Eric Cantona Aims High with the New York Cosmos

The 20th MLS franchise is most likely heading to New York. The New York Cosmos, a special team that is still recognized worldwide, is coming back to life with the help of English businessman and former Vice Chairman of Tottenham Hotspur, Paul Kamsley.  He has seen the opportunity of reviving the biggest soccer club in American history. The Cosmos have named Pele as honorary president and former Manchester United legend Eric Cantona as Director of Soccer. 

“The story of the club is very important for me.  It's not like other clubs.  And the project is very important.  We are here to try our best to help the Cosmos become the best team in the United States and the world. Our ambition is to have the best team in the country, with most of the players coming from our academy, and help the United States national team win the World Cup. It can happen I think, “ said Cantona in an interview to BBC.

In the late 1970s, the Cosmos bought some of the world’s best soccer players, but today, due to the salary cap rule governing the MLS clubs, the maximum budget charge for any one player is $335,000. The New York Cosmos won't be as expensive as the original galacticos we saw in the 1970s. The MLS's team salary cap was estimated to be around $1.9 million in 2006, $2.1 million in 2007 and was raised to $2.3 million for the 2008 season. In 2011, the salary cap is $2,675,000 per team, not counting the extra salary of designated players. Pele joined the Cosmos on June 1975 on a salary of $1.4 million per year, an enormous wage for an athlete at that time, equal to about $6 million in today's money.

Cantona knows how important talent is on the pitch: “The most important thing is to have the best players in the world. You have two solutions, to buy them or they can come from your academy.  It's less expensive to have them coming from the academy and it's better for the team.  A perfect example is Barcelona. A very rich club, they can buy the best players, but they walk with young players from the academy." 

It is yet to be seen if the New York Cosmos can achieve the magnificent flight of the Pele era. The Pele deal was later described by Gavin Newsham, an English writer, as "the transfer coup of the century". In 1975 hearing that the Brazilian's debut for New York was to be broadcast on CBS, the groundsman spray-painted the pitch green to disguise how little grass was on it. The match, against Dallas, was broadcast to 22 countries and covered by more than 300 journalists from all over the world.

"We transcended everything, every culture, every socio-economic boundary. We were international, we were European, we were cool, we were Americans from the Bronx. We were everything to everybody." said former goalkeeper Shep Messing speaking in 2006.