Manchester City get a lot of flak for their recent big spending summers; that has seen them spending eye-watering amounts of money, because what they are doing is apparently a new phenomenon. Guest author Stephen Brandt refutes that claim and looks at the team that was doing the big spending quite some time ago…

It’s hard to watch football nowadays without seeing someone talk about the super teams. In how many transfer windows do we hear about the big teams offering to or being rumoured to buy most of the great players up? Since the mega bucks came into the sport in Europe, how many great players have been swallowed up? Many times; and we’ve seen this since the Nineties in Europe. I’ve however, thought that this isn’t a new fad.

The mass buying of players and creating super teams is something from the 70′s and 80′s. And strangely it’s not from Europe; it’s from the USA. Some may not know the New York Cosmos, or the North American Soccer League but a quick Google, Bing, or Ask search will yield many books, and an amazing documentary ‘Once in a Lifetime’. Any football fan should take a look into the league. Yes it fizzled, and yes the teams lost all their money, but for a short period of time the NASL showed the rest of the world what a super team would mean to a city and a fan base. The NASL was great, explosive and taught people that you can get money in and raise attendance figures.

The attendance figures for the NASL :

SEASON  No.of games     No. of teams    Attendance(avg.)

1968    32              17              4699

1969    16              5               2888

1970    24              6               3128

1971    24              8               4157

1972    14              8               4785

1973    19              9               5974

1974    20              15              7841

1975    22              20              7597

1976    24              20              10361

1977    26              18              13584

1978    30              24              13006

1979    30              24              14163

1980    32              24              14440

1981    32              21              14060

1982    32              14              13156

1983    30              12              13387

1984    24              9               10659

But why am I bringing up the Cosmos in mention with todays’ super teams Real Madrid and Manchester City? Well that’s because I’m seeing an eerie similarity between the three teams. The New York Cosmos were in a top city and had an owner (Steve Ross of Warner Communications) who wanted the best team he could buy. And we see that Real Madrid have done that twice, the first Galacticos, and now the new generation. Real bought up every top player they could find at each position.

What these two teams showed, was that you bring in the top players; you sell shirts and have attractive football on the field every match. So supporters go away happy, and spend more money coming back. You also have the added advantage with big names, that they can be marketed to different arenas to bring more exposure to the club; such was the case with David Beckham going to Madrid.

We also see Manchester City with the Sheik’s money have bought more players than they have squad spots for. They’re hoping to turn their team into the next Galacticos, marketed all over the place, drawing higher jersey sales and greater attendance figures. They have a string of top strikers in Mario Balotelli, Edin Džeko, Sergio Aguero and Carlos Tevez. This doesn’t also point out how many solid players they have. They can sell a backup keeper to another Premier League team (Shay Given to Aston Villa) without rocking the ship.

So what does this mean? Will Manchester City win four cups (well The Cosmos won four Soccer Bowls)? Who knows? I’m not Miss Cleo; but what we can say is that they’ll keep getting talked about. They’ll also keep bringing in players, and adding to that massive payroll budget. Who knows, maybe they’ll make another reported run at Kaka or Messi.

Stephen Brandt is current writing a book about the New York Cosmos. He can be found writing his Liverpool blog Blaming the ref and followed on Twitter @KingKennyfanlfc

Photo courtesy of ipele.