Brooklyn Football Club proved what has long been suspected: When the team launches into USL League One in 2025, it will play home games at Maimonides Park, the Coney Island minor league baseball stadium that has long been the home of the minor league partner, the New York Mets. Brooklyn cyclones. . .
As Hudson River Blue first reported in November, Brooklyn FC had an initial agreement on a home stadium that was awaiting similar approvals, in particular, to the box surface. Matt Rizzetta, president and founder of the North Sixth Group, the release of the Brooklyn Football Club, demonstrated that the lawn at Maimonides Park has now obtained the mandatory approvals of the United States Soccer Federation and the USL.
In a new interview with HRB on the club’s now-official website, Rizzetta said: “We have set our sights on Maimonides Park since we started the project. We need to make sure that the club has a wonderful home and can deliver a wonderful experience. We looked at other features that were interesting, but would require too many renovations or upgrades, and we felt that would save us from focusing our efforts and resources only on building a wonderful club. Coney Island gives us the opportunity to do that.
Rizzetta also showed that Brooklyn FC will make big adjustments to the design of the Maimonides Park pitch from its days as the home of the New York Cosmos, and said the club plans to launch a women’s professional team that would compete in the new USL Super League. and said Brooklyn FC’s long-term plans included initial conversations with New York City officials and personal developers about potential and hypothetical long-term advancements of specific soccer stadiums at two unidentified Brooklyn locations.
The New York Cosmos, now inactive, played part of their 2015 season and all of their 2017 season at the former home of Brooklyn FC, which was then MCU Park.
Rizzetta says the terrain layout will be very different from what it looked like in the days of the Cosmos. The NASL club demolished the mound for home games, however, Rizzetta says Brooklyn FC will “leave the mound in place. “We reconfigured the terrain to pass around the mound.
The mound demolition procedure, according to Rizzetta, is expensive and too restrictive for the access to the box that the new club needs to offer. Rizzetta says the club has a few other possible field configurations that he is still evaluating, but hasn’t done yet. was able to verify the precise football configuration that the team will use in 2025.
Spectators at the Brooklyn FC game can look forward to the opportunity to get up close and private with the box and the game itself, and Rizzetta stated, “We’re going to maximize a lot of the area around the box. There will be Regions used for fan engagement, their delights, for VIPs and for access to the field, to revel in a benefit of the field itself.
This Maimonides Park box itself: It is a FieldTurf, and has been since 2012, in part due to the devastating effect of Superstorm Sandy on the stadium and Coney Island.
Turf is a debatable playing surface for football players and enthusiasts, a lightning rod for debate and criticism. Rizzetta says he and his control team have “discussed ad nauseam” the potential drawbacks of playing on grass courts, and have also analyzed insights and trends. in the functionality metrics of grass court players compared to those of grass court players.
This in-depth research and study of the territory, which Rizzetta says was carried out in collaboration with the network of lower-level European clubs that he and his investment partners co-own, “put our mind at ease. “
“If we had a solution that was an outdoor natural grass solution in the borough, would we have chosen it? Maybe? But we felt this was the best option,” said Rizzetta. “When we studied the data and the history, we felt comfortable moving forward. We don’t feel like this will be a risk for player injuries or performance or stamina or fatigue or otherwise, we feel confident in that.”
Rizzetta also said Brooklyn FC will be making “adjustments and innovations to the playing surface, which come with some box overlays,” though he can’t yet carry points on how those tweaks and overlays will work.
The announcement of Brooklyn FC’s move to Maimonides Park called it a multi-year deal. Rizzetta did not verify the length of the club’s lease to use Coney Island Stadium, but hinted at some of the longer-term plans the club still has. The club that is going to be played has already been played.
By “long-term,” Rizzetta clarified that she means 2027 and beyond, but says part of that long-term plan includes access to women’s football.
Brooklyn FC is set to publicly announce that it will add a professional women’s team that will compete in the USL Super League, with the official announcement likely to be made in early February.
The USL Super League will begin its first season in August and represents an ambitious effort across the USL to challenge the NWSL as the most productive domestic league in women’s soccer. The USL Super League has said it is seeking US Soccer Federation Division 1 approval, which would put it on par with the NWSL. The USL Super League also plans to stick to the “European calendar” for its schedule, which differs from domestic leagues like MLS and NWSL, which do not play in the colder winter months.
Mentioning plans to bring a Brooklyn women’s team to life, Rizzetta said, “When you communicate things like that, it sparks broader conversations about plans and new stadiums. “
Brooklyn Football Club are involved in at least preliminary talks and searches for an eventual, hypothetical place to build their own soccer specific stadium in the borough. Here is the entirety of what Brooklyn FC principal owner Matt Rizzetta said about the club’s potential stadium site search:
“We’ve had initial conversations with city officials, with private developers, and there are some spaces in Brooklyn that are preliminarily known as possible answers for a new structure or development. “
“It’s attractive to us in the long run, but the good news is that we don’t feel any pressure to make that happen, so I think we feel comfortable and safe to have a house in Maimonides Park for a lot of people. in the years to come. But if something were to materialize sooner, in the form of a new development, a specific football stadium where perhaps we would also do concerts, not unreasonable, a corridor with 10,000 to 15,000 seats, preferably done in collaboration with the city in a kind of public-private partnership, it could be very attractive.
We’ve already had some initial conversations and we’ve known some initial places for this, but we’re talking about several years at this point. It’s interesting, we’ll definitely explore them as the task takes off, but the smart news is that we don’t think there’s any need or urgency, because we have a wonderful home here in Coney Island for many years to come. Let’s go. “
While some football enthusiasts in the New York domain would possibly doubt the concept of a ballpark hosting a professional football team, Brooklyn FC’s new stadium has some undeniable advantages.
It’s in a famous, photogenic landmark right in the middle of Coney Island’s liveliest area. The stadium is widely available via public transportation via several metro and bus lines, and is also close to several major highways for those who want to drive.
Does any of that mean Brooklyn FC will be able to out-draw the New York Cosmos?
The Cosmos played their final season at Coney Island Ballpark in 2017 and averaged 4,789 fans per game, according to Soccer Stadium Digest. The venue seats between 7,000 and 7,500 spectators, but Rizzetta spoke about his goal of making Brooklyn FC a global brand, which he said is in line with the nature identified around the world by Coney Island as a destination.
He also talks about beyond the training classes from the Cosmos that have been installed in Maimonides Park: “We have formed from the Cosmos, some things that we are going to do or optimize, but the Cosmos has also done many things. We are revered for continuing Brooklyn’s soccer culture and we do so in the form of a Brooklyn-born professional team that is an expanding franchise. Our club actually needs to make sure that our roots, our identity, and our birthplace are Brooklyn.
For those unfamiliar with Brooklyn, Maimonides Park is literally the only moderate option for playing soccer. There are a few football fields used in local schools, but they are not entirely suitable for a professional game.
What are the chances that we’ll ever see a specific football stadium in Brooklyn?Real estate in Brooklyn is incredibly expensive, and it’s highly unlikely that you’ll get any help from New York City or New York State. Can a minor league-owning organization do it? There’s also the query about the location of a stadium. Most places with smart transit features are residential and would involve a fight that could kill any stadium project. Some commercial spaces may just work, but they tend to be the most sought-after by developers. It will be a big chain that gets a quality USL stadium in Brooklyn over the next decade.
It sounded very hypothetical and far-off in terms of timing when discussed by the owner, who also says in the story it would have to be done as a public-private partnership, so that means city money and/or land would be involved, which could change the price point
A network in New York City
© 2023 Seawall Media LLC
Sign in to your account below
Enter your username or email address to reset your password.