In 1968, Harper & Row published A Fan's Notes, the first book by writer Frederick Exley. A "fictional memoir" that plays it fast and loose with the distinctions between fiction and biography (a line I believe is better off blurred anyway) it is one of the best works of late 20th century American literature. If you haven't read it yet, you should.

It's a funny, sprawling, angry, lusty, and disturbing story. Exley writes from the perspective of a character named Frederick Exley, native of a small town in upstate New York whose youth is lived in the shadow of his charismatic, domineering, local legend of an alcoholic father. He grows up, leaves home, staggers from this career to that, gets drunk a lot and institutionalized twice. His marriage fails and his friendships falter; he sinks into several morasses of pure piteousness. Whatever his faults, this Exley is also intelligent, impassioned and literary-minded; perhaps that is why he fits so awkwardly into American life ca. 1950s-60s (and beyond?)

Throughout the book, his drive to find his way and meaning in life is matched by his fierce hunger for recognition - the recognition that comes from writing Great Literature. Only he hasn't written Great Literature, or much of any literature yet - he's only thought about it, wanted it, felt born to it. A typical conceit of fairly bookish, ambitious, slightly pretentious middle-class boys, I would be lying if I said that it had never resonated somewhere inside me. Another binding theme of the story is that of sports - especially Exley's fanaticism for the New York Football Giants, but even more particularly, the figure of Frank Gifford (yes, Kathie Lee's septuagenarian squeeze).

From his days spent studying at USC (where Gifford happened to be the Golden Boy star athlete at the same time) to his years spent in NYC, where he faithfully goes out to the Polo Grounds to watch the Giants play (the descriptions of Exley spending fall weekends in the stands with a motley crew of vulgar, beery brothers-in-arms brings to mind the best parts of being a diehard sports fan) Frank Gifford functions as a sort of parallel figure, only on a higher plane. He is what Exley imagines he should be, if only he could be as effortlessly talented, handsome, charming and famous. And then all his failings - the alcoholism, the dissatisfaction in love and in art - would be negated. Life would be good. Exley transfers a lot onto Gifford, and one might imagine there would be a counter-feeling of hate for him, an anxious, jealous anticipation of seeing him reveal his feet of clay. If only Exley could meet Gifford once, the reader thinks, he'd discover what a arrogant prick he really is and the whole facade would shatter. But no - we discover that they did meet by chance once, at a campus diner, and it was Exley who was the prick, Gifford the relaxed, unassuming one.

"When he looked at me, I smiled - a hard, mocking, so-you're-the-big-shit? smile. What I expected him to do, I can't imagine - say, "what's your trouble, buddy?" or what - but what he did do was the least of my expectations. He only looked quizzically at me for a moment, as though he were having difficulty placing me; then he smiled a most ingratiating smile, gave me a most amiable hello, and walked out the door, followed by his buddies who were saying in unison, "Hey, Frank, what'll we do now?"

Now, as much as I love sports - all sports - I have a hard time picking favorites. I don't fan for many teams, never having picked a favorite team in basketball, football or baseball. I just never felt it for any one team - Metro is definitely an anomaly. And there's no individual in any sport who I've taken on as my hero, my idol, who meant more to me than a team, much less a sport. Maybe when I was young there was a little bit of that, as kids do. But as an adult, I think it's a little weird to relate to a potential peer that way, much less someone ten years younger than you. That said, I have felt a deep and somewhat personal affinity for Clint Mathis.

You see, over the past five or six years, Mathis has been as close as I've ever gotten to a Giff.

There are a handful of personal similarities on or near the surface. No, no mohawk, no southern accent, and only one of my ACLs has been reconstructed. But yours truly and Clint are less than two months apart in age, about the same height, more or less the same build, and if you saw pictures of me with the hair closely-cropped and the beard growing in, there's a faint likeness there. It's no separated at birth thing, but a little more pronounced than my resemblance to, say, Brian Ching.

Moreover, Clint plays, when he deigns to, more or less in the same style I do (I still do play quite a bit, and pretty decently.) That, and the fact that I'm about ten times the player I was when I was twenty, are rueful reminders that I was just a couple years too old to have MLS to look up to, that I focused on being a serious player too late - but there is room for that kind of player in the game, and I ought to have been it, if only... I have speed but not too much, some skill but not tons. I do have to say I'm a tad more slim and trim than the Clint we've seen over the past few years, and probably more ready to run box-to-box for 90 minutes. Invariably I'm that withdrawn forward, that exchanger-of-flicks, slider-of-clever-through-balls and walloper-of-twenty-three-yarders, playing within myself in the same way that Clint does nowadays. Perhaps too much - no more daring, lightning-fast 50 yard sprints with the ball. It was very shortly after he made his return from his 2001 ACL injury that I remarked to friends how much Clint seemed to be playing like another great in MLS - Hristo Stoichkov. The problem was that Stoichkov was then 38 years old.

