As the Red Bulls’ signing of Thierry Henry thrust soccer back into the New York limelight, MLS commissioner Don Garber reiterated that the league is talking with the Mets-owning Wilpon family, and is intent on having a second team in this city. And the team already here responds: Bring it on.
“We very much want a second team here,” Garber said. “I continue to have discussions with the Wilpon family of the New York Mets about seeing whether we could convince them that soccer would be better in Queens than hockey. We have work to do with the city to get their support for building a stadium.
“I think if we’re able to really make a lot of noise here, get lots of people to come out, have this team resonate throughout the tri-state area, it will be that much easier to convince everybody we need to convince about that second team.”
Garber is all too familiar with the struggle of the Red Bulls _ and MetroStars before them _ to make any real noise, or a dent in the New York media market.
“I live in New Jersey, and have lived through the trials and tribulations of soccer in this area,” said Garber, a Montclair resident.
He’s, for lack of a better term, bullish on what the Red Bulls have done in terms of delivering a $200 million stadium and now a huge world-class star to help fill it. He’s convinced a New York derby would lift the league, and the Red Bulls agree.
“We like the competitiveness. We can’t say we don’t like when there’s another team here. We want to have competiveness, so if there’s another team coming, we will be better,” said Dietmar Beiersdorfer, head of Red Bull global soccer. “Yes (it’s a positive).
“If you have a good strategy and if you work (well) and develop your club, and you build a stadium and training facilities, if you want to have good competition, prepare our team to be good in the pitch, it’s top sports and we want to bring top sports to MLS. How can we say no to another team? We are not sad about it.”
The Red Bulls, and MetroStars before them, have largely concentrated on marketing different parts of New Jersey; the former pitching to suburban soccer moms and youth soccer, the latter building their 25,000-seat stadium in Harrison and trying to penetrate the Portuguese and Brazilian Ironbound community.
And while the Red Bulls are also banking on the convenience of the PATH train drawing fans from parts of New York City, they’re convinced there are more than enough soccer fans to go around.
“The Tri-state is not too small,” said Beiersdorfer. “When the people can see good sport, good product on the field, I think we have enough space for another team, so I’m not worried about it.”
As a matter of fact, he claims he and the Red Bull New York organization he oversees from Austria are looking forward to it. A 46-year-old German, he was a player and general manager for the Bundesliga’s Hamburg; like many Europeans, he’s been indoctrinated with derbies at a young age, and is adamant that bring more of them to MLS would help the league and the country’s soccer culture.
“We need to infect the people with soccer, with football, with our product. Can you imagine if you have the derbies here?” Beiersdorfer asked rhetorically. “It’s the football culture. We want to build up our culture and bring it to New York, to settle it in New York.
“And if we fail, if we have two or five or ten years time, it will be our fault. How can I say don’t come in? We are the first team in New York, so it will help us. So I have no problem with it.”