Banned in Belson

All, with the big US OPEN CUP match between Red Bull New York and FC New York, it should be publicly stated why The Borough Boys CAN’T come out in full support for the local side.

Earlier this year, some of our members started attending FC New York matches and supported the local side in their inaugural season. We had a group of members out to the first two home matches, and plans were on the way for a big event surrounding the memorial day match against the Rhinos. We had at least 30 members going and up to 50 ready to pay for tickets and enjoy the unofficial start of summer.

However, after the second match, we were informed by a 3rd party that FC New York banned us from their matches.

Allegedly, after the first match there were some New York Cosmos stickers on the bathroom walls. We were told there were “50 stickers all over the bathroom”.   FC New York blamed The Borough Boys.   We were an obvious target, as we are of course a New York Cosmos supporters club.  Nevertheless, The Borough Boys certainly did not plan, encourage, facilitate or in any way condone the conduct. 

We do realize, however, that there if in fact there were stickers on the bathroom walls it was likely one of our members showing some admittedly poor judgment.  We contacted St Johns by letter, offering our help to clean it up and to accept responsibility.   St Johns was incredibly gracious in their response and in fact welcomed us back for St Johns games, which we look forward to obliging. 

Only after the second match, which some of us attended, were we made aware of the incident.  The FCNY front office were all in attendance, but they did not have the decency, or perhaps nerve, to tell us directly what happened.  No.  Instead, they contact a third party to get in touch with us to tell us we were banned.  Doug Petersen et al have our contact information, but again, they didn’t see fit to contact us directly.  Clearly, they understood that the messenger of the ban holds its supporters in higher esteem than they do.

We wish to state that for the FC New York players, we are in full support of you all and wish you luck this week in the match. We hope for victory and want you to know that we in fact support you, but we are not a supporters club that will be treated like we do not matter. Especially when we are supporting with our hard earned money.

A BIT OF HISTORY

Now, we recently saw a tweet from an intern who worked for FC in the past, and it stated that the front office of FC New York did not have kind things to say about the Borough Boys.

So we would like to share the history with you all:

As you all know, The Borough Boys have been around since 2007 trying to do anything we can to help bring a professional side to New York City proper. After the Bernie Madoff scandal we realized that our dream was on hold for a while, and we tried to help a number of potential investors bring a USL side to the area. We have made contacts with many local politicians and continue to have those contacts. When FC New York was announced we were very excited about the prospects and threw a bit of a celebration for their birth. We were excited about the plan to play home games around the city while they found a permanent home. We began marketing them online and started the plan a supporters section as well as road trips.

We met with the teams President Doug Peterson who told us that they were looking to play at Columbia, Icahn Stadium as well as York College. Shortly after, through our contacts, we heard from some of these locations that talks were never held. In fact administrators at Icahn informed us that stadium no longer supported soccer.


We confronted FC New York on that and publicly displayed our disappointment.

We offered Doug Peterson a number of times to introduce him to some of the local leaders who could possibly help him build a smaller sized stadium in Queens, and every time those offers were met with silence. Silence for a group, who might just be fans, but were able to convince a Councilman to come with us to meet the Wilpon family about a potential MLS sized stadium.

FC then came out and said they would be playing home games at Hofstra, which we voiced our displeasure for, as we wanted to see the team play in Queens. On a number of occasions, FC New York interns insulted us on the Big Soccer Message boards in a very personal way, one going as far to say that we were low class for living in the boroughs - or did he call us trash?  Needless to say, it turned off not only potential season ticket holders and supporters, but cut off an avenue of free marketing.

Eventually, FC New York announced that Belson Stadium would be the venue for home matches, and many of us were very happy with that decision, and despite our work with the New York Cosmos and our not so great past with the FC Front office, we wanted to be there to support local soccer.

As you can see, from the start, our interaction with the Front office has been shaky at best, and despite that, we still went to support. At the home opener, which was filled with parents and kids from their academy, we kept all our chants to PG to be respectful and not to hurt attendance, yet security guards were sent to stand by us and watch us like we were causing a disruption.

Clearly, the supporters atmosphere is not in the plans of FCNY and the stickers, which very well might have been one of our members, was an excuse to get rid of the Borough Boys. Had FC New York approached us on the incident, we would have worked our hardest to rectify the situation and handled the situation like adults, which we are, but FC New York, who has our contact information, chose not to act like adults and took the route of calling another business and treating us like we are nothing.

Good luck to the players of FCNY, we just won’t let a front office, that clearly cannot run a soccer club, treat fans and people of New York City that poorly.   If you don’t believe they can’t run a soccer club, just look at their web site, and all the plans they’ve already abandoned (Straphangers Supporters club anyone)?

Lucky for us all, there is a better future on the horizon! Run by people who have run soccer clubs all around the world. People who treat the supporters as well as they would their business associates. People who despite being heads of a soccer club, interact with their supporters and care about their desires. Lucky for us indeed!