the lips are Pele’s. You can see in the photo, the kiss is in the exact spot,” Larsen exclaimed. “We put it in the contract with FIFA: you can’t polish this! The historic value of the kiss is what makes it unique.”
How did the tarnish happen? What might’ve been on Pelé´s lips? Was it chemistry, or perhaps something less scientific? It’s impossible to know a half century later. But there they are, clearly imprinted on the metal, a genuine American soccer relic. Pelé’s legend, and the lore surrounding that once-in-a-lifetime Cosmos team and a unique era in the domestic game’s meandering history, continues to grow.
A soccer club obviously exists to play the sport. That’s its primary function. But over time, a club often becomes about more than athletes and supporters, wins and losses, tickets and transfers.
We see it every time a goal scorer kisses the badge on their jersey. We see it when fans of teams like Atlético Madrid, Leeds United, the Chicago Fire and so many more fight to preserve a logo that became a symbol of community and shared history. The word “brand” may sound a bit corporate, but consider an original meaning: an identity burned permanently onto something. Crests and colors, history and tradition, old jerseys and trophies that kindle priceless memories—a kiss sealed in silver—these are also vital components of a club, as fundamental as a person’s name.
That’s why so many stewards, from Commisso, Larsen and Mediacom to the renowned Peppe Pinton, have worked so diligently and invested so much to preserve the Cosmos’ brand and legacy. There were years when the Cosmos haven’t played soccer. But from its 1971 founding to its record eighth championship in 2016 and beyond, it’s always been a soccer club.
“The continuity of the club is clearly defined,” said Erik Stover, who ran the Cosmos during their NASL 2.0 era and will serve as CEO when they return to the Hinchliffe Stadium pitch in Paterson, NJ, in 2026. “We know who owned the club and when, and all of those people who maintained the trademarks and fielded teams and believed in the ideal of the Cosmos.
“It’s a uniquely American soccer story in that there are big gaps when they didn’t play,” Stover continued. “In the late ‘80s through the early 2000s, Peppe Pinton spent a lot of his own money keeping the dream of the Cosmos alive, keeping the club active by selling merchandise and doing camps and clinics. And that effort has been consistent throughout the last 50 years.”
Pinton, who still lives in Northern New Jersey, was a colleague and friend of Cosmos legend Giorgio Chinaglia. The Italian striker had taken majority control of the club from Warner Communications in 1984, shortly after concluding his glittering playing career. The original NASL then shut down in 1985, and Chinaglia subsequently transferred ownership and control of the Cosmos’ assets to Pinton, then the club’s general manager. Over the next quarter century, Pinton dutifully kept the Cosmos alive, maintaining the trademarks, running his Cosmos Soccer Camps (which still exist) and dreaming of a return to professional play.
“He’s the person that saved the brand from its death,” Larsen said.
Pinton finally parted with the Cosmos in 2011, selling the club to a consortium fronted by English businessman Paul Kemsley. He then sold it to a group led by English sports marketing executive Seamus O’Brien later that year. The American pro soccer landscape had shifted considerably by that point, and the advent of the second NASL ensured the Cosmos could join a league that guaranteed their independence. The stars finally aligned for a return to competition, and the long hiatus ended with a sixth championship in 2013.
The on-field success reflected the Cosmos’ legacy. In Raúl González and Marcos Senna, the club showcased the brilliant and charismatic imports for which it was famous. But with the likes of Carlos Mendes and Danny Szetela, among others, the Cosmos also fielded the sort of local and domestic talent which has always been a critical and treasured part of their identity.
Additional NASL titles were claimed in 2015 and 2016 and multiple MLS foes were vanquished in the U.S. Open Cup. But a club isn’t just players and games, and what transpires off the field matters, too. The NASL was struggling, and the Cosmos, after playing in Nassau County and Brooklyn, still lacked a permanent home.
The Cosmos were running out of time when Commisso, a long-time soccer fan who played for Columbia University in 1967-70, stepped in and purchased the team in early 2017. But when U.S. Soccer stripped the NASL of its sanctioning during the ensuing campaign, the Cosmos were adrift once again.
