Bad at these things.

Real name's Mike. I wasn't raised on football (or is it still soccer around here, seeing as it's north american mostly?), but kind of stumbled onto it in my younger days, and really began following it a few years back. I'm Irish (and a tad Polish) by heritage, so following Celtic seemed to be a rather blatant decision, given the state of the League of Ireland. Through Celtic, I learned of St. Pauli, and being a good old leftist, became a fan of theirs too.

I'm still American too, albeit reluctant at times, and do follow the national team here, along with the Metrostars. Yeah, I know, they're the Red Bull, but I just hate calling them that, and no, I'm not going to switch to get away from the consumerism. Reality is that the MLS has been consumed by consumerism from the start, so it really wouldn't make much sense for me to turn against it now. Though, I'd love it if the lower leagues had more support...

hi & welcome!

welcome to the site .

holla back youngins

Welcome back to the site and good to have another MLS fan. I see what you are saying about the MLS and consumerism, but sadly for soccer to kick start in America it is a necessary evil. When they were metro, while having awesome uniforms, they were stuck in Giants Stadium and getting shit from the security there. Now next year you guys will get your own stadium.

We still get shit from security, even as the Red Bull, some things never change. Earlier in the year, when Beckham came to town, all the lil soccer moms ran around the place telling on all the supporters who dared utter a bad word in front of their lil sheltered kiddies. Of course, a decent number of our supporters are of latin or south American decent, and the gaurds are all big white jocks, so there was a lot of racism accusations going around. It was a grand mess. We can't get out of there soon enough.

The recent thing is with all this talk of the Mets owners starting a soccer team in NYC, a decent group of supporters turned off by the rebranding are debating on hopping over to support this new team... If it's not one thing, it's another with us. We start winning on the field for once and now we've got drama off.

I agree that it's the necessary evil, and there are much larger issues with consumerism to tackle that don't have a thing to do with energy drinks. To me, although Red Bull is a huge corporation, at least they make their products in Austria and, to my knowledge, treat their workers fairly. Much less can be said for Nike, Adidas, etc.

That's a good point about Red Bull at least seeming to be a decent company. Isn't the trouble with the security because RB/Metro don't own the stadium and have to contract with Giants Stadium security? From what I've read, when you guys get your own park, RB won't have to use those neanderthals for security and hopefully things will be better. It seems like the Empire Supporters Club have a lot of members and some cool tifo could be made with those type of numbers and the fun police not looking over you guys.

what part of the Bronx are you from?

I'm a native of New Jersey, to be honest, but I'm going to school at Manhattan College in Riverdale.

I'm not quite that tough haha.


Yeah, the problem is based around that the security staff is done by the state, which owns the grounds. They're used to the American football crowds, I think. Though the argument is that you don't see people kicked out and banned for cursing loudly at a Jets or Giants game, and then you say, "well that's because most Jets and Giants fans are white." I'd prefer to believe they're not racist, but it's really hard to make the argument sometimes.

The club did well with us to get some of the guys reinstated, they handled it as best they could. The guy they've hired to run the stadium claims to understand the different audience soccer brings in and more tolerant of our style. Hopefully it's better. The stadium's actually coming along now, they started the steel a couple weeks ago after years and years of missed timelines and bickering, so it looks like a pretty sure thing that it'll be done sometime next year. Knock on wood though. You never know with this organization.

hi