When the story of modern American soccer is written, Clint's going to go down as a talent squandered. Given the flashes of genius he displayed over a very brief period, they'll probably call him the greatest talent to be most rudely squandered.

Is that word, "squandered," harsh?
After all, Mathis was key to the US qualification for WC 2002, and he brilliantly saved our ass against Korea. As this terrific post argues, he was one unfortunate twist away from really, truly putting MLS, Metro and himself on the map in NYC in a major way. It was so close to happening in 2000. And all that aside, he's made a lot of money. He's made the cover of SI. He punked out a Bundesliga coach - how many guys can say that?

Yeah, "squandered" fits.

But we've all squandered things.
Mathis's first run and career peak with Metro neatly coincides with my time living on the edge of New York City. I was fairly fresh out of college, out on my own and thinking of certain big things ahead. Among them, some Exley-ish visions. Big things didn't happen for me there. At least, not the big things I imagined would just fall into place, and not right away. It took about eight steps backwards to move ten steps ahead, and in a totally different direction altogether. If you asked me in 2000 if I could imagine myself here, doing this, I would have laughed. Or been dumbstruck. And I've got a hunch that the same might go for Clint Mathis.

It isn't necessarily a tragic thing, the way things turn out.

I bristle at any mention of "Clint Mathis, the American Gazza." It's lazy and inaccurate; say what you will, but Clint's head has always been screwed on a lot tighter than Gascoigne's. The shock return of Fowler to Liverpool is a better, if not perfect, comparison here today. Not knowing the guy outside of press reports and hearsay, not having spoken to him beyond a few moments at a team event that lasted as long as Exley and Gifford in that diner, I've never thought of Clint Mathis as some uncontrollable addict with problems requiring intensive treatment. A little different, sure. Undisciplined, yes. But another way of saying that is, Mathis appears to enjoy life (and cigarettes, Bud Light, and Doritos are all enjoyable parts of life, believe you me) as much as he did score goals. You may not want that on your team. But I'll be the last one to run people down for not absolutely maximizing their abilities, least of all someone whose peaks and valleys kind of track mine, as long as I'm putting myself in that same box.

The saving grace is that my chosen fields don't wash "talents" up on the rocks by the age of 30. By most soccer standards, the re-acquisition of Mathis is a nonsense move. He's looked like a spent force for years now, since for those of us who remember so fondly what that "force" was like. Founding a lot of hope on a nice playoff performance is a lot like thinking an unproven coach has what it takes based on three or four decent performances as late season fill-in, and casting your lot with him (and no, I'm not talking about Bob Bradley here, but rather, Mo Johnston.) If the best argument you can make is that he comes cheap and its worth a shot, well hell, I come even cheaper. More realistically, there's got to be better value for money, even if the money being talked about isn't much.

Ives blogged that Claudio drove the move, being friends with Clint. That's a nice story, I guess. John Ellinger was the "only coach he'd come back from Germany to play for," too.
Bruce may think he can unlock Mathis's mind and resurrect his career, but I can only imagine that's Bruce way overestimating his own abilities. Otherwise, opinions on the trade run hot and cold.

Yet I really don't care if it's a sensible move. This is the first thing this organization had done since March, 2006 which makes me even the least little bit happy. Nostalgia's a funny old thing, innit?

I say that, and still I can't help but hope for the best and expect the worst. We all remember the way Giff finished up.

Labels: Frederick Exley, Mathis, Metro, nostalgia

Step One: Give the job of immortalizing a man who served the club in virtually every capacity over 60+ years to a professional sculptor who's a passionate fan, yes, but also has never worked on any sculpture on this scale or in this material.

Two: Rush it. Crank it out in less than two years, when comparable works have taken four - and that was with a live subject. (Though I'm seeing that better statues in the "football legends" genre have been done quicker and cheaper, too.)

Three: Hope for the best.

I give you the just-unveiled, already-reviled, and soon-to-be-toppled statue of Southampton legend Ted Bates at St. Mary's.





Good Lord - more photos here.
















