Nearly 50 years later, playing with Pelé is still a ‘dream come true’ for Delco’s Bob Rigby

Bob Rigby boarded two flights and a hydrofoil boat, traveling 30 hours to meet the New York Cosmos in Sweden as their last-minute goalkeeper for a 1975 world tour. He grew up in Delaware County, was a substitute teacher while playing at Veterans Stadium for the Atoms, and was now standing behind Pelé in the tunnel of a European soccer stadium.

“I remember looking out at the field, looking right over his head, his head steaming because it was really cold on a fall night over there, and I just remember, ‘Holy mackerel,’” Rigby said Thursday, hours after Pelé died in Brazil at 82. “The awe. It was just surreal. The vividness of that memory hasn’t changed at all.”

Rigby played the four-country tour with the Cosmos, winning over Pelé that first game after stopping more than 20 shots as the Cosmos were overmatched against powerful Malmö FF. Pelé immediately told ownership that the Cosmos needed Rigby and then took the kid from Ridley Park out on the town. That, Rigby said, was the biggest honor.

“I couldn’t speak to him since he spoke Portuguese but he came up and took me with him,” Rigby said. “I’m the knucklehead from Delaware County. What the heck. We’re not in Kansas anymore.”

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Pelé, who won three World Cups with Brazil, was already a global icon when he joined the Cosmos of the North American Soccer League in 1975, where he would play the final three years of his career. The crowds followed the team everywhere, from 20,000 fans who flocked The Vet despite Pelé not playing that night for the visiting Cosmos to the 40,000 who swarmed an evening training session in Haiti as the Cosmos finished their ‘75 tour.

Rigby, who starred at Ridley High and East Stroudsburg before being selected by the Atoms with the first pick in the 1973 NASL draft, was in the middle of it all. When the Cosmos landed in Port-Au-Prince, they traveled on a dirt road to their hotel as crowds of 40 to 50 people deep filled the entire 25-mile route.

“Every place, there would be 50,000 people at the airport,” Rigby said. “The kings and queens. That was my first exposure to that. That’s just the way it was.”

Rigby, the first soccer player on the cover of Sports Illustrated, caught himself being a fan. The 1975 World Tour took the Cosmos to Italy to play against A.S. Roma in front of 70,000 fans at Olympic Stadium in Rome. Rigby needed to capture the moment.

“I asked him for a photo right before the game and then I realized, ‘Oh my god. What did I do,’” Rigby said. “But he pulled me right in. That’s the kind of guy he was.

“He was very gracious. It wasn’t just the soccer player or what he represented, he was a phenomenal man, human being. I played with all of them. All the top players in the world from that era were over here. But just him, the man, and how gracious and humble he was, that was never tarnished.”

The Cosmos played most of their home games in Pelé’s first two seasons at Yankee Stadium while Giants Stadium was being built. One goal stood in left field with the other on the first-base line, the 18-yard box made up of grass and infield dirt with the pitcher’s mound in play.

Pelé debuted for the Cosmos in June 1975 in a game played in Downing Stadium, a run-down facility built in 1936 on Randall’s Island in the East River. The field conditions were terrible so the Cosmos painted the spotty grass green to fool the national TV audience.

“It was greener than Christmas green,” Rigby said. “He came in after the game and thought something was wrong because he had all this green crap over his legs. He didn’t know if it was fungus or something. He grew up playing in sandlots and alleys in Brazil but he never ran into what he ran into that day.”

Rigby and Pelé played together in the summer of 1976 for Team America in the Bicentennial Cup, which pitted a team of Americans and foreign stars who played in the NASL against the national teams of England, Italy, and Brazil. They played three games in eight nights at JFK Stadium, Seattle’s Kingdome, and Washington’s RFK Stadium.

Pelé refused to play against his native Brazil, so he sat on the bench that night in Seattle alongside Rigby, who started the other two games in the tournament. They watched Team America’s Tommy Smith — the tough former Liverpool star — square off against Rivellino, the menacing Brazilian star with a handlebar mustache.

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“These guys never played on AstroTurf,” Rigby said of the Brazil squad. “Tommy Smith lined him up and Rivellino nutmegged him, Tommy completely missed him and ripped half of his thigh. I just remember Pelé was almost wetting himself laughing. I knew Smitty and I said, ‘Oh man. This is not going to end well.’ He came up and went at him again and Rivellino nutmegged him the other way.

“It was different than a lot of teams because players of that status were on the team but they weren’t available and present and part of things as Pelé always was.”

Rigby played 13 games for the Cosmos in 1976 before suffering a serious injury halfway through the season when an opposing player ran through him as he leaped for a ball. The goalkeeper was sold after the season to Los Angeles, ending his 10-month run protecting Pelé’s net.

Rigby had been texting for most of the month with Bobby Smith, a defender who grew up in Trenton and was acquired by the Cosmos from the Atoms on the same day. The two friends reminisced about Pelé, the icon they shared a field with, after it was reported that his health was declining.

Smith texted Rigby Thursday afternoon that Pelé died. He lost his last hero, Rigby said.

“I don’t feel any differently and perhaps more so now than when I was that starstruck kid trying to pinch myself, ‘Like you have to be kidding me?’ It was literally a dream come true and it still is,” Rigby said. “Those are the things that over time, you can’t take away. A lot of it, you can have it. But that, to be able to never have that diminished, reduced, or tarnished, is priceless.

“Honest to god, I feel so fortunate and I never lost that kid-like awe. I don’t feel any different about it today.”