Scaled-down Cosmos back in NASL at Hofstra

Just call it soccer's version of Back to the Future.

The New York Cosmos are back in the new North American Soccer League and they will return to their namesake's roots -- Hofstra University -- their home for their first three seasons (1971-73).

The NASL Thursday announced the Cosmos would join the nine-team Division 2 league in 2013. These won't be the star-studded Cosmos of the 1980s, a club with legendary players like Pele, Franz Beckenbauer and Giorgio Chinaglia. That team folded in 1985.

Many soccer observers believed the Cosmos, reborn in 2010, would join Major League Soccer, which wants an expansion franchise and stadium in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens. But Cosmos chairman Seamus O'Brien said it was more important to walk before running.

"I won't be gazing into a crystal ball and coming up with a great vision," he said. "We'll take it one step at a time. We believe . . . this was the right place to start at the right time."

O'Brien did not rule out playing in MLS.

"To start from scratch again after 30 years, to suddenly think you're going to be up there would be absolutely a bit of an arrogant statement," he said. "You've got to build it. When we get to the highest level, whenever that will be, we want to have a franchise and a club that will be rock solid and be the best."