Soccer Stud Flashback - Shep Messing

With all the world focused on the the current hot soccer studs playing in the World Cup, lets take a moment and look back at the first major soccer star in the USA. 

Shep Messing played seven seasons in the North American Soccer League and six in the Major Indoor Soccer League. He was also a member of the U.S. soccer team at the 1972 Summer Olympics. But  even more important, Messing attracted attention by posing in the nude for a photo spread in the December 1974 issue of Viva magazine, for which he was paid $5,000. He joked that these photos gave the New York Cosmos more "exposure" than they'd ever received from the media up to that time. See those photos HERE.