The chairman of New York Cosmos 2.0 is taking a patient tack when it comes to restoring American soccer’s most successful club to their former glory

On a clear summer’s evening at the start of August, a few thousand fans slowly trickled in Hofstra University’s James M Shuart Stadium, on Long Island, New York. Outside, parents and their children partook in soccer-themed games; members of staff handed out New York Cosmos emblazoned sling backpacks to the first 2,500 children into the stadium.

In one corner, level with the corner flag and behind an inflatable entranceway to the pitch, around 20 fans leaned on barriers, waiting for the players to pass. A similar number gathered in a temporary beer tent just behind them. “Alla Madrid!” one shouted, a can of Sam Adams Summer Ale in hand. Raul, the club’s star player, let slip a smile as he headed out into a quarter-full stadium.

This is New York Cosmos 2.0: the second coming of the most successful club team in American soccer history, once known for packing Giants Stadium and fielding the likes of Pele, Beckenbauer and Carlos Alberto. The team currently ply their trade in America’s second tier, the North American Soccer League, and, according to their chairman, Seamus O’Brien, are “building a foundation that we are going to be able to build a big house on.”

Since they announced that they would be rejoining the NASL in 2012, the Cosmos have never changed their mission statement of becoming the “biggest club in American soccer.” But making such statements as being the “biggest club in 10 years” also leaves a lot to the imagination. Just how will the Cosmos – and the United States soccer scene in general – look in a decade’s time.

O’Brien, who rarely does one-on-one interviews, partly due to a hectic schedule and partly because of an actions-speak-louder-than-words mentality – “I want us to be judged on our performance” – recently explained to the Guardian how he thinks this will be achieved.

“What do I think we will look like in, say, five years’ time?” O’Brien said, seated in one of the executive boxes overlooking the 12,000-seat stadium prior to the match. “I think we will be playing in our own stadium, in a league of 18 to 20 teams, and we will be competing at the highest level in this country.”

Finding their own stadium is, perhaps, the next big step in the Cosmos and O’Brien’s plans. Since the team began playing competitively again, almost all of their home matches have been contested at the multi-purpose Shuart Stadium, which is used by the university’s football team and lined with fieldturf. It was also played in by the original Cosmos, between 1972 and 1973. “There is a strong historical link,” O’Brien said, “and in re-tracing the journey, that was an important element of it.”

Nostalgia aside, with seasonal average attendances around the 6,000 mark (higher than the league average, but 13,000 lower than MLS’s), some have criticised the choice of venue, saying that it is too far from the city. O’Brien accepts that they would, if possible, like to be nearer to Manhattan, but insists that facility was the best for-rent soccer venue available, and that Hofstra has served the club well.

“There isn’t a soccer facility like this anywhere in the five boroughs,” he said. “So, for us, it was a reasonably simple choice to come and bed ourselves down here – at least in the short term.”

In early 2013, the club submitted a privately funded proposal to the State of New York for a $400m, 25,000-seat stadium at Belmont Park, Queens. The plans include a 175-room hotel, four acres of park space, nine restaurants, and a large deal of retail space, which, the club say, will bring a number of jobs to the area – 500 in construction, and 3,000 permanent. More than two-and-a-half years on, the Cosmos are still waiting on the state’s decision on the proposals.

“Belmont is a great opportunity for us, we are pursuing that, and if it doesn’t come through, we are now identifying other sites,” O’Brien said. “The idea is that by the end of this year or early next year, to have a clear pathway to our own venue.”

Offering to privately-fund such a stadium does hint that there is money to be spent. But when it comes to backers, very little is known about the Cosmos’ finances. Previous reports have stated that the club have investment from Sela Sports, a Saudi marketing firm who were involved in Brit Paul Kemsley’s shambolic attempts to resurrect the club in 2010; Lagardere Unlimited, a global sports and entertainment agency based in France, of which O’Brien is the deputy chairman of the executive committee; and World Sport Group, Asia’s leading sports media and marketing company, and a company that O’Brien founded.

