"It’s gonna be huge. Support us. The Cosmos are back."

The Cosmos, the New York soccer team that Steve Ross and Warner Communications built into a jet-setting, championship-getting phenomenon more than three decades ago, with the the aid of aging international stars like Pelé. Franz Beckenbauer and that ball hog Giorgio Chinaglia, are back–well, possibly. A British entrepreneur named Paul Kemsley is reviving the brand and hoping to coax lightning to strike twice, something the skies generally do rarely and at their own caprice. David Segal of the New York Times reports:

“’Thanks so much for coming,’ [Paul Kemsley] said, turning serious. ‘We hope you get it. It’s gonna be huge. Support us. The Cosmos are back.’

Hang on — the team that gave Americans their first taste of soccermania, once packing Giants Stadium with more than 77,000 fans? That rum band of night prowlers with their own table at Studio 54 and Hollywood hangers-on? The franchise that vanished not long after Steve Ross, the head of Warner Communications, decided that pro soccer had no future? Those Cosmos are back?

Certainly the brand is back. Amid all the team memorabilia on display at that February party were plenty of crisp new Cosmos shirts, shorts and warm-ups, part of a recently unveiled line of clothing from Umbro, the English company that co-sponsored the shindig.

But Kemsley’s ambitions far exceed retro sportswear. A former real estate mogul who flamed out spectacularly in England when the recession struck, he is now chairman of the Cosmos, whose rights he bought recently. Since then, the team has been his all-consuming passion; he talks about building a stadium as well as Cosmos-related restaurants and hotels in New York City. He predicts that he and Umbro will sell a fortune’s worth of shirts in Europe and Asia. He has a staff of 16 already (including an executive named Terry Byrne, a close friend and former manager of David Beckham’s). He is touring the world to spread news of a second coming.”

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The trailer for the Cosmos documentary, Once in a Lifetime: