John Riordan: Blue sky thinking earns New York City coveted MLS title opportunity

City Football Group’s US experiment hasn’t been smooth but finally a first piece of silverware has validated ambition

New York City FC celebrate after defeating Philadelphia Union during the MLS Eastern Conference Final at Subaru Park on December 5. After a comeback win, they will now face Portland Timbers in the US national final.

IT was never supposed to be easy launching a new Major League Soccer club in New York City but in many ways, it should never have been so complicated.

And yet, after a half dozen seasons of near and not-so-near misses, New York City FC’s 2021 MLS campaign has been pulled out of the fire. Tomorrow in Portland, Oregon, the club more commonly known as NYCFC will compete for their first ever MLS Cup, the top prize in the league populated by clubs from across North America.

Last Sunday in Philadelphia, the Eastern Conference final (effectively an MLS Cup semi-final) saw the New Yorkers come from a goal down against a dramatically depleted Philadelphia Union to secure a memorable 2-1 win and their first ever trophy.

At times this season, former Celtic manager Ronny Deila seemed to be going nowhere fast with his squad. And then a few plucky wins snuck them into the playoffs in the East which ultimately culminated in a contest which was tarnished by the fact that Covid had been ripping through the Union squad.

NYCFC will be underdogs tomorrow but they have always been the unlikeliest of underdogs; backed by deep Emirati resources and boasting the sort of dream branding which was served up on a plate to their marketing team, they’ve somehow consistently made it hard on themselves, much to the joy of rival clubs across the league.

In 2013, huge fanfare greeted the announcement of a City Football Group satellite club in the Big Apple, the arrival of which was also resented by a pair of competing interests.

The $100m entry fee was split 80:20 by the Manchester City owners and one of the other super rich sporting organizations of the world, the New York Yankees.

That was a sum of money which the New York Cosmos had balked at when they had their chance. This was in and around the time the controlling interests of that 1970s relic were beating an ultimately doomed path back to relevance. And while the New York Metropolitan Area is populated enough to handle multiple professional teams of all codes, the arrival of new noisy neighbours was bad news for the New York Red Bulls.

Having bought out the MetroStars franchise and rebranded in the colours of their Austrian ownership, the Red Bulls based themselves in a tidy little New Jersey stadium just outside Newark. The Thierry Henry years would never last forever and then they had to brace themselves for a derby with the new money of NYCFC. The high cost of entry to the MLS means you’ll never risk relegation but it doesn’t mean you are guaranteed complete ownership of the New York market.

As competitive games got going at Yankee Stadium in 2015, it was soon pretty clear that the double edged sword of playing and forging an identity at one of the most iconic sporting arenas in the US would also be one of their biggest headaches.

It wasn’t just because the uniquely baseball dimensions of their home stadium meant even the best fan atmosphere on the sold-out nights felt more than a little jarring. It was because the constant yearning for a stadium to call their own pitted them against the black hole into which land ownership deeds are tossed by decades of New York City property rules and regulations.

Simply put: the money to build a stadium is available but the availability of suitable space is far less evident. It isn’t just because space is at a premium; it’s more so that whatever space there might be is shrouded in so many layers of planning permission landmines that several proposals in the Bronx, Harlem, and Queens have bitten the dust on an almost annual basis.

On the playing side of things, having access to such an intimidating network of scouting was never going to hurt but, this being NYC, the marquee needed a few box office names to get the show safely through previews.

Top tier, late career stars were drafted in and the publicity machine took full advantage. David Villa, Frank Lampard, and Andrea Pirlo were willing pawns and they each seemed to genuinely enjoy their time playing out their twilights in the sky blue of NYCFC. Patrick Vieira took the managerial reins and enjoyed a pair of top two finishes in each of his full regular seasons.

Meanwhile, the league was very gradually improving (not to mention growing, adding yet more teams) and there was a gentle move away from relying on veterans bouncing over from Europe.

But as much as it feels like they’ve been behind schedule all this time, the NYCFC top brass had zero expectations that tomorrow would suddenly be possible.

Such was the realism and / or pessimism around their postseason prospects, a significant club event aimed at community organization fundraising was being organized for next Tuesday evening.

Players had been expected to attend and plans had been months in preparation. Last weekend’s penalty shootout success forced the postponement of a night out which should never have been scheduled 72 hours after what potentially could be the greatest moment of their short history.

There was a much more significant near miss for the MLS who were praying that the biggest day of their calendar and the most watched game of their season would not be set against the chaotic backdrop of the Yankees’ stadium.

Had the Portland Timbers failed to round out their dominant season in the Western Conference, the lower seeded Real Salt Lake would have been forced to travel to the Bronx and the MLS Cup would have looked a lot less appealing to the casual viewer. Crucially, the timing of this would have been far from ideal, leading into the TV rights negotiations which are on the horizon in 2022.

For the most part, the outlook is pretty strong. Admittedly, the biggest MLS story of the week was not the build-up to tomorrow’s final but rather the surprise announcement from Manchester United that Chris Armas would replace the departed Michael Carrick as an assistant coach to Ralf Rangnick.

Armas spent the majority of the last 25 years playing or coaching in Major League Soccer while also earning over 60 caps for the US. Not even the most hardened of MLS loyalists is ready to endorse a move like that.

That said, however, the league is on the verge of handing out its 30th berth to a Las Vegas entity that has investment ties to Aston Villa while expansion teams in Charlotte and St Louis are scheduled to kick off in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

The new soccer-specific stadiums in Austin, Cincinnati, and Columbus are the envy of the league and are a reminder to NYCFC in particular that the opportunity could pass them by if they aren’t able to gain a local foothold.

The lack of New York media interest in tomorrow — in a city where both NFL teams are currently finding new levels of awful and the rest of the pro sides are ambling through the early stages of their seasons — brings into sharp focus the temporary nature of the bump NYCFC will enjoy on the west coast, win or lose.

Because whether they are victorious or not, the challenge for acceptance will go on. And that despite the fact that, infamously, the city of New York has not been able to celebrate a big league victory since 2009. That decade brought a pair of Super Bowls for the Giants before ending with a World Series for the Yankees.

It has been a barren wasteland ever since and if NYCFC manages to achieve the unexpected tomorrow, they’ll earn a parade along Broadway but little else in the way of big city acceptance.

- @JohnWRiordan