I'm not even sure Lampard's signing is the biggest thing to happen to New York City FC, much less American soccer as a whole, as I think Villa's was arguably more important. Beckham, Donovan, Dempsey, Bradley, Kaka, Keane, Henry, are names that off the top of my head have come and made significant contributions that to date eclipse what Lampard's would do. Maybe Lampard comes over and does well, but it's premature to make those conclusions.
Also, maybe not bring up Pele? That didn't work out so well in the long term.
I am talking about the impact of his mere signing. The signings of Pele and Beckham were huge media events that changed the nature the domestic league and the cultural place of soccer in the U.S. Nothing matches those two events, which will probably forever remain the the top moments in the history of American club soccer.
One rung down is the signing of Lampard, which is comparable to the signings of Henry, Kaka, Villa, and Gerrard, though far more significant. The arrival of no other player, be he a foreign star (Keane, Cahill, Blanco in MLS; Beckenbauer, Cruyff, Best in the NASL) or a great American player (Donovan, Dempsey) is comparable in terms of raising the profile of the league and the sport in the American sports landscape. Lampard is now the worldwide face of MLS. Only the arrival of Ronaldinho now or the imagined arrival of a Cristiano Ronaldo in X-number of years could eclipse the magnitude of the Lampard signing.
Secondly, Pele worked out wonderfully. The Cosmos won a title with him, and three more afterwards. And his having played with the team gave it a legitimacy that no American club had ever equalled until the Galaxy in the Beckham / post-Beckham era. Even the current Cosmos continue to associate themselves quite rightly with Pele and his run with the club.
What is often overlooked -- or misunderstood -- about the NASL is the fact that the Cosmos were not the problem; they were the ones doing it right. The problem was the rest of the league.
The Cosmos' owners, Warner Communications, were ideal in that they were able to sustain the team in the long term. Warner could decide to accept some losses now, as a bet on the future of the club. This stood in stark contrast to the league's other ownership groups, most of whom needed today's revenues in order to pay tomorrow's bills.
The NASL expanded far too quickly, once adding six teams in a single year. The league did very little vetting of ownership groups; essentially, any lemonade-stand operator who could pay the expansion fee was in. There was no thought given to the long-term viability of the teams; the only apparant business plan was the blithe assumption that soccer was in the ascendancy in the U.S., and therefore the teams' values would increase. When this didn't happen, the rickety nature of the majority of the league's teams eventually brought the whole league down.
So it would be wrong to say that the signing of Pele didn't work out well, or to imply that the Cosmos were emblematic of anything bad. The Cosmos were a club run the right way, by the best kind of owners; the fact that the other teams didn't follow their good example is the fault not of the Cosmos but of the NASL's leadership. If that league had had half as many teams, but if more of those teams had had ownership groups of the calibre of the Cosmos, then it would never have folded, and we would have had true
club football (instead of a single-entity quasi-charade) all these years.