Man, I feel terrible for everyone here. The fans are understandably up in arms about it; their season has sucked, and now their fundraising efforts - the statue cost over $200k - gave birth to that thing. Bates' family can't be pleased that he comes out looking like Tattoo (as opposed to Tatu - I can't wait till they put up the statue of Tatu down in Dallas, if only to see how they'll replicate the shirt flying off into the crowd in bronze.) The foundry is like "hey, don't look at us." And sculptor Ian Brennan really does sounds like someone who put a lot of honest sweat and toil into the work - it just didn't come off. Ok, understatement there. Did it ever "not come off."

I do love this quote, from an interview with sculptor Brennan.

"I've never seen a smile on a statue before but after a lot of research we decided to go with a pose of him waving and with a smile on his face.

"Generally that's a no-no because most people remember your face as it is most of the time. A smile only lasts a few seconds but Ted was always smiling and if his statue had a straight face and he was still waving, there was a risk of him looking like Stalin or the Saddam Hussein statue that was pulled down."

Don't miss the comments here - particularly those from the sympathetic souls down the South Coast at Portsmouth - which are absolutely worth the price of admission.

And I thought the bronze Batistuta in Florence looked a little weird.

Labels: bad monuments, easy pickings for rival fans, Southampton

You know those magic rec specs Davids wears have that Terminatoresque digital display going on inside, right?



And from another angle, to give you more idea of the damage.



Two more of those, and he's Brett Lindros.

I had begun a post full of sweet venom, razor-sharp enmity, and uncouth but hilarious-cause-they're-true stereotypes before the little voice inside insisted "life's too short to hate." So let me just say: Good evening to all my new friends from the readership of DCenters!

Springboarding off something I wrote over the weekend, it seems they were a little - shall we say smugly? we shall say smugly - pleased with the discovery that "the hatred for DC in New York is much more about New York than it is about DC."

By gum, I think you've cracked it, Inspector Smarmsworth! Metro fan hates DC, but hates Red Bull even more. Lots of self-loathing there. Alert the press.

Without getting into a lengthy thesis here, we can all imagine there is some perfect ratio of positive/negative involved with being a fan. Ideally, I think that means a high amount of positive - Go us! - spiced up with a certain, smaller complementary amount of the nasty negative - Boo (or Fuck) you! If that ratio has always been a little volatile in Metroland, for this Metro fan, at least, it is now completely shot. Speaking for myself, there is virtually no positive side, hardly any "yay our side" left to go on. I like most of the players individually, and can't wait to see a few develop into stars. I like the game of soccer, especially when it's played by teams from places in my country. Other than that, it's currently all about seeing those you don't like go down. That's you, DC - but that's just the way it's supposed to be, isn't it? If it's any consolation to your poor feelings, at least I've got a little grudging respect (which is what that post was mainly about.) Respect for Red Bull, much less pride in what they're doing? None.

Now that is a sad situation, and not a lot of fun to be perfectly honest, but spare your pity for better things. Following MLS isn't a lot of fun, the way it was - that's why as much as I admire your Free Beer Movement (hey, I'll even plug it), you won't find me rushing to take anyone out to a game anytime soon. I figure MLS soccer is worth watching, but minus a team worth being passionate about, I can't be bothered to put myself or anyone else out for it right now. Good luck with that.


Other news n' notes:

Marc de Grandpre, just back from a spa in the Seychelles or something, Fires Back! just a week after Ives's story about the Red Bull New York's 14 million dollar loss last season. Determined to nip these stories in the bud and bringing the full force of his personality to bear on the Metro beat writers, he wrote an email with a lot of fluffy PR language, and cc:'ed it to Dyer and Michael Lewis. Stand-up guy, that Marc de Grandpre.

