Reason #12: Giorgio Chinaglia

We're getting on the way back machine for this one. We're going back to a time when everything was funky, the Mariners barely existed, and Rod Stewart had the number 1 song in America. Let's go back to 1977... and the glory days of the North American Soccer League.

For those of you that don't recognize the smiling face on the left, shame on you. That would be Edson Arantes do Nascimento, more commonly known as Pele, the Brazilian widely considered the greatest soccer player of all time. To say that he was soccer's Michael Jordan is flattering MJ. In 1977, Pele was finishing his final year of 3 with the New York Cosmos, who had imported many of the greatest soccer players of the day - Franz Beckenbauer, Chinaglia, Carlos Alberto. The Cosmos were a force to be reckoned with, and cruised into the Soccer Bowl championship match with all the confidence in the world, and a serious mission - to send Pele off into retirement with the championship that had thus far eluded him.

Of course, their opponents in the Soccer Bowl would be the Seattle Sounders. Led by rookie of the year Jimmy McAllister and a whole bunch of players you've probably never heard of, the Sounders squeaked into the playoffs with a 14-12 record. They were good, no question - they beat England side Chelsea in a match that year. Playing in the Kingdome and drawing bigger crowds than a very bad expansion Mariners team, the Sounders - a soccer team in America - were the hot ticket of the town. And they stayed hot through the playoffs, all the way to the final. It may have seemed destined to be a Cosmos victory, but the Sounders ignored the stars - they wanted to bring Seattle a championship.

Since this is Seattle, of course, the final would not go as well as the team hoped. A brain-fart mistake by the Sounders keeper gifted the Cosmos an early goal, but Seattle would tie the match. With time running out and the penalty shootout in sight - at which point the championship would be up for grabs - fate intervened. Giorgio Chinaglia, the brilliant Italian striker loved by the Cosmos fans and reviled by those from every other city, headed in a cross to put the Cosmos up 2-1, which would be the winning margin. Chinaglia would later go on to ruin the Italian team SS Lazio and later be arrested for money laundering. Little punk.

It was a storybook finish - the multicultural, attacking New York side winning it for their retiring star, defeating the defensive-minded, predominately white and English Sounders.

Unless, of course, the reader of the storybook was a Seattle citizen.