Giorgio Chinaglia, who played for the New York Cosmos in 1976 "as the greatest player in the history of S.S. Lazio, a venerable Rome team" and who would make third-person pronouncements like "I am Chinaglia. If I shoot from a place, it's because Chinaglia can score from there," died at age 65 on Sunday. He had suffered a heart attack two days earlier and died in his home.
The Times' obituary gives the atmosphere of the Cosmos' heady days and Chinaglia's proud, if off-putting, statements:
His game was brash, relying on power and supreme confidence.
“I am a finisher,” he said in 1978. “That means when I finish with the ball, it is in the back of the net.”
Indeed, Chinaglia’s charisma and taste for the spotlight on the New York sports stage rivaled that of Reggie Jackson of the Yankees and Walt Frazier of the Knicks. He wore silk robes to postgame news conferences. He commissioned two portraits of himself by LeRoy Neiman and hung them in his 22-room New Jersey mansion.
Even playing alongside the legendary Pelé did not dampen his self-regard. He was known to let drop a criticism or two of Pelé, at one point saying he was “not playing on all cylinders.”
Here's a clip from the Cosmos documentary, about Pele and Chinaglia:
The Star-Ledger's Frank Giase writes, "While Pele could do it all, Chinaglia was just the opposite. He couldn’t dribble very well, his passing wasn’t all that accurate and he left something to be desired on head balls. But if he had the ball at his feet in the box, it was in the back of the net a moment later. He was that deadly." Chinaglia would say, "I am a finisher. That means when I finish with the ball, it is in the back of the net." Here's a montage of his 50 goals in 1980:
Chinaglia admitted that he was uncoachable, “That’s because I know more than the stupid coaches. That’s — how you say — presumptuous? It’s true.”
