Paperjam

Once In A Lifetime

Film // Jim // 28th May 2006

Imagine that one day Rupert Murdoch wakes up and decides to buy Leyton Orient, then he perusades Zinedine Zidane to go and play for them. Does't seem very likely does it? Well in the 1970s, business, media mogul and sports nut Steve Ross decided to buy into the North American Soccer League by investing in the New York franchise. At the time soccer (as they insist on calling it) had a public profile somewhere between bear baiting and dwarf tossing in the grand scheme of American sports.

The New York Cosmos (as in short for cosmopolitans) were a rag tag bunch including a giant striker with comedy hair and a keeper with a penchant for getting his cock out in ladies magazines, they played on a shitty pitch covered in broken glass in front of a crowd of about 200. Then they broke the bank to sign Pele.

This film explains how this kickstarted a total revolution, within a couple of years the team also included Beckenbuaer, Carlos Alberto and Georgio Chinaglia and were playing in Giants Stadium in front of 70,000.

We are treated to the sights and sounds of some truly great footballers taking the complete piss out of a bunch of half arsed amateurs, Pele nutmegging a series of clueless defenders is especially good. Matt Dillon narrates, while a series of candid and conflicting interviews paints the picture of the irresistable rise and eventual fall of the Cosmos and indeed the whole structure of soccer in America.

Chief architect of this is the rather unpleasant Chinaglia, who looks like Tony Soprano, sounds welsh and has the ego to match his phenominal goal scoring record. Brutally unapologetic, he is the sort of person that you would never want to meet, but he is terrific value as an interviewee.

Aside from the cracking soundtrack, priceless archive material and superb editing, the cost of admission is almost entirely justified for the moment where Pele completely clatters the preening cock that is Rodney Marsh, could have done with a few slo-mo replays there.