Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

I loved this flick and in many ways it beats the book by a mile as the interviews esp. of Cosmos personnel (hey, they even interviewed the guy in the Bugs Bunny mascot costume!) but there are a lot of generalizations and misinterpretations because I think it was done by a Brit from a soccer point of view.First of all, the football (as in American football) footage in reference to 1977 he used was of the USFL (TB Bandits vs. Houston Gamblers), a league which did not start until 1983. So it was obvious NFL Films would not cooperate with his flick but this sort of "throw a generic football clip in" doesn't cut it with North Americans, Mr. Director. It's sloppy film-making.The claim that the Cosmos were #1 in the NY sports market at the time is preposterous. That era from 1975-81 was when the NY Yankees rose from a decade of poor play and poorer attendance to lead the American League every single year in attendance plus go to four World Series, winning two. Sure the Cosmos were incredibly popular but to suggest baseball was suffering in NY under the Cosmos' glare is laughable. Add to that both the NY Jets and NY Giants of the NFL had a greater average attendance per game than the Cosmos.Anyway, it is an entertaining film esp, for those of us who grew up with and loved the NASL. As far as the guy who wished Cruyff was interviewed. he must have been asleep as the Dutch great makes a great comment on the shootout in the film.Lastly, this whole Cosmos were ahead of the curve in having 14 different nationalities on one team like they invented that. The year before the Cosmos joined the NASL, the 1970 champion Rochester Lancers had players from 12 different nations in their squad. Even hockey (Swedes, Finns and Cezchs came over) or baseball (always had Latin Americans since the '50s) had that mix...it's our immigrant, no import quotas in sports history.

One of the bubbliest, most rollicking, and most surprising documentaries you'll ever see.I am a soccer fan, but you won't have to be one to enjoy this movie. If you like anything about the 1970s--the music, the disco scene, the cheesy TV graphics--you'll love this movie.It's premised on the nearly-insane vision of multimillionaire media mogul Steve Ross to make soccer a big time sport in the USA. It led to absurd spending, classic sports excess, and surprise, surprise--sold out stadiums! The whole thing was a roller-coaster destined to crash from the very beginning, but my it's fun to watch happen.The cinematography is quick, flashy, and usually tongue-in-cheek. The interviewees inform, hedge, dodge, bicker, and blame. You end up with a partially contradictory but often balanced view of what happened with this wildest of teams. The personalities of this movie are its most endearing quality.It all makes for an entertaining story for non-enthusiasts, but an epic story for anyone with any liking for this game. There are a few factual discrepancies (the largest of which was that the NASL had accomplished a few things in cities other than NY before Pele ever got there), but they're more than compensated for by the insight the film gives to its central topic.

I was the radio broadcaster for the Rocheter Lancers of the North American Soccer league from 1975-1980 and I spent quite a bit of time at Giants Stadium seeing Cosmos games,if we weren't playing. The film brought back all kinds of memories. It was great. I never would have recognized Shep Messing who played for Rochester in 1979. Also Chinaglia (sp?) I thought looked like Tony Soprano today. The Lancers used to play the Cosmos twice a year, once in New York (rather New Jersey) and once in Rochester. Plus we played a semi final series against the Cosmos in 1977...losing both games. We didn't beat the Cosmos after 1976. Still despite our lack of success, the Cosmos were a great team to watch. Anyboy who was a US soccer fan in the 1970's should like this movie. I didn't know it existed until I saw it on ESPN2 on 9/20/06.PS-Downing Stadium on Randall's Island was my least favorite venue to broadcast from...Giants stadium was the best||| Yankee stadium was fun too in 1976.

I saw this film at the Hot Docs Film Festival in May 2006. The North American Soccer League was struggling along through the 1970s until the New York Cosmos, owned by Warner Communications head Steve Ross, decided to bring superstar Pele to the Big Apple. Suddenly, attendance was up, and the Cosmos started winning. Continuing the formula by bringing some European stars over, the Cosmos won several league titles over the next few years. In the process, the once-moribund NASL expanded quickly to 24 teams. Unfortunately, the resulting dilution of talent, and the inability of smaller-market clubs to pay the huge salaries demanded by European or Latin American stars, meant that the league soon imploded.The film tells the story with humour and verve, and it's hard not to be a little bit nostalgic for the days when 70,000 people would crowd into Giants stadium to watch "the other football." But ultimately, the Cosmos' strategy was short-sighted. Building an audience for soccer in North America was going to take time, and the free-spending style of Ross and the Cosmos attracted only fairweather fans, who would melt away as soon as the team stopped winning. Other franchises couldn't attract enough fans in the first place, and the league suffered as a result.It was interesting that the director admitted afterwards that he is a huge fan of Chelsea Football Club in the English Premiership. Chelsea are following a similar strategy at the moment, with the seemingly endless billions of owner Roman Abramovich funding the construction of another superteam. So far, they've won back to back titles in England, but to the detriment of the league, according to many observers. Without a salary cap, the English Premier League drains talent away from the rest of the world, and Chelsea are the richest club of all. This concentration of talent makes the game less competitive in the long term, and while it may attract a few new fans, they're not the sort of fans who will stick around if and when the team starts losing.Many of the American innovations brought to the game by the NASL have made it into the game in the rest of the world. For example, penalty shootouts to decide games tied after regulation time. This will always be unpopular with football purists, but for the casual fan, it certainly adds excitement to the game. Other gimmicks weren't so successful, thankfully. Who wants to see cheerleaders at a football match?The only flaw in the film was the absence of any present-day interviews with Pele or Johan Cruyff (who played for the Los Angeles Aztecs and Washington Diplomats franchises), though I believe numerous attempts were made to obtain their participation. The director Paul Crowder promised lots of fun stuff in the DVD extras, including their attempts to get Pele on board.