Manchester City legend Dennis Tueart had two spells with the club – either side of two years at New York Cosmos, where he played with a host of star names at the Giants Stadium. The MetLife now sits on that plot, with England ready to take on Panama there on Saturday. Here, he tells Daily Mail Sport what it was like being part of the US soccer revolution…
Franz Beckenbauer wasn’t a bad midfielder, was he? We had some team at New York Cosmos but my first game for them back in 1978 was memorable for something other than the star quality around me.
Dallas were the opponent on Astroturf and we had a bit of defending to do so, as I did in England, I tracked back from my wide position. We won possession and I went to attack; we went back and forth a couple of times in the space of a few minutes.
Suddenly, when asked to attack again, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t go again. I had to stop. I had to stop to start breathing. The humidity just hit me, unbelievable. This is what playing in America during a mid-afternoon kick-off does to you.
It was a surprise. Nobody told me about that. We played up and down back home, and nobody acclimatised me when I arrived in the plush Galaxy Tower apartments overlooking the Hudson River and Manhattan skyline from the 36th floor. But I certainly realised very quickly.
We used to have dishes of cold water in the locker room at half time so you could put your feet in them. Just to cool ourselves down. We had those pimple boots for different surfaces and the rubber used to wear away with the heat so you had two or three pairs of those a season.
Dennis Tueart pictured alongside Franz Beckenbauer in 1978 when the pair played for now defunct side New York Cosmos at the Giants Stadium – where the MetLife Stadium now sits
‘We used to have dishes of cold water in the locker room at half time so you could put your feet in them. Just to cool ourselves down,’ Tueart tells Daily Mail Sport
Tueart credited the hydration breaks at this summer’s World Cup – saying that that humidity is ‘killing’ and the MetLife Stadium will be ‘like a boiling point when it gets hot’
Obviously it’s all grass now but it’ll be interesting to see which studs are being worn. It’s a good job that grass is the norm, really, because I had a terrible experience on the Astroturf.
Again, it involved me chasing back – like English wingers would – and the opposition were getting nearer to my penalty area. I thought that I’m going to have to slide and block his cross. Skin of my thigh ripped straight off. That was a lesson learned.
We used to play at the Giants Stadium, on the same plot as the MetLife – where England face Panama on Saturday. Because it’s a bigger stadium, and they’ll have higher stands, the pitch down below will be like a boiling point when it’s hot. It’ll be roasting because the heat doesn’t go anywhere. It can’t get out.
The humidity is killing. It really is. It’s a good job they have the drinks breaks when the conditions are like that. We didn’t have those. Looking at the forecast, England might just get lucky with milder temperatures – but you would imagine that they will rocket for the final next month. Five days after Panama, it is forecast to reach 37 degrees. You get used to it eventually.
We might not have had drinks breaks in the late 70s but there was one big benefit. We had the 35-yard line, drawn in each half. You had to be goal side of the 35 yards to be offside so defences couldn’t push up to halfway.
They could only push up to the 35-yard line. So that’d give your midfield players, especially Beckenbauer, a bit more time on the ball.
And we had another brilliant midfielder called Vladislav Bogicevic – ‘Bogie’ – who was captain of Red Star Belgrade. He signed the same time as me. And he could open a tin can with his left foot.
We had brilliant players. And the kind of football that we played had to be accurate. When you’re passing, it had to be accurate because you didn’t want your players to run for the ball because that drains them.
That is key in the searingly hot American weather. Don’t waste anything.
