Gotham FC’s forced relocation of its NWSL semifinal from its home stadium in New Jersey to Icahn Stadium may be an awkward inconvenience, but it also gives the club a place in Randall’s Island’s storied soccer history. The 5,000-seat Icahn Stadium opened in 2005 on the site of the 22,000-seat Downing Stadium, which hosted Pelé‘s 1975 Cosmos debut, scores of international friendlies — including England’s 10-0 rout of the USA in 1964 — and Bill Cox’s International Soccer League. The league included an American all-star team and foreign clubs, such as West Ham United with future England World Cup winners Geoff Hurst and Bobby Moore.
“A stadium that had been at the center of the 1960s era of touring foreign teams, when Pele and Santos and Eusebio and Benfica, and the great Inter Milan team of that era had played there. Pele had returned there in 1975 to play with the Cosmos, which called it home for a while. The field was always awful, the fans sat on hard concrete, the press accommodation was atrocious, there was no cover.”
— SA Columnist Paul Gardner on Randall’s Island’s Downing Stadium.
Columnist Paul Gardner reflecting on the first time he attended a U.S. national team game:
“That was my baptism: USA vs. England at Randall’s Island in New York (a rather less-than-state-of-the-art venue, long since smashed into nothingness by the bulldozers). Back in 1964 it was the USA that was vaporized, on the wrong end, the nothing end, of a 10-0 scoreline. Well, remember, England was only two years away from winning the World Cup. The USA was so obviously light years away from winning anything.”