Apart from a handful of games contested as part of a National Independent Soccer Association (NISA) tournament in fall 2020, the Cosmos haven’t played since. But the club endured. Like his Italian-American compatriot, Pinton, Commisso desperately wanted to see the Cosmos back on the field. But he had to ensure that field was a fair and level one, so he began backing the NASL’s antitrust suit against U.S. Soccer and MLS in fall 2017.
Meanwhile, Larsen and his colleagues have been keeping the Cosmos’ heart beating. Through May of last year, he stayed active on the NISA board while the club remained a dues-paying member. NISA operated as a third division pro league from 2021 through 2024. The Cosmos logo retained its value. International outfitters like Admiral and TOFFS utilized deals with the club to create and sell thousands of branded items, while the Cosmos maintained a local presence through a jersey distribution arrangement with a Westchester County, NY, soccer shop. Larsen led the protection and defense of the trademark against counterfeiters and unlicensed users, and Pinton continued running his Cosmos soccer camps with the blessing of club ownership.
“We did a lot. We were busy. We were really working at building the Cosmos brand and protecting it at the same time. That’s not putting a team on the field, but it was working toward that goal,” Larsen said.
“At the same time, I was always looking for a potential buyer,” he continued. “I didn’t want Rocco’s legacy to be the last owner of the Cosmos. He bought them to save them, to keep the brand alive. In his heart, he wanted the club to play again. But he also didn’t want to put the brand in the hands of someone who started it and then failed. It was important to find an owner that had the business plan in place to make this thing a going concern, that could survive.”
Re-enter Stover, who maintained a relationship with Larsen over the years. Stover, the New York Red Bulls’ managing director before running the Cosmos, returned to New Jersey after a stint in Denmark and reconnected with former colleague Baye Adofo-Wilson, a real estate developer and attorney who had been Deputy Mayor of Newark in 2014-17. Adofo-Wilson, a Paterson native, was spearheading a $110 million project anchored by the renovation and refurbishment of Hinchliffe Stadium, an historic venue that once housed Negro League baseball teams and stood just a few hundred feet from the famous Paterson Great Falls.
“He had the vision that soccer would probably be the most popular sport in the stadium,” Stover said of Adofo-Wilson, now the Cosmos chairperson. “It is the only stadium of its type in the New York metropolitan area and it’s perfectly situated to build a club around.”
Those were the ingredients Commisso and Larsen were seeking—the sort of permanent home and foundation that the Cosmos, despite all their assets, never established. Larsen reached out to Stover in early 2025 and the deal to sell the club to Adofo-Wilson’s North Jersey Pro Soccer group was quickly hammered out. Commisso retained a minority share in the team he rescued eight years earlier.
“We took our time with respect to the team kicking the ball on the field. We took the time to find the right buyer. We found the right buyer. I think Paterson is a phenomenal landing spot—the [current Negro League baseball and future Cosmos] museum, the stadium renovation, the size of the field, the fact it’s got the falls, the view of the New York City skyline,” Larsen said.
“The city is 100% behind this project and they’ve put their money into it,” he continued. ”The fact that Baye is a Paterson native and invested in making Paterson a great city again, and building a club that’s a reflection of the neighborhood and giving kids a place and a pathway, all that stuff is amazing, and that’s why I think we found the right place. But that part took time, and that was continuous with all the other stuff we did to keep the brand alive.”
The museum Larsen mentioned will be constructed at Hinchliffe and will feature some of the thousands of items that Pinton, Stover, Commisso and others have saved across the decades (as well as that 1977 trophy once it’s returned by FIFA). Club museums aren’t uncommon elsewhere. Many understand intuitively that preserving the tangible trappings of the game, and memorializing the players, moments and memories that mean so much to fans and the surrounding community, can be as much a part of the sport as scoring goals. It matters. It creates a thread that can be traced through seasons and generations.
For the Cosmos, the most iconic club and brand in U.S. soccer history, that thread has remained intact from the moment founder Clive Toye conjured the name. There have been twists and turns, triumphs and troubles, but the full realization of the club’s mission now is finally at hand. And it has a home address.
