Daily News | A look back at when Pelé played in Philadelphia
James L. McGarrity / Philadelphia Inquirer & Daily News archiveWhen Pelé first came to Philadelphia with the New York Cosmos, the crowd of 20,124 fans at Veterans Stadium was left disappointed because he didn’t play.
“So what if Pele only played three-quarters of Sunday’s game against Arminia Bielefeld of Germany?” The Inquirer’s Dave Sims wrote. “Philadelphia got a chance to see an interesting international soccer match. An estimated crowd of 20,000 saw the Santos team defeat the Germans, 5-0. Soccer’s king, Pele, assisted on the first goal and scored on a blast from 20 yards out in the second half.”
Sims later gained some renown too, though not in soccer. A college intern at The Inquirer when he covered Pelé's visit, the Philadelphia native later spent many years calling college football and basketball for ESPN, and the NFL and college hoops on Westwood One radio. In 2007, he became the local TV play-by-play voice of the Seattle Mariners, and he’s had that job ever since.In 1975, Pelé shook the soccer world and America by coming to New York.
The Inquirer’s Bill Livingston wrote that Bahr’s goal produced “the only roar of the game to rival even remotely the one that greeted Pele.” “Soccer is fast and violent,” McMullen wrote. “If we had thought of it first, it would be a success here. We are still working on ice hockey.”A year later, Pelé finally played here again. In fact, he played in Philadelphia twice in 1976. The first time was an exhibition tournament with a NASL All-Star squad. “Team America,” as it was known, played England at JFK Stadium on May 31 to cap off a nationwide tour with Brazil and Italy.
“Nobody was toasting Team America yesterday after the NASL All-Stars were turned into a burnt English muffin during the Bicentennial Soccer Cup game,” Dick Weiss wrote in the Daily News — another renowned basketball scribe who covered soccer back in the day.
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