Funny from this: our spin, spin sugardaddy's man claims RB "deliberately shed off all our sponsors at the end of the year." Well, I thought it was a contest between stupidly arrogant and inept to explain why they lost those major sponsors; I hope you had your chips on "stupidly arrogant," at least if we're believing this line from MdG,
Funnier from this: the usual BS suspects taking it all at face value. Hold tight, Marc and Dieter have a vision! They said it themselves!
Absolute funniest from this: That Ives can not only respond on his blog, but feel free to come into open conflict with the team over this. What's at stake for Ives if he hammers them some more on it? Anything? Some access, perhaps - but RB is Kremlin-like in that regard anyway, so what's his big loss there? They're not going to tell Bruce and the boys not to talk to him, are they? That would be utterly dumb, and it wouldn't work anyway.
But here's the beautifully ironic twist; as much as we like to think journalists can say whatever they want without concern for the sales department, if Ives kept it up, then one imaginable (I'm not saying actual) pressure that could fall on him might be through the team's major sponsors. It's just slightly possible that say, St. Barnabas Health Care wouldn't like reading continual slams on RBNY, justified or not, if it was a major team sponsor AND a North Jersey News advertiser (again, hypothetical). Does it work that way? Who knows. I can imagine it working like that somewhere, sometime. Call it goodwill in the community, or lack of.
Would that RB had any big local sponsors left to aggravate. And it's not like RB is ever going to be buying ads in something so un-edgy and conventional as the local newspaper.
Well, late night thoughts.

And lastly, the jury remains completely out on Bruce Arena (only fair), which is to say that a lot of people are naturally expecting him to be Mr. F'ing Wizard, just 'cause. I'm skeptical, and I was going to get around to my reasons why sometime. Someone who knows a lot more about soccer and MLS beat me to it. Take those reasons, add in the fact that Arena won his MLS championships when three-quarters of the league couldn't play their way out of a wet paper bag and...we shall see, won't we?

Labels: de Grandpre spins like a top, Ives, we like Wilt

Someone pissed off the Crypt Keeper lately, and by the looks of it, that someone was Bruce Arena. Because our dusty old skeletal friend is neither happy nor charitable with his analysis of how Metro is coming together on the field under The Best Coach America Has Ever Produced (tm).

Michael Lewis reports on Paul Gardner's slams on Arena.

What a truly weird thing to publish - and I'm talking about what Michael Lewis did here. Don't get me wrong. I like Lewis. I'm just not quite sure what the point of excerpting and highlighting an opinion piece in another publication could be - especially one that's sorta there, sorta on-the-periphery like SA is these days. And when it's Paul "Rotmasters was mine!" Gardner doing the opining. Sure, you will find some who like him, some who respect him as part of an earlier era of soccer journalism but think him pretty irrelevant now, and many who throw him straight in the "Cranks" basket, beside Trecker the Younger. Whatever - it's not like we look to Paul Gardner to get the inside scoop on Metro.
It makes me wonder just what the real purpose is on Lewis's part.

Is Gardner saying things that Lewis would like to say himself, but can't get away with, being on the beat and all?
Is it just the product of a slow news week, team-wise?
Something else?

The thing that's missing in the BAS piece, unfortunately, is any kind of response from Lewis - in agreement, in rebuttal, or to moderate. That's a real shame.

But if the Crypt Keeper is more right than wrong here...hoo boy.

Labels: Bruce Arena, Metro, Michael Lewis, Paul Gardner, pessimism

To take it to the weekend, one-time Metro "knowledge-sharing partner" (anyone ever hear ANYTHING more about that?) Eintracht Frankfurt has fans who know how to make the stadium rock. Seriously. Courtesy The Offside.



Just noted - that's an AWAY crowd doing that. Nice.
Proof positive that fans can go out en masse and act passionately for a shitty team...provided it means something to them. Working on that. Or not here, not at all.

Labels: Eintracht Frankfurt, fans, Germany, makin' it pop

Ives was watching the CCC last night*, and he's got some magnanimous things to say as far as his hopes for DC and Houston in their away legs.

*What was he doing watching that instead of the basketball tonight?
Wait, what was I doing?

That's good. Those are the sane, rational words of someone who cares not just about the team he covers, but about the growth and development of MLS as a whole. You kind of expect and understand it from a journalist. There's even a lot of MLS fans like that.

Luckily, I have no such noble compunctions. While I can tolerate - barely - DC nicking one to send their oh-so-insipid fans home not feeling totally forlorn, I simply cannot wait until Chivas takes DC back to Mexico and makes them look silly, as they inevitably will. Embarrass them. Hang a five on them. Go Goats.

Because you know what I always say - the diving, whining, too-cowardly-to-take-a-flight-to-NYC jerkstore-acting enemy of my enemy is kind of my friend. At least till this tie is over.

That said, it's all too clear from nights like tonight just how incredibly far behind DC our Metro stands, from an all-around point of view.

