"Why haven't you won a game yet?"
The first question for newly minted NYC FC head coach Jason Kreis, making his first media appearance at the Grand Hyatt in Midtown on Friday, was thankfully a joke. But as the team's management laid out the philosophies and themes that they hope will define the club, one could be forgiven for wanting them to just get on the field already.
Take the "opportunity", cited by Kreis as the driving reason why he would leave Real Salt Lake, where he was a club legend, for a new expansion side. Wowed by a trip to meet with team management in Manchester in September, Kreis declared "the choice to come here at some point became not just a no-brainer, but an opportunity I could not let slip away."
Last year, Major League Soccer announced that a second NYC-area team called New York City Football Club, would join the league, with storied sports powerhouses the Yankees and Manchester City FC partnering to form the ownership team.
But as Kreis thanked his friends and family (his parents were in attendance) with a lump in his throat, he mentioned that without his wife and children's blessing, "this leap of faith could never be possible". He gave special thanks to all of the RSL fans and community ("they will always hold a special place in my heart") and to his former coaching staff ("who never get, or got, or probably will ever get the credit they all so very much deserve"). And Kreis had a very noticeable verbal slip, referring to his old team, as he introduced Miles Joseph as "my very first appointment as Real Sa-… as a New York City FC assistant coach".
The soft-but-well-spoken Kreis can be forgiven for not being able to so quickly let go of the nearly seven years he spent in Utah. Perhaps his upcoming 6 month stint in Manchester will help cleanse him of some of his lingering sentimentality. Which brings us to another common theme: "the City way", in reference to the Manchester City - and, hopefully, NYC FC - style of play.
Txiki Begiristain, MCFC's Director of Football, defined it early in the press conference: "We want to win, but we want to win in a very special style. We want to always have a winning team, but trying always to entertain the people, and to do brilliant football." Elaborating: "It's easy. It's to hold the ball. To have an effective position...to attack, at the end to score, and to have the right balance as defending. Always trying to win back the ball immediately. This is our philosophy...we have the philosophy of football, and then we sign the manager."
Those who are well traveled in world club soccer may feel like they've heard this "philosophy" before. In fairness, they probably have - nearly every coach and every club around the world wants to play Beautiful Attacking Football. Counter-attacking, or a defensive-focus, or even sometimes using a 4-4-2 formation is considered "boring", even if it generates results.
Don't get us wrong: it's good to have a philosophy, a style of play you want your club to achieve. But a philosophy based on Premier League success, fueled by record spending, may be a tough fit for Major League Soccer's restrictive salary cap and byzantine roster rules.
The last theme, as Football Director Claudio Reyna put it, was "to build a New York club for the people of New York". "It's important from day 1 that we create our own identity. We have local people involved with the team, we know the league, we know the area and how things work here. But we're not going to shy away from the incredible knowledge and resources we have in Manchester...we want to make sure this team has a New York City feel."
With a stated goal of putting a stadium somewhere in the five boroughs, with a rumored deal set back by the clock running out Bloomberg administration, and with the team scheduled to begin playing in 13 months, some advanced stadium news would've been welcome. But club CEO Ferran Soriano was in no rush when we asked:
"We will play in a temporary stadium for the 2015 season. We are very advanced with that; we will announce this in a matter of days or weeks. In terms of the permanent stadium, you said it very well. We're not looking for a place to build a building, we're looking to build a home. And that's much more relevant and complicated, and if it takes more time it takes more time. Wherever we build a stadium, we have to be able obviously to build a building, it has to make commercial sense. But it has to make civic sense. So we need the community to embrace us. We need to go to a place where we can say it's home, and the community say it's home, and they like us...and that takes time. And the first thing that we need to do is to listen. And this is what we're doing. We're listening to the communities, we're talking to the city officials, and we'll take as much time as needed in order to find a place that we can call home."
Ferran indicated that "several" sites were still in the mix, "in the Bronx, and elsewhere. If we can play in the Bronx, it'd be perfect, but we have other ideas and other opportunities elsewhere. But I can tell you we're not looking at anything outside the five boroughs."
New York City FC will begin play in the 2015 MLS season.
Mike Petke at training in late 2013.
Across the Hudson, Mike Petke struck a different tone in his first press conference of 2014. In all the ways City came off as polished and philosophical, the Red Bulls head coach was his usual no-nonsense, down-to-earth self.
On his expectations for the MLS Combine and SuperDraft, which run through the next week: "I'm under no illusion, we have a pick early in the second round. We have players that we'd like that, if they're available, we'd probably be on our knees thanking. But I doubt most of them will be, so we do have a list like we did last year of players we thinking will slip through."
On persistent rumors that assistant coach Robin Fraser could be leaving the team: "He is on the staff. There are rules to follow in the league. Unless something's been kept from me internally, which I doubt very highly, we have not been contacted by Colorado, Jamaica, or whoever, and that has to go through that protocol. So he is on the staff, and I expect him to be with us."
On letting go of Markus Holgersson last week: "With Markus, we have three center-backs who were making good money at the same position. It's such a repetative comment for years now, but it's absolutely true. With the salary cap that we have, it's tough to maintain that. The better a team does, the more bonuses come into play, the more budgets go up. Guys like Fabian [Espindola] and Markus were very difficult decisions, but they were necessary decisions to maintain a team, and a competitive team."
On whether he felt pressure to make a big signing after news that both Jermaine Defoe and Michael Bradley were heading to Toronto FC: "Let me ask you this. We just won the Supporters' Shield last year, which means the team did well and we did something right. It's been almost a cliché about the New York organization over the last 18 years about huge overhauls in the offseason, and that's definitely something I want to get away from...having said that, if some huge player became available, that fit exactly with what we want to do and he was too good to pass up, I have complete faith in Red Bull that we would spend the money and do everything that we could to get that person. However, having said that, I stick with our philosophy right now, that there's no reason to revamp a team that has done well and won a trophy last year...whichever fans are voicing displeasure about not getting Michael Bradley, well, I'll ask them if they have fifty million dollars to borrow, because I certainly don't have that."
Speaking of transfer rumors, the one getting the loudest is that the Red Bulls (and Thierry Henry specifically) have reportedly been making overtures to Barcelona midfielder Xavi to join RBNY in the summer.
The Red Bulls begin pre-season on January 24th, in advance of First Kick in Vancouver on March 8th.