The Cosmos will field a professional women’s team for the first time in the coming years, and with Vice Chairman and Head of Soccer Giuseppe Rossi on board, the club will be committed to developing and promoting local talent once its USL League One schedule kicks off in 2026.
“Cosmos” is short for “Cosmopolitan”, and the brand has always been about uniting diverse people in celebration of soccer. Like Pele’s silver kiss, neither the mission, nor that legendary logo, ever faded away.
“Clive built the club one neighborhood at a time, and he was using soccer to pull different communities together around this club. Part of the club’s legacy is to be diverse and inclusive and that was at the core of the Cosmos when it was founded,” Stover said of Toye and the early ‘70s origins. “We’re doing exactly the same thing.”
VIDEO: MORNING KICKAROUND – New York Cosmos CEO Erik Stover Talks Club’s Return In New Jersey
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THE GUARDIAN — The Cosmos return with a new home, new league and old ideals
Founder Clive Toye on the birth and rebirth of the Cosmos
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.
JASON DAVIS —Cosmos 3: Back To Jersey
Home Sweet Homes: The Cosmos’ five-decade journey through New York and New Jersey
The Cosmos have called ten stadia and two arenas home since the club’s inception in 1971.
Although Yankee Stadium in the Bronx was home for the Cosmos’ inaugural season in 1971, the club’s home debut was made at Hofstra: an exhibition on April 28 against the Eastern College Coaches Association Senior All-Stars. The Cosmos were scheduled to play their 12 regular season matches at Yankee Stadium, but the baseball tenants reserved the right to veto any game due to weather just hours before kickoff. Six games were postponed.
One 1971 game was moved to Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, NJ. It was a 3-1 win over the Dallas Tornado that opened a doubleheader capped by Bologna v. West Ham United, and which drew a crowd of 9,000. That game in Jersey City attracted the second-largest home crowd that year, after 19,739 showed up in the Bronx for a match against the Rochester Lancers. But that also was a doubleheader. It included a friendly between Deportivo Cali and Santos that featured future Cosmos talisman Pelé as the star attraction.
Since Yankee Stadium had proven less than hospitable that inaugural season, when the Cosmos played their first home playoff game on Sept. 5, they opted to host at Hofstra.
Hofstra served as home for NASL games in 1972 and 1973, and it would also serve as the Cosmos’ training ground from 1972 through 1976. Since the size of Hofstra Stadium at the time wasn’t large enough to accommodate the club’s long-term ambitions, club owner Warner Communications tried unsuccessfully to secure the Singer Bowl in Flushing Meadows as a soccer stadium and concert venue. When that fell through, the club decided to renovate Downing Stadium on Randall’s Island—or Drowning Stadium on Vandal’s Island as it was called—in the East River. The Cosmos played there in 1974 and 1975.
After two seasons at Downing, the Cosmos went back to the Bronx for the 1976 NASL regular season at Yankee Stadium. It was unavailable for the playoffs that year, however, so Shea Stadium was home for a day on Aug. 17.
In 1977, the Cosmos moved west of the Hudson River into Giants Stadium at the sparkling new Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, NJ. The Cosmos also made Giants Stadium their full-time training facility, leaving Hofstra, where they had trained since 1972. Although some in the organization feared playing at a venue that couldn’t be accessed by train, when 77,691 fans gathered to witness the Aug. 14, 1977 playoff game against the Fort Lauderdale Strikers—setting an NASL attendance record—the arrival of Cosmos Country was confirmed. For 70 consecutive home games of NASL play, the Cosmos drew crowds of 30,000 or more. The streak ran from 1977 to 1981.
In addition to Giants Stadium, Meadowlands Arena served as home for the 1981-82 indoor season. Skipping a year before returning indoors, the Cosmos split their 1983-84 indoor games
between Brendan Byrne Arena and Madison Square Garden. Although arenas in upstate New York and Connecticut were considered for the 1984-85 Major Indoor Soccer League season, the club remained at the Meadowlands for its last indoor campaign.
