Soccer Bowl '80
association football match
Soccer Bowl '80 was the championship final of the 1980 NASL season. The New York Cosmos took on the Fort Lauderdale Strikers. The match was played on September 21, 1980 at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. The Cosmos won, 3–0, to claim their fourth league championship, and third in the past four seasons.
Background
New York Cosmos
The New York Cosmos qualified for the playoffs by virtue of winning the Eastern Division of the National Conference with 213 points. The Cosmos defeated the Tulsa Roughnecks in a first round series, two games to none. The first game was played on August 29, 1980 in Tulsa before a crowd of 22,890. The Cosmos won the match, 3–1. The return leg was played at Giants Stadium on August 31, 1980 before 40,285 fans. Not only did the home side win in convincing fashion, 8–1, but Giorgio Chinaglia added to his already impressive résumé by netting a record-breaking 7 goals in the contest. In the conference semifinal series they went up against the Central Division champion Dallas Tornado.
The public source identifies “Soccer Bowl '80” as association football match. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Soccer, Bowl and association.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Soccer Bowl '80”, the useful work is to connect “association football match” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16191940. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1980.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Soccer Bowl '80”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Soccer Bowl '80 primary sources, Soccer Bowl '80 archive and Soccer research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Soccer Bowl '80”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Soccer Bowl '80” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.