Not for the first time, the New York Cosmos are returning to US soccer – although with a decidedly more community-centered feel than the iconic star-studded club of the 1970s that boasted Pele and Franz Beckenbauer among its ranks.
The Cosmos, who previously played in front of sold-out crowds at Giants Stadium, will adopt more humble surroundings when they enter USL League One next March for the start of the 2026 season.
Playing in the third and lowest tier of professional soccer in the United States, the Cosmos will play out of the newly redeveloped Hinchliffe Stadium, a 7,800-seater venue situated atop the Great Falls in Paterson, NJ. For the rebrand, they have also dropped “New York” from their name.
The new iteration of the Cosmos will be deeply rooted in the local Patterson community.
Baye Adofo-Wilson, the club’s new majority owner who led the redevelopment of Hinchliffe Stadium, is a Paterson native who bought the Cosmos and its intellectual property from Rocco Commisso – the current owner of Italian giants Fiorentina, who led another revival of the Cosmos in the NASL during the 2010s.
Meanwhile, Erik Stover, a former Cosmos and New York Red Bulls executive, has rejoined the Cosmos brand as co-owner and CEO. Meanwhile, Giuseppe Rossi, who was born in nearby Teaneck, NJ, before moving to Italy at 12, has joined as vice chairman and head of soccer.
Stover said the seeds of the newly reformed Cosmos were laid as far back as 2021, when the development of Hinchliffe Stadium was still ongoing.
“[Adofo-Wilson] just saw that when this stadium was finished being restored, that this would be a great soccer opportunity, that the future was soccer,” Stover told amNewYork.
Stover quickly came on board and almost immediately recruited Rossi after speaking with the former Fiorentina and Villarreal star about his experiences playing youth soccer in North Jersey.
Stover acknowledged that bringing back the Cosmos “wasn’t an original idea” but said the club’s new owners have spent four years laying the foundations of a community-based club that would create business opportunities in North Jersey and sporting opportunities for young kids in the surrounding area.
Those sporting opportunities will include working with existing academies to provide opportunities for talented youngsters in Paterson and surrounding towns while also building strong relationships with local clubs.
“We want to have good working relationships with all the academies and clubs that exist, and work together to find the best, brightest talent and sign those players,” Stover said.
Aside from returning as a professional soccer outfit, the Cosmos will also offer free soccer camps and clinics for local children and start social groups and clubs that cater to a variety of interests in the local community—from rugby to cricket and from track-and-field to chess. The Cosmos will also boast a professional women’s team that will feature in the USL Super League, which debuted last summer and runs alongside the NWSL.
“We’re going to have programs that support the community, and not just sports, but arts, culture, dance,” Stover said. “One of the things we expect to announce here shortly is a chess club, and the whole idea is to get as many people involved.
“We’re bringing different diverse interests into the club and then using the stadium… as a hub for the community.”
He said the club aims to follow a European or South American model akin to St. Pauli in Germany, adding that the Cosmos will try to bring the Paterson community together “under one roof.”
Stover believes the rehabilitation of Hinchliffe Stadium, coupled with the arrival of the Cosmos, can help lift Paterson, a city with rates of poverty and unemployment well above the national average. He also noted that the Paterson community is among the most diverse in the country.
“We’re going to create a lot of business, and we’re going to create a lot of jobs,” Stover said. “Building a European or a South American-style club is just a natural extension of the diversity of this area. It’s not just diverse in skin color, religion, and belief, but it’s diverse in the interests that people have.”
The timing of the Cosmos’ return is no coincidence. The USL is currently plotting a revamp that would introduce a promotion and relegation system and a new Division 1 to run alongside the MLS, which will remain a closed shop for the foreseeable future.
For Stover and the Cosmos, the planned promotion-relegation system offers an opportunity to grow organically if the club can move upward through the USL.
“We knew this was coming,” Stover said of the plans to introduce promotion and relegation. “We know our organization has to be profitable and build a really strong foundation.”
The Cosmos will focus on developing their own talents in the beginning as well as building partnerships and relationships with neighboring clubs and academies.
Stover, meanwhile, believes that the rapid growth of women’s soccer affords the club a big opportunity and said the ownership group will be just as committed to the women’s team as they are to the men’s.
“The vision is very much the same,” Stover said. “We’re just as committed to that as we are to the men’s game… but it won’t be treated exactly the same, just like if we form an amateur cricket club, it’s not exactly the same.
“Women’s professional soccer has shown itself to be growing tremendously, which is a huge opportunity for us,” he added. “Our plan is to get started in the USL as quickly as possible on the women’s side.”
For now, however, Stover and the Cosmos ownership have focused on new recruits ahead of the 2026 USL season.
Most clubs balk at the prospect of bringing in four or five new recruits over a transfer window. The Cosmos must bring in upwards of 20 players on both the men’s and women’s side, which Stover described as a “massive” undertaking.
“Luckily, I’ve been around and done it before,” said Stover, who played a significant role in luring French superstar and former Arsenal and Barcelona great Thierry Henry to the Red Bulls in 2010.
“We’re already starting to look at guys that are heading towards the end of their contract, guys that are free, young players that have huge upside… but first we have to get our head coach on board so we’re all unified in the approach and understand exactly what to do.”
The task may be daunting, but the Cosmos still retain the aura of the bygone days of Pele, Beckenbauer, and Carlos Alberto—even if they have shifted to a more grassroots version of the team that sold out Giants Stadium in those halcyon days.
Stover aims to leverage that star power to recruit players for next season but to lean even more heavily on the club’s “family atmosphere.”
“It’s an advantage to us, but maybe more importantly, so will the organization that we have, the people we have involved, and the identity of the club through the family atmosphere that we have.”
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