NEW YORK
The past year offered Claudio Reyna a few spare seconds here and there to contemplate this day. Reyna spent most of his time working with coach Jason Kreis to build New York City FC from scratch, but there were times when he could allow his mind to drift to the point where all the elements found their proper places and his team took the field at Yankee Stadium.
The oft-considered landmark finally arrived on Sunday. NYCFC sporting director Reyna packed into this makeshift soccer ground alongside 43,507 curious spectators and watched that moment finally come to fruition. He invested in his team and reaped the desired payoff in the 2-0 victory over New England.
As Reyna processed this spectacle in the Bronx, he weighed whether this day conformed to the scenarios he pondered over the course of the past year. And he reached the conclusion one might expect after watching a new team play in the outfield in one of baseball's most esteemed venues.
"No, not at all," Reyna said as he stood in a locker room adorned with NYCFC touches. "Not at all. It was crazy. I couldn't believe it. I was hanging over the box I was in. When we scored the second goal, it was crazy. It was very surreal to hear the fans and how loud they were, screaming, chanting N-Y-C and New York City."
Most of the particulars fell squarely within that category. Two MLS teams ambled around on sod laid a few days ago and squeezed onto a tight surface located primarily in right and center field. David Villa glided onto the stage for the home team and grabbed man-of-the-match honors with a cultured first goal and a timely assist on the second. Blue-clad fans from across the Five Boroughs piled onto the 4 and the B and D trains to show their support for a club still trying to establish roots in the city.
There were still occasional foibles -- many fans spent far too long trying to make their way through the turnstiles, for instance -- to manage as everyone worked through the kinks of hosting a soccer game at a baseball stadium, but those wrinkles smoothed out as the home side and its supporters reveled in the occasion.
Yankee Stadium -- for all of its many, many flaws as a soccer venue -- remains uniquely suited to big events. Any questions about whether this game might warrant that classification dissipated as the first half progressed. Villa's silky opening goal inside the first 20 minutes certainly helped, but the setting within these historic confines ensured the type of debut worthy of a team with designs on establishing itself in the NYC firmament.
"We're kind of in our own bubble," NYCFC midfielder Mix Diskerud said. "There are a lot of things happening around, but we're just focused on training, eating right, sleeping, all of the boring stuff. But when we come out here today and see how many people are involved around this, it's incredible."
All of them contributed to the sort of substantial first step required to establish NYCFC in this marketplace. There are connections to exploit and stars to market, but there is still a club and a community to foster, too. The nascent underpinnings supply ample encouragement with a strong season-ticket base to match the considerable resources at hand, but there are real world questions to answer about ground sharing with the Yankees and training field issues more in line with the earliest days of the league, too.
Time will inevitably render its verdict on NYCFC's quest to establish itself as a club of and from New York City, the silver bullet designed to give MLS a foothold in a city often too provincial to cross the Hudson to back a soccer team. It is far too soon to delve into those matters now, even with this encouraging opening day.
At this stage, the focus falls upon appreciating the present. Kreis and Reyna molded a squad with experienced MLS campaigners, promising youth talents and the enduring class of Villa for these first steps. These players have so far garnered four precious points by relying on Diskerud to dictate possession in midfield and Villa to round off the play when he can. It is a positive start for a team with quandaries still to address in defense and in the wide areas.
The responsibility extends beyond those temporal issues to the stewardship of the developing club itself. By every measure in that department, this opening fortnight is a success. These players have guided their new club safely through two indelible moments. There is substance behind all of that sky blue now.
"Really, it was the last two weeks for me," NYCFC midfielder Ned Grabavoy said. "You have to give Orlando a lot of credit as well with what they did down there and the atmosphere and the support they had. But to come back here and realize that it's equal, if not better, it's amazing. To never play a match yet and to have the stands almost completely packed, it was a special, special moment, not just in this club's history, but in New York City sports history."
Those lofty associations may not endure the test of distance, but their application now reveals the difficulty of trying to anticipate this grand home debut. Not even one of the two men who knew this club best could figure out how it might unfold. It worked out wonderfully in the end. In this rare instance, reality trumped imagination.
