Reuters Soccer Blog

Cosmos and Cantona could take MLS to the next level

For all the progress made by Major League Soccer since it began in 1996, there is not one team in the league that can match the old New York Cosmos for name recognition – not globally and not in the United States.

But when the new owners of the Cosmos name announced in August that they planned to bring the team back to life and take them into MLS, there was a good deal of scepticism in the American soccer community. Now they have named former Manchester United great Eric Cantona as director of soccer.

Such a cynical reaction was understandable – for years there had been rumours of a return for the Cosmos name, which was owned by Peppe Pinton, an official of the old club, but nothing beyond youth soccer camps ever materialized.

When MLS announced a team in New York, there were attempts to make that team the Cosmos but no deal was ever struck with Pinton, who was reported to be holding out for a big pay-off at a time when MLS was very careful with every dollar.

The other cause for scepticism is a reluctance by some to embrace American soccer’s past. The old NASL, with the Cosmos, the Tampa Bay Rowdies and the Los Angeles Aztecs, collapsed in the early 1980s with the league unable to keep up with the costs of paying top international players such as those Cosmos brought in.

MLS has been careful to avoid any repeat of the past – it has used a conservative salary cap system to limit costs, it has wisely encouraged clubs to invest in stadiums, facilities and youth development, rather than expensive imported players and it has expanded gradually, keen to avoid the boom and bust of the NASL.

The Cosmos may mean glamour, excitement and a seat at the top table of the global game for many fans who remember them but for those who have devoted years to the painstaking task of reconstructing professional soccer in North America, they also symbolize a reckless waste of potential, the kind of flash-in-the-pan faddishness that the sport can ill-afford to repeat in this market.