There was a time, many of us forget (others were too young to remember), when soccer in the U.S. was the chic thing, the metropolitan thing, attracting many of the world’s stars to U.S. soil. Once upon a time, 77,691 people packed into Giants Stadium to watch the likes of Pele and Franz Beckenbauer play in the North American Soccer League. That guy on ESPN, Giorgio Chinaglia, the guy who predicted the U.S. would have no chance against Italy, used to score the kind of goals that turned Giants Stadium into scenes that rival Rio or Milan, once upon a time. USA Today says analogies to great sports teams of the past come up short when trying to explain the New York Cosmos: it’s as if a basketball team in Italy scooped up still-great but ageing stars like Allen Iversen, Ben Wallace, and Shaquille O’Neal and put them together on one team. That happened in New York in the late 1970’s, and for those of us who weren’t there or don’t remember, a new documentary, “Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos”, is there to tell that story. ESPN commentator Shep Messing, the Cosmos goalie in its 1977 championship season, recalls, “We were as big as the Yankees and bigger than the Giants… We had our own tables at all the clubs. But we weren’t any more decadent than players today.” Maybe, but this was the 70’s and the Cosmos were living the kind of Warholian 15-minutes befitting those with an always-reserved table at Studio 54. The Cosmos were all glitz, a project that “was about a time in New York’s history that was really crazy,” says the documentary’s producer Fisher Stevens, who admits to being as mesmerized as anyone by their sheer star-power, though he never cared much for the sport. The rest, of course, is history; the NASL’s extravagant expenses outweighed the super-stardom it imported, and the league folded in 1984.