Where have you gone, Giorgio Chinaglia?

In a soccer mad summer, it's important to remember that despite the current fancy, my generation of New Yorkers didn't give a shit about "the beautiful game" before the Cosmos, and have only been vaguely interested since. "Once in a Lifetime", a well-timed documentary history of the team and the men who made it, opens in theatres Friday and does justice not only to the relatively well-known Pele comes to New York story, but also finally gives my man Giorgio Chinaglia his just desserts.


I was four in 1977, too young unfortunately to appreciate the Cosmos first title run. The dawn of my soccer consciousness came in the fall of 1980 (year of the third Cosmos title), when as part of a Friday afternoon sports club called Cavaliers, I was taken to Randall’s Island to play baseball, floor hockey, touch football, bowling if it rained, and soccer. We knew very little about the game other than the sure facts that you wanted to kick the ball into the other team’s goal (between the orange cones) and that if you scored, you were supposed to do a little dance which began with fist-pumping, concluded with ass shaking, and could be occasionally embellished with finger pointing or sliding on your knees. We knew because we saw Giorgio Chinaglia do it when Warner Wolf went to the video tape.

I loved Chinaglia's shtick. Being a mercurial little fucker myself, I have always been soft on sports brats, and in the early 80s, my brat pantheon was centered on a holy trinity: Gastineau, McEnroe, and Chinaglia. Seeing Giorgio in his shameless prime and his fantastically unrepentant middle age is by far the best part about “Once in a Lifetime”, which leans a little heavy on a suprisingly deep, disco soundtrack, but should have more than enough archival footage to satisfy the vintage soccer needs of my fellow retrosexuals.

“Once in a Lifetime” handles the epic rise and fall of the Cosmos chronologically and comprehensively: their hardscrabble origins as a semi-pro team on Randalls Island, unlikely purchase by ur-media mogul Steve Ross, rapid transformation into a world class soccer powerhouse, and equally sudden implosion. Hungry to be soccer’s Steinbrenner, Warner Brothers’ honcho Ross paid a whopping 7 million for Pele (in the days when Hank Aaron was making a measly 200 hundred large), and when Ross realized the great one couldn’t win alone, he went out and bought Chinaglia, Franz Beckenbauer, and Brazilian defender Carlos Alberto.


During their epic ’77 title run, the Cosmos were media darlings, a box office smash (first team to sell out the Meadowlands), and legendary studio 54 swordsmen who knocked in booty hat-tricks like they were penalty kicks. The film stops short of presenting hidden camera videos of Chinaglia and Pele jamming New York City nubiles, but doesn’t play it too coy, relishing in juicy details like the “two sex acts” performed on the plane ride to the 1977 Championship Game. Apparently, even Cosmos hangers on got to ride on the groupie gravy train. NY Post sourpuss Phil Mushnick admits he turned down a plum job covering the Yankees to stay on the Cosmos beat because he was having “too much fun”. You know if that whiny, humorless, curmudgeon was getting action, they were days of wine and roses indeed.

(The other dude is Shep Messing, who famously posed nude for Viva magazine in the Cosmos lean years)

Besides the innuendo and the shot of Henry Kissinger wearing a Cosmos parka I would give my left pinky for, Once in a Lifetime is worth watching for the still seething rivalries between the surviving Cosmos protagonists. In the modern interviews there is a Roshomon-like disagreement between sources on all the key points of credit sharing and blame-laying. The one thing that everyone seems to agree on is that Chinaglia was an asshole of unusual dimensions. Ass-kisser, womanizer, conniver, showboat, ball hog, mug like an Italianate Joe Namath, Chinaglia manages to make Reggie Jackson look humble.

He openly criticized Pele (once reducing him to near tears), sucked up to Ross, undermined the Cosmos coaching staff and eventually got his personal manservant Pepe Pinto installed as the Team President. Many accuse Giorgio of hammering the nail in the coffin of the Cosmos, and his “Why can’t I just be judged by my play on the field” defense lends credence to everything nasty said about him. In short, he is a great one.

For restoring Chinaglia to his proper place near the top of the list of New York villainous sports heroes, Once in A Lifetime takes an early lead for the coveted title of No Mas’ Sportflick of the Year.

Rating: 8.5 of 10