Despite such potential funding streams, the model of previous Cosmos – known for their free spending on worldwide names – will not be followed just yet, O’Brien insists. “There is no point if we go out and sign Ronaldo tomorrow, as I can still only put 10,500 people in here,” he said. “From a business perspective, that just doesn’t make sense. When we have a 25,000-seat stadium, we will have those global names, because we can put 25,000 people in there each week, and the economics of the team will make sense.”

The plan, O’Brien said, is to run a sustainable football and let things “grow organically.” Having admitted in 2013 that the club made “modest losses” (owed mainly to startup costs), when it comes to players, coach Giovanni Savarese is given a budget and is the one who makes the final decision on players who, he thinks, are capable of being successful at the level the Cosmos currently play. This season, the club added United States’ U17 internationals Hadji Wright and Alexis Velela to a roster that contains a selection of internationals, as well as veterans Raul and Marcos Senna.

“I don’t think there is a correlation at our level between what you pay a team and the way the perform,” O’Brien said. “Eleven competent footballers, well coached, can do very well.”

Such competition is one of the appeals that, O’Brien thinks, will continue to attract new franchises to the NASL. When the league relaunched, in 2011, there were eight teams competing; in 2016, they look set to have 13. Making the decision to join such a fledgling competition may ultimately be the move that decides whether or not the Cosmos reach their goals. When he became chairman, in 2012, O’Brien said that all options were considered.

“When I agreed to take over the managing part of this, I was of the same mindset as most people out there: that MLS is the only league and we would have to be in the MLS,” he said. “Through the due diligence process that we undertook, we rapidly came to the conclusion that we did not think it was a very good investment.”

The Cosmos opted against Major League Soccer because they did not feel the entry fee justified the gains, O’Brien said. When looking at which league to invest in and their potential futures, O’Brien said that the Cosmos ownership came to a similar conclusion that Stefan Szymanksi, author of Soccernomics and Money in Soccer, wrote about a few months ago.

“The business opportunity is the same: pick a city, run a professional soccer team,” O’Brien said. “One will cost you $100m, and by every bit of advice I have seen, is a license to spend more money; this one, at the moment costs, around $3m, and if you do it well, you can make money.”

Some of the appeals of the decentralized NASL that O’Brien has mentioned in the past – lack of salary cap; low entry fees; the freedom to spend, should an owner wish – he thinks will continue to attract new investors, not necessarily from the biggest cities in the United States. (“I am a believer that you don’t have to be in a big city to run a great soccer team, and to run a financially successful one that plays a key part in the league.”) With the number of teams and the quality on the field continuing to increase, O’Brien believes will lead to a lucrative TV deal – or deals – down the line, as are enjoyed by the major soccer leagues of the world. The league’s decentralized model, he added, will allow clubs to negotiate their own deals.

“If a country of England is 50m people with 12m homes, and Sky can produce the Premier League,” he said. “I don’t need to be a genius to work out what a country of this size and 110m homes can produce with a clear love of soccer today. It’s not going to happen tomorrow, but it will happen over a period of years.”

NASL's split-season model, now in third year, offers unpredictable thrills Read more

Accepting the their claims are not going to happen tomorrow has been the Cosmos’ standpoint throughout their second tenure in the NASL. For the club’s chairman, tomorrow – or five to 10 years down the line – will see the Cosmos playing in a 25,000-seater stadium, fielding some of the best-known players in the world; the journey there will have seen the club’s on-field quality grow organically (within budget) along with the NASL, which will have continued to receive investment over a number of years.

And for MLS? Having made a decision on which league to join, O’Brien said he is not one to speculate on what will happen to the league anyone; the Cosmos have made their choice, and that is what they are now going to stick. “I am not going to be one to predict what is going to happen to another league, and I don’t spend too much time in the day worrying about it,” he said. “The difference between the NASL and MLS is actually a business story - it’s not necessarily a sporting story. At the end of the day, the market is going to decide.”

On the field that evening at Hosftra, the Cosmos defeated the San Antonio Scorpions, 2-1, in front of a registered attendance of 4,006. The win kept the team top of the NASL’s combined table, having already wrapped up the spring season and guaranteed a playoff place.

“Let’s see where the journey goes,” O’Brien said. “It’s been fun so far.”