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Catching Up With . . .
Giorgio Chinaglia, New York Cosmos star
May 21, 1979
Posted: Tue June 16, 1998
If ever
an
athlete appeared to emulate Machiavelli's Prince in an
attempt to consolidate power, it was Italian-born soccer
star Giorgio Chinaglia, who led the New York Cosmos to four
North American Soccer League (NASL) titles between 1977 and
'82. A center-forward
with neither exceptional quickness nor grace, he scored an
astounding 193 goals in 213
NASL regular-season games, not including seven in one playoff
match. Though he played alongside international stars such
as Pelé, Carlos Alberto and Franz
Beckenbauer, Giorgione, as he was nicknamed, aroused the most passion
among
fans.
During the Cosmos' run of championships, Chinaglia
(kee-NAL-ya) made no apologies for wielding his influence.
He publicly
castigated teammates, Pelé among them, when he found
their effort lacking; on lavish vacations with Steve Ross,
the Cosmos' owner,
he recommended roster moves and coaching changes. At first
the fans accepted Chinaglia's backroom maneuvering, but he
came to be perceived as a fat cat whose meddling blurred
the line between labor and management. It
didn't help his approval rating
that, at a time when the NASL was awash in debt, he would
arrive at postgame interviews wearing a silk dressing gown
and then depart to his 22-room mansion in Englewood, N.J.,
where he had hung two portraits of himself by LeRoy Neiman.
"Someone had to make
things exciting," he recalls. "Remember, I was not
just another player. I was Chinaglia, the one and only. I
made the impossible
happen."
At least he did on the field. After retiring in 1983 as the
NASL's leading career goal scorer, Chinaglia, intoxicated
with ambition, purchased a majority interest in the Cosmos,
convinced that he could rewrite its balance sheet the way
he did the record
books. Yet by that time America's interest in pro soccer
had dwindled. Within a year, the league folded and
Chinaglia returned to
Italy.
Now 51, Chinaglia is still playing the power broker in the
soccer world. He's in the process of purchasing a club in
Budapest and serves as the director of sports for both a
television station and a newspaper in Rome, where he lives
with his wife,
Angela, and their children, Donald, 15, and Anthony, 12. Giorgio
also remains refreshingly unstinting with his opinions.
Asked, for instance, to compare the NASL to its
contemporary incarnation, Major League Soccer, he says
simply, "The players in MLS
couldn't shine our
shoes."
He remains, in other words, Chinaglia, the one and
only
—by L. Jon
Wertheim
photo: Gianni Giansanti/SYGMA; George Tiedemann (cover)
Issue date: June 22, 1998
Past Editions of Catching Up With...
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