NYCFC fans are OK with the Citi Field move, but not the factors causing it

They’ve done their best to make Yankee Stadium feel like home in their five seasons in the league, but they’ll never be anything more than a tenant in the Bronx. Their nominal home field is more of an extended-stay stadium than a permanent base. 

New York City FC is the vagrant club of MLS.  They might be able to hang around most of the time, but they can be kicked out at any second, for just about any reason.

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Unfortunately for NYCFC, they’re getting displaced at just about the worst possible moment in their 2019 season. Thanks to the Yankees participating in the ALCS, from which they were eliminated by the Houston Astros on Saturday, NYCFC was forced to move Wednesday’s Eastern Conference semifinal against Toronto FC to New York’s other baseball stadium: Citi Field, home of the Mets.   

Wednesday’s do-or-die encounter won’t be the first time that NYCFC have played a meaningful match at Citi Field. The club had to move their final game of the 2017 regular season to the Queens ballpark, also due to a Yankees playoff game; they drew the Columbus Crew 2-2 in front of an announced crowd of 20,113.

And while being forced to move out of their normal home for their biggest match of the year seems like it’d be a serious nuisance, it doesn’t appear to be bothering most NYCFC supporters. In fact, a sample of fans who attended the Crew match in October 2017 actually prefer the soccer experience at Citi Field to the one at Yankee Stadium.  

“To me, the gameday experience itself was a lot better,” said Jon Levin, an NYCFC season ticket holder since 2016 and a contributor for TheNYCFCnation.com.    

“I actually liked it a lot,” said NYCFC supporter Brendan Cosgrove, one of the club’s founding season ticket holders. “I know the capacity isn’t much different, but it just feels a lot more intimate and smaller than Yankee Stadium does.”   

There were a few ancillary factors that played a role in that thinking, but the main reason was simple: Citi Field is simply configured better for soccer than Yankee Stadium. 

The larger dimensions of Citi Field allow for the soccer pitch to run from the third base line to the right field bleachers. The corners on one end are at the left field foul pole and near third base; at the opposite end, they’re located at the right field foul pole and in the deepest part of centerfield. That’s a bit different than the layout at Yankee Stadium, where a short porch in right field forces the soccer configuration to be jammed between the left field bleachers and the first base dugout. 

Importantly, the Citi Field configuration puts more fans closer to the action than at Yankee Stadium. Three levels of seats hug half of the touchline where the coaches and substitutes will sit on Wednesday. Several more sections sit directly behind the centerfield corner flag. There are plenty of seats directly behind both goals. NYCFC’s supporters’ groups will be located behind the goal in right field, where they’ll occupy two tiers of bleachers, with roughly half of the supporters in the upper level, and the other half underneath an overhang in the lower section. It should make them sound a bit louder than they do at Yankee Stadium, where they’re more removed from the action in an elevated stand in left field.  

“The corners were tighter and the supporters were closer to the field, which made a big difference in the atmosphere,” said Jim Prentice, a season ticket holder with the club since 2016. 

“The seats are almost better than they are at Yankee Stadium for supporters,” added Colton Coreschi, an NYCFC season ticket holder who covers lower-division American and Canadian soccer for the website Soc Takes. “The seats at Yankee Stadium are up, they’re elevated, a little bit more removed than the first base line at Citi. So you’re a little closer to the field, which is kind of cool. I just remember the sightlines being better compared to Yankee Stadium. I’d say it was a better game day experience.” 

For their part, the players were a bit more subdued about the club’s temporary home. They’re certainly not fazed by moving to Citi Field, which, according to head coach Dome Torrent, should have the same size field as the tight Yankee Stadium pitch, but they’re not really thinking about things like sightlines and seat configurations. They’re more focused on advancing past the conference semis for the first time in club history. 

“From an aesthetic standpoint it’s obviously a different stadium, but playing on this field, with our fans in the stadium, it’s going to feel like home,” said goalkeeper Sean Johnson, who started the club’s 2017 match at Citi Field and trained with his teammates at the stadium on Tuesday. “Obviously, we trained today, gotten a good feel for the pitch and I think the pitch is in great condition going into tomorrow. We’ll approach it the same way, it’s not going to be any different.”

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And while the match at Citi should be a solid experience for fans, it does speak to NYCFC’s biggest problem: A lack of a home of their own. Though the club is working on finding a site for a soccer-specific stadium, there hasn’t been much reported progress. They don’t appear any closer to building their own venue in the five boroughs than they were when they played their first MLS match in March 2015. 

That could lead to more situations like the one playing out this fall. NYCFC will host the Eastern Conference final at Yankee Stadium if they win on Wednesday, but no one is quite sure where they would host MLS Cup on Nov. 10th should they advance to the final as the higher seed. Yankee Stadium is out due to an Ivy League football game between Princeton and Dartmouth scheduled for Nov. 9th. Citi Field is unavailable due to a golf promotion. MetLife Stadium will be hosting a matchup between the city’s two NFL teams, the Giants and Jets, on the day of the final. 

“It’s bullshit,” said Prentice. “I went to Columbia and the idea that an Ivy League football game for two teams that aren’t even in New York would bump us from Yankee Stadium is insane.”   

That leaves Red Bull Arena, the soccer-specific, Harrison, N.J.-home of the rival New York Red Bulls, as perhaps the most viable option for an NYCFC-hosted MLS Cup. But NYCFC hosting the league’s marquee event at the home of their biggest rival would be… awkward. To say the least. 

The supporters seemed mostly on board with the idea — all thought it’d be funny, Prentice joked that NYCFC should be allowed to raise an MLS Cup banner at Red Bull Arena if they win — but there was an undercurrent of disappointment in their answers, too. Citi Field is a fine alternative and winning MLS Cup at Red Bull Arena would give them infinite bragging rights over their biggest rivals, but NYCFC fans are more than ready for a home of their own. 

“I mean it’s definitely disappointing,” said Levin. “You would hope that NYCFC would have a plan in action or have something ready ahead of time, but that’s never really been the case for the club. I understand it, but as a fan of this team, after five years, it definitely gets tiring not knowing where you’re going to play.” 

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