Where Trump first learned to love soccer

Aging stars like Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Harry Kane may still fill stadiums just by showing up, but their teams' results are only as good as their on-field chemistry and coaching. The squad that best illustrated that principle over soccer's long history is the one that first convinced President Donald Trump that the sport was worth a look.

In the 1970s, the moribund New York Cosmos, part of the North American Soccer League, convinced the Brazilian soccer icon Pelé to come play for them. He was followed quickly by stars like Giorgio Chinaglia, Franz Beckenbauer and Carlos Alberto.

The stars, along with a sharp public relations push from club owner Warner Communications, transformed the team, the league and the arc of American soccer.

“Without the Cosmos and their panache, we wouldn’t have been in a position to bid for and get 1994,” said Jim Trecker, who served as public relations guru of both the Cosmos and that year's World Cup, the first in the United States.

The team went from playing in a sparsely attended stadium on Randall’s Island to the very same Meadowlands where England and Panama played today. The Cosmos regularly drew over 50,000 fans, including Mick Jagger, Cher and Henry Kissinger.

“The one and only time I met Kissinger, he shoved me into Pelé’s lap,” David Hirshey, who covered the team for the New York Daily News, told POLITICO.

The Cosmos also convinced a young Trump, who at least once partied with Pelé at Studio 54, that soccer was worth watching. When asked about Trump's Cosmos experience, the White House referred POLITICO to his family business, the Trump Organization, which did not respond to a request for comment. Multiple times, though, Trump has cited Pelé and the Cosmos as an inspiration for his own interest in the sport.

“Many years ago, I remember watching Pelé on a team called the Cosmos,” Trump said at the World Cup's lottery draw in December. “I assume he is one of the greats. I said, ‘That man can play!’”

At the same event, the president seemed somewhat forlorn that the promise of the Cosmos didn’t manifest in the explosion of successful soccer across the country.

“For years, they thought soccer would be so big and big fast,” he said.

At the height of the Cosmos’ glory, Trump was a young, up-and-coming real estate scion with big dreams of filling the same rooms as New York’s most famous characters — even though he may have viewed them only from afar.

“I never saw Trump in the locker room,” said Hirshey. “You would think that’s where he would want to be."

Read Calder's POLITICO Magazine story about the Trump and the Cosmos here.