Spitz, into protective custody. So, for 24 hours we were held in protective custody and we were only getting bits and pieces of what was going on... only that terrorists had attacked the village. We got all our information from television. How do you describe the horror to other people if you are Jewish? You can’t describe it.
entertainment
Goal Keeper
Shep Messing WHEN THE NEW YORK COSMOS WERE THE BIGGEST GAME IN TOWN A CONVERSATION BY ADAM KLUGER
Editor’s Note: Being a soccer goalie in high school was always fun and exciting. My Freshman year at Horace Mann, I was even voted All-City and had a wonderful coach named Richard Remsen along with so many terrific teammates over the years always making me look good. As a teenager, I wanted to be like Shep Messing, the incredibly talented goalie for the world-famous New York Cosmos. All these years later I’m so excited to interview my sports hero, the legendary goalkeeper and broadcaster. -AK Shep, what are some of your high school memories at Wheatley? You were quite the allaround athlete? I played American football, basketball, wrestling, and at the same time track and field and baseball and it was really just unbelievable circumstances by all rights that I ended up having a place in soccer. I never saw a soccer ball till I was 16. The soccer coach came up to me and said I need a goalkeeper, I know you’ve 72 | MetMagNY.com | 25AMagazine.com
never played but you are a shortstop in baseball you are a point guard in basketball and you are a little bit crazy, and so, I thought I would give it a try. I ended up going to NYU and I was a walk-on, I just walked onto the field and I was an All-American the first year. I ended up loving it and because I was an All-American in college, they invited me to try out for the Olympic team. I sprained my ankle playing basketball but I begged and pleaded and got a second tryout in St. Louis. I slept in the airport. I’ll never forget waking up at the airport and I picked up the newspaper and there was an article on the Olympic team and I had been named to it. Our Olympic team was a pioneering team with a bunch of kids and it was the first time the U.S. team had gone through qualifying and made it to the Olympics. So I graduated from Harvard in June, went to play in the Olympic games in Germany. Tell me about the tragic Munich Games in 1972. For me Adam, you go through life always not knowing what to expect. To actually get to the games and to Munich was one of the high points in my life. we were a bunch of college All-Americans playing against West Germany some professional players from Bayern Munich. My son tells me I have two Olympic records, one for most saves ever made in a game, 63 saves-- as well as the record for most goals allowed-- which was seven (laughs). Still, the Olympic Games were a dream come true until I got a knock on my door at four o’clock in the morning. We were right across from the Israeli complex about 25 yards away. I opened my door and there were two German soldiers with machine guns and they said “, are you Shep Messing?” At first my instinct was to jump the bigger soldier because I grew up in the Bronx, I didn’t know what was happening but they showed me their police ids and said,”come with us,” and they took all the Jewish athletes on the U.S. team, including Mark
How did you become Pele’s goalkeeper? I got home from Munich and found out I had been drafted by a team I had never heard of called the New York Cosmos. I was drafted by the New York Mets too and I was enrolled to go to law school. I started at Fordham law and my father was a lawyer and I told my dad, “ I really want to play one more year of soccer, what do you think?” He said, “Shep the last thing we need is another lawyer...go play soccer.” (laugh) The Cosmos to me were just love until one day there was a helicopter and it flew over the field and it landed and the whole world changed for the New York Cosmos and professional soccer changed when Pele joined the team. We were getting, Adam, maybe two thousand, twenty-five hundred fans at the game, and with Pele, two years after he had arrived, we were playing at Giants Stadium in front of 77 thousand people. New York in the ‘70s was rock and roll, Studio 54, we were owned by Warner Communications, Warner Brothers and Steve Ross so every game there were sell-out crowds of 75 thousand people. We would be whisked away in a limousine after the game to nightclubs in the city. At Studio 54 there was Robert Redford, Mick Jagger they were all fans of the team. They were at games and coming to the city for the parties after. And if you know New York in the ‘70’s it was financially broke there was a blackout, Son of Sam in 1977 and it’s kind of what sports can do, it can take a city on its shoulders and raise spirits. I think the Cosmos, Pele’s final year when we were playing to sell-out crowds and winning the championship, we were bigger than the Giants or the Jets or the Yankees or the Mets. We were the talk of the town in the New York Post, Daily News, magazine articles because of Pele and Beckenbauer and Chinaglia those guys were rock stars worldwide. Was Pele the biggest name in sports at that time? I’ll never forget I grew up and I loved Muhammad Ali and I went to all his fights and one day I went to the locker room in Giants Stadium and there’s Muhammad Ali he wanted to get into the locker room to meet Pele. Muhammad when he was outside he was being Muhammad Ali, joking and trash-talking, and then when he came into the locker room I was one of the few Americans on the Cosmos so I was like the social director so I brought Muhammad over to meet Pele and Muhammad was the most humble with his head down saying