Without too much exaggeration, I figure that it's 8-10 years before Metro - or whatever name they're called at that point - gets anywhere close to where the filth down I-95 is right now. On the field, they're simply deeper, more skilled, and will benefit from being battle-tested (not that they're doing all that spectacularly) against the best teams on the continent. We're having a hard time getting by college teams and counting on a 17 year old and (maybe) an A-Leaguer to bring the goals. In the stands and in the city, there's simply no comparison. A big chunk of that 26k number came to support the Goats, as anyone with ears (I guess we'll leave out Christian Miles on the telecast last night, then) could tell. But still - 26k for an international match 3 weeks out from the opener. This is a sign, among other things, that DC's FO knows what it's doing, and that the club has some actual connection, not just with the hardcore, but with the people of the area in which it plays. In short, everything that our organization is not.

This second point fiercely sucks, since those who have been around a while may easily remember that (early titles or not) Metro and DC were more or less equal in crowd numbers through the first half of MLS's existence, and the Metro diehard core was always a little more...how do we say this nicely...."credible" than the weird assortment of fake Mods, knife-toting Salvadorans, and margarita-mix buying, tailgate-ticketing elements that constitutes your average DC crowd. That is, until the bulk of the Metro faithful was beat into a fine powder by shit results, shit management, and a shitty gameday experience, and drifted away on the winds.

8-10 years of consistent positive development, on and off the field; that's my conservative (and maybe even optimistic guess) of what it'll take to see scenes like last night's up in NJ. Harrison alone won't make it happen. Nor would winning a title alone. Coming off a week and half of good press to the left of them, good press to the right of them, and a sharp reminder of just how MLS's ultra-egalitarian rules make RB's money a non-factor, even when they care to spend it - can you see RB still being here in 2017?
Prop bets are often sucker bets, but if you know a bookie who'll offer good odds against that....

Labels: Concacaf Champions Cup, DC scum, pessimism

I am not a great reader of the game or outstanding appraiser of players. I don't have any clout or inside connections ready to leak juicy rumors to me. At best, I've got some words I can turn handily, a decent memory for where we've been in the past, and a passion - dinged up as it is now, insane as it's always been - for American soccer, and American club soccer in particular. Beginning with the Metros.

So when I began this blog a little more than a year ago with this humble post, I didn't have much in the way of a great vision for it, except for this - to chronicle, describe, criticize and have a little fun with the Metrostars' endless journey towards becoming a quality team, a championship team, a team we long suffering fans can be legitimately proud of, come what may - so that in our travels here and abroad we could eventually tell people "yeah, my team is the Metro and I've been there since the beginning. Soy de Metro, de Metro soy yo..." and get a little respect, if nothing else. It could mean something, if we all stuck together; I had some faith in that.

You laugh, and point to ten years of Metro fiascos, like it was something to be proud of at all. Keep dreaming, you naive Metrologist.

Then I'll argue that ten years is in fact nothing much in the big picture of sports, and even 96-05 came with a lot of good times. Knowing full well that all of us are cheering for someone else's business at heart, as a diehard soccer fan who wants something just a little more authentic and rooted, the timeframe I'm operating on is that of decades, not seasons. For every Chelsea that shoots to global prominence and profitability when a speculator drops in and starts buying it trophies, there is a Middlesborough going almost 130 years before winning its first major trophy, or a Yeovil Town FC that goes over 110 years before even making it into the Football League(!) to cite but two examples. This is soccer reality to me, as much as any glitzy cup final. And somewhat perversely, I like it like that.

The point isn't to glorify mediocrity and stumbling around the nether reaches of the leagues for decades. No one wants that. It's to glorify the resilience and endurance of soccer fans through all the shit, a resilience that gets built into symbols like names and badges, and how they mean something to a place, a group of fans, no matter what the results might be. That's enabled people in many places to follow the same team their ancestors, actual or just locally-speaking, did. That enables the 90% of supporters around the world who aren't following G-14 teams to feel like they're not totally wasting their time. And that stability and continuity is worth something you just can't count.

Winning, in fact, isn't everything and isn't worth getting into bed with anyone for - the thought that some fans think an MLS championship - MLS, for chrissakes! - is so important that it justifies hocking the whole shebang of your team's identity is just amazing to me. Winning is the goal, for sure. It catalyzes us as fans. But simply being there, in the same recognizable form and in the same place is every bit as important. It's where real tradition is forged over time, and THAT, not ticket giveaways or aged, expensive world superstars from the right immigrant demo, is what gets people coming back time after time, year after year.

But Metrologist, you say, such nice examples are useless here. Soccer just means something different in the rest of the world, and especially in places like England. It's engrained in their culture and their traditions.