The last league match played in New Jersey was at the Meadowlands Arena on Feb. 19, 1985. The Cosmos broke a five-game losing streak with a 10-6 win over the Kansas City Comets with four goals from Mark Liveric and a hat trick from Angelo DiBernardo, along with goals from Dragan Vujović, Robert Meschbach and legendary Brazilian defender Carlos Alberto.
Although the club planned 15-18 friendly matches for 1985 at Giants Stadium, only three were played. The last was a 2-1 loss to Lazio on June 16 that ended in a rain-drenched brawl.
A Cosmos Reunion match was held at Giants Stadium on July 21, 1991. A crowd of 31,871 supporters turned out to watch two squads of 52 Cosmos alumni compete in a doubleheader. The Cosmos lost 5-0 to a squad of Italian masters and played to a 0-0 draw against a similarly composed Brazilian select side.
The New York Cosmos’ return to competitive play at Shuart Stadium on the campus of Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY, on Aug. 3, 2013 was truly a homecoming. It marked a return to the site of so much of the club’s early history, and to the only one of its prior outdoor home stadia still standing. Before moving to the Meadowlands in 1977, the Cosmos used Hofstra as their training facility. But in 2013-2019, Mitchel Athletic Complex in nearby Uniondale, NY, was used for that purpose. When the Cosmos claimed their seventh title in 2015 with a win over the Ottawa Fury at Shuart—the same venue at which they won their first back in 1972—a fantasy was fulfilled for long-time Cosmos supporters.
The nostalgia trip in Hempstead was a stopgap measure, though. Before the “Reboot” kicked off, the Cosmos submitted a proposal to the Empire State Development Corp. on Jan. 11, 2013 for a 25,000-seat soccer stadium at Elmont Town Crossings near Belmont, which straddled Queens and Nassau counties. The proposal sent a surge of optimism throughout Cosmos Country, where fans were desperate for the club to have a soccer-specific stadium where it was the primary tenant. Nassau County served as a home base for much of the second NASL era, but other stadia were needed to host Cosmos home matches in 2013-2020.
Belson Stadium on the campus of St. John’s University in Queens was the site of the Cosmos successful NASL title defense and eighth league championship on Nov. 13, 2016. Indy Eleven were defeated on penalty kicks. Belson also served as home for U.S. Open Cup matches in 2014 and 2015. The Cosmos defeated the Brooklyn Italians, 2-0, in the third round on May 28, 2014, and returned to Belson on May 27, 2015, for another third-round win, 3-0, over the Jersey Express.
Weeks after the NASL final at Belson, the Empire State Development Corp. on Dec. 9, 2016, rejected the Cosmos’ stadium proposal for Belmont. What looked for a time to be a done deal wound up a dream deferred, creating a nightmare scenario for a club suddenly in crisis.
Back in 2015, MCU Park in Brooklyn became the seventh stadium to host the Cosmos, with a 1-0 regular season win over Ottawa on May 2 and a 2-1 playoff win over the Strikers on Nov. 7. The latter set up the 2015 NASL final at Hofstra on Nov. 15th, that thrilling 3-2 victory over
Ottawa that clinched the club’s seventh championship. The Cosmos then began the search anew for a home of their own, calling the Coney Island stadium home for 2017. That was the last season played before the NASL’s second division sanction was denied, forcing the league to suspend operations.
Columbia University’s Rocco B. Commisso Soccer Stadium in Manhattan hosted several Cosmos B NPSL matches and a friendly against St. Pauli on May 23, 2019. Other NPSL matches were played across the street from Shuart at Hofstra University Soccer Stadium and at Mitchel Athletic Complex, where the ghost-game, closed-door NISA matches were staged before team operations were suspended after the fall 2020 season.
With the news that the Cosmos will resume team operations and compete in USL League One beginning in 2026 at Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson, NJ, for the first time in the club’s history the Cosmos will not be merely tenants. At long last, the club has a home of its own—at a stadium with a rich legacy of its own—in the heart of Cosmos Country