Major League Soccer, at long last, has a team in New York City.
On Tuesday morning, MLS announced that it has allocated its 20th franchise to a combined ownership group comprised of Premier League club Manchester City and Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees. The new club will be called New York City FC and begin play in 2015.
“This is a transformational moment for MLS and soccer in America,” MLS commissioner Don Garber said. He may be right.
The deal ends one of MLS’ biggest quests, and greatest challenges. It is no secret that the league has lusted for a city team, actually stationed in one of the five boroughs, since it opened for business in 1996. MLS fancies itself to be major league, and major leagues have two teams in New York City. Now, MLS has 1 1/2: the New York Red Bulls built a fantastic facility in Harrison, NJ, but in spite of sparing no expense to import star power, that club has had a hard time getting people to make the 40-minute journey on public transportation from Manhattan.
“It provides us with a rivalry for the Red Bulls,” Garber explained. “It will add enormous value to our league. Rivalries drive soccer around the world; just look at the Pacific Northwest and Manchester and the six or seven clubs in London.”
City only emerged as a possibility recently. Its interest in MLS first was reported in November, and Ferran Soriano, the freshly-minted CEO of New York City FC, admitted the deal had only been in the works for nine months. Yet the club had been sowing goodwill on American soil for some time. Since an Abu Dhabi ownership group took control of City in 2008, the English club has set down roots in America, building fields in major cities and doing outreach through a grassroots soccer program in New York.
This isn’t the first time a major international soccer club has bought into MLS. Chivas Guadalajara opened Chivas USA in 2005. The experiment has been a disaster, and there is talk of the franchise being sold and moved. Yet both sides on Tuesday proclaimed optimism.
“We believe in soccer in the United States,” Soriano said. “The main opportunity comes from the fact that there are quality fans in the US who are looking for high-quality football. This isn’t as much about Manchester City. We want to develop a winning football team.”
Added Randy Levine, club president of the Yankees: “We’ve been approached a lot about investing in various soccer clubs and never did because we never thought it was worth it. We only work with quality people and brands that stand up to ours, and Manchester City is one of those. We feel this is a good opportunity and a wise investment.”
The announcement is also a blow to the revived New York Cosmos. Several potential ownership groups, including the New York Mets, had jostled for position to operate a team in New York City, but it long had been thought that the revived Cosmos, spearheaded by English businessman Paul Kemsley, were on an inside track. Cosmos icons Pele and Carlos Alberto were engaged to act as figureheads, and the new Cosmos have poured money into the franchise.
But there proved to be little substance underpinning all the hoopla — an expensive advertising campaign including billboards in Times Square; big-name front-office hires; promises of world domination — and the Saudi ownership group that actually owned the team grew fed up. They pulled the plug and started over with a more sensible approach, instead aiming for a shiny stadium and commercial success within the confines of the second-tier NASL — a new version of the 1970s-80s league.
The wisdom of City’s investment remains to be seen. Red Bull, the Austrian energy drinks giant, bought an MLS club for name recognition. In spite of being one of MLS’s 10 original teams remaining from its 1996 kickoff (it previously was known as the MetroStars), RBNY has had little on-filed success and market traction. In fairness, the Red Bull logo is splashed across national television and in local sports pages several times per week.
“We are supportive of MLS expansion, as it illustrates the growing interest of soccer in North America,” New York Red Bulls general manager Jérôme de Bontin said in an official statement on Tuesday. “We are committed to continue to build an organization that is the flagship club for Major League Soccer around the world and a club that soccer fans across the region can be proud to support.”
There is a sticking point for NYC FC: the lack of a finalized stadium plan. Garber has stated repeatedly that any new club would need to have a venue — or at least the funding and construction approval thereof — in place before a club could be allocated. While the Yankees and City surely have the spare funds to build a facility with a nine-figure price tag, no lot has yet been allocated. Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens was named in the news release, but no deal is done. That means that, in the interim, NYC FC will play in a “temporary venue.”
One can’t help but wonder if the Cosmos played a part in the 20th franchise endgame after all. They will kick off their inaugural season later this summer and have a stadium proposal in place for a gleaming new complex in Belmont Park — which is also in Queens. If MLS’s announcement feels a tad rushed, it might have been timed to preempt any momentum built by the Cosmos. That club isn’t shy about stating that it would like to compete with MLS. It remains to be seen if it is the true new rival to NYC FC.