Well, exactly. And you want club soccer to be somewhat "cultural" here too, dontcha?
I do. I'm a big fan of the sports that are part of our culture already. But soccer...that is just something different, and I'd like us to have a piece of that here, too. If it takes till I'm old and gray.

It may not be in the cards, sociologically speaking. I've done quite a lot of studying and thinking about it (if it's not apparent by now that the Metrologist is hopelessly shuttered up somewhere in the world of higher education, it should be) and I've gradually concluded it's possible the United States simply isn't set up for it at this point in time. There may not be the room or the inclination in the US soccer world for an idealized club soccer culture to grow. It could be that US soccer will grow nicely, as long as we acquiesce to naming some clubs after the highest bidding multinational lifestyle-oriented conglomerate, and branding others after the Great and Good Clubs of Real World Soccer - Arsenal Colorado, Real Salt Lake, DC Chelsea United, Columbuselona. PMLS = Post Modern League Soccer. The signs point in that direction. It could be our destiny.

So be it. The "product" (and I loathe, loathe, loathe that term) on the field will probably improve. But if that's the case, I can't see much reason for us hardy few to go on acting like fervent, loyal, do-anything-for-our-club-because-it's-repping-us supporters. Why do anything much more than buy my ticket now and then (if I don't feel like watching the Mets/Yankees/Devils/Nets/Knicks, etc., since I "support" them equally), sit in my seat and take in the show? Anything more would be foolish - you can't express your team spirit when there's no spirit inside to be found. Who can scream out Red Bull songs with a straight face? Unintentional self-parody at its worst.

Today, March 9 2007, marks the one year anniversary of the conversion of Metro into the Red Bulls, and this string of discussions is its legacy - the magic candles flickering on the taurine-soaked birthday cake. They always re-ignite. They still vastly overshadow the actual job of supporting this team. They always will, until the last of the dyed-in-the-wool Metro traditionalists give up and find something else to do. Make a wish!

Personally, I don't like spending too much of my precious time in negative ways, and the older I get, the even less so. It's the flipside of my tendency to criticize and play devils advocate; too much of that, and it sucks the life out of you. Who wants to waste time beating this further into the ground? So there's been less and less posted here (you might have noticed.) The US soccer blog landscape has really grown since I started here, in line with big things going on in the sport here, but I've had less and less time for it. I've taken less and less interest in the things like playoff matchups and draft coverage, and planned on spending less and less money. My link to this team, if not severed, is stuck in a state of limbo. As someone who was, and should still be, pretty evangelical about MLS, I now have to force myself to care as often as not. That's not good.

What today also marks is the the ticking-over of the worst year of being a Metro fan ever. While the organization itself has been jarred, and I don't think anyone can say for the better overall (more on that in a coming post), I think what remains of the already-tortured diehard Metro crowd has only been further alienated, divided, and turned against one another. I've been a part of that, on a personal level, more than I'd like to admit. What used to be a pretty cooperative community, especially online at least on the surface, now has serious lines drawn through it.

Hypercaffeinated bickering among the desperate remnants like this isn't pretty and certainly not productive. Yet again, another reason for those like me to drift off instead, or for prospective fans to wonder "why would I want to bother?" It's somewhat reminiscent of a scene I saw once at a Fiorentina match I attended in the late 90's; Napoli arrived for a spring match already sure to be relegated, its ragtag, dejected-looking traveling fans barely filling up a third of the fenced-in visitors section at the Artemio Franchi. The Napoli fans quickly got down to the business of beating the shit out of each other, and by the time Fiorentina was coasting with a 2 or 3 goal lead, the Napoli fans were stretched out over the stands, taking in the glorious afternoon sun rather than bothering with the shambles on the field. A similar sort of Lord Of The Flies scenario doesn't bode well for any resurgence of real Metro - or RB, for that matter - support. The question is, do those running the show even want it?

Over the next few days I'll look at some of the substantial problems RBNY has ahead of it. What isn't working now and why I don't think it can ever work - not as anything other than an ersatz soccer product with their name all over it (maybe that can justify their investment, but who wants to watch that? Not me.) It won't be a cheery or particularly enjoyable analysis. But it's not particularly enjoyable to go through this as a fan. Who knows why we do it? We slog on - for the time being - in the hopes that this joke finally stops being told, or else it's so damn successful that someone decides to take a chance on another NY-area team that isn't such a sham.

Happy Birthday, Red Bull New York. May there be very, very few more for you.