Fair enough, and the door didn't hit me 4 years ago. I was merely commenting about the door, and why people were still inside. And let's be fair, if attendance went way down after the name/brand change, then there may be a case to be made that I'm hardly alone.
Look, I know that some fans are really hyped about a brand when it comes to sports teams. Hell, the sports marketing folks are all about hyping their brand. But it really isn't any difference if you think about it. A professional sports team is just another money-making enterprise that counts on name recognition and brand loyalty. You could argue that with less than 20K attending regularly, Metrostars hardly had either. Red Bull comes to the table with a very well recognized brand. Sure, its an energy drink. But, to many people, it's more. It's also recognized as an extreme sports brand, with skydiving, auto, boat, and aircraft racing, not to mention the skate/bike/snowboard/ski/ etc. teams. The brand is more than just a drink. So, I'm fine with the fans that are so loyal to a marketing campaign (Metrostars) that they can't make the switch. But don't tell me that there is anything morally wrong with this scenario. It's like a Pepsi drinker telling a Coke drinker that Coke is an ethically wrong choice.
There is something ethically wrong with what they did with Salzburg, and trashing their 100 year history. Metros was a lesser version of that. If they were to buy the Red Sox and call them the Red Bulls, it would be the same. There's givers and takers in this world, and I believe Red Bull to be self-serving arrogant people who take what they want. It's the absolute reverse of grass roots, the absolute reverse of what happened in Philly with the SOBs, with AFC Wimbledon, and with the Sounders. It's the opposite of everything I believe in with football. Fine, I can appreciate that they wanted to start with Year Zero. But so did Pol Pot. Maybe it's ethical to rip a team identity away from a group of supporters without their input or without care. But I got news for you, ethical or not, anyone who does that can go f themselves for life. Put it this way, when the Devils moved in 1982, there was a massive name contest to name the New Jersey hockey team. Devils won in a landslide. Whether or not New Jersey will ever draw people to games, they certainly have a loyal fanbase who had a hand in naming them after our first folkhero. Name one person, one person who would have voted to name the team the Red Bulls other than some asswipe corporate scum who saw an opportunity to trash what was built up and force people to worship what they were forcing down their throats. It's disgusting that we who grew up with the Cosmos should be forced to accept this horror.
Oh boy, you (and anyone who makes this dumb comparison) really need some understanding of the difference between company-sponsored/originated teams which emerged at the height of early 20th century industrialization - CONNECTED DIRECTLY TO THE LOCAL COMMUNITY, CULTURE AND ECONOMY (I can't make it any clearer than to shout, but I'm so sick of this red herring), and the style of late 20th/early 21st century post-modern fakery that RBNY is engaging in here. At best, the RB kind apes the first kind - and fools people like you into thinking it's all the same thing. It is not - or can you point the way to the gigantic Red Bull factory that employs thousands of North Jerseyites and plays a major part in their everyday lives, like Philips no doubt did and does in Eindhoven? RB has no local connection, outside of the fact that you can buy it there...like anywhere else. The whole RB corporation could disappear tomorrow and it would mean nothing to NYC, outside of the fact that dumb people would drink Monster or some other crap instead. Get thee to a good cultural theory/sociology book (on the sporting tip, may i suggest Giulianotti? Markovits ain't bad either) and stop making this useless argument.
A professional sports team is just another money-making enterprise... A team's name and symbols are just a marketing campaign... With diehards who think like this, anyone else still confused as to why American club soccer struggles to arouse much passion, especially among those big bad snobs everyone likes to piss on? It's not the players or standard of play, stupid. It's the understanding of what a club actually is and represents and can be, and what many clubs historically have meant to their fans and communities. Franklin hits upon it, but a lot of fans won't ever articulate it or think it all through, they'll just feel it all and stay away from this canard. Look at what you're writing. I'm not saying you're wrong in relation to MLS, I'm saying it's incongruent with the way the sport developed in other parts of the world, and that's important to recognize. You can act like hardcore, "ultra" tifosi all you want, but in the end you (speaking broadly) can't help thinking as consumers/marketeers - what you wrote betrays the thinking that it's all, ALL "product" to you. Ok, fine - that's the world we live in and that's what we are, basically. We're not going back to the more localized, industrial-era, less-mediated age that all those old clubs were born in, so maybe this is it for us. That's what we get, take it or leave it. Just stop acting like what's going on here is exactly the same as it is in the sport's so-called "traditional centers", or that they follow similar trajectories, and stop acting so confused when people in this area don't ever take to RBNY with passion, no matter who or what comes in. If it is indeed all product, then RB is in serious trouble, because it's a crowded marketplace with many more attractive sports-and-entertainment "products." If only it could be something more than a product. But with all this being the case, you won't ever see anything like "Mes Que Un Club" translated into American for MLS - not in seriousness, anyway.
Wow. You read my posts, didn't you? I'm not confused why people are upset about the switch. I stated clearly that I understand that people had some serious loyalties and felt betrayed. I am arguing that there is NO ETHICAL or MORAL CRIME here. For F#CKS SAKE, the guy uses Pol Pot as an example. How f*cking deluded can you get? What's next? A Hitler reference? Michael, you are free to feel however you want. I'm just saying coming here and telling me how to feel is wrong. I don't apologize for not being that upset about the change. I'd rather watch soccer than put on some airs about this being a big deal, TO ME. If it's a big deal to you, fine, so be it. I'm not here trying to tell you otherwise. Anyway, I'm unsubscribing from here because I'm only interested in following a Red Bulls forum.
No need to leave JB. Think of me like Omar Little, or Spiderman #129-era Punisher. I just come in, bring the ruckus, say how much I love the Cosmos, and leave. Back in 2000, a guy named Soccernova started a campaign to bring back the Cosmos. He went to a football-oriented forum I write on, and I posted on a thread he started here. The people here were so nasty, calling him a loser, calling Cosmos fans losers, Andy Mead calling everyone who supported him a loser - that I became a mortal enemy of what I call PigSucker.cum. I had another big ruckus back in 2004, taking on anybody and everybody, and I was so sickened by Red Bull buying the team that I didn't even see what people were saying in 2005. My point to all this is that upon my return this time, I can see that this board has changed. There doesn't seem to be a "Heathers" mentality anymore, where a select group of people call people who disagree with them trolls (even if it happened here, it's not happening en masse.) I seriously respect your opinion. And I am not going to be an asshole anymore and start shit with the people of BigSoccer. Not a joke, not a pisstake. Maybe it's my first child going to be born this weekend, maybe it's the fact that I'm not an obnoxious post-adolescent teenager that I was during the Metros years, maybe it's the fact that people who want the Cosmos to return have a voice and are not called trolls or losers for wanting the only team that means something to them. I see BigSoccer has grown up, so I am going to grow up. So I take back my Pol Pot reference (it was more a Year Zero reference, but indeed a cheap shot,) and I apologize for any offense. But I won't only drop the name of the Cosmos, but I went to Eskie's store in Hackensack for my goalkeeper gear, Hubert Birkenmeier himself gave me his goalkeeper pants which I wore for my Sophomore and Junior years of high school ball, and I was at the 6-2 game against the Portland Timbers where Bogie got the all-time leader in assists mark.
jimbrown, I wasn't talking about Franklin or anyone else in particular, there. I hadn't even noticed any references to SE Asian despots, but I was bored and scanning. Instead, when I said "stop acting surprised" I was talking more generally (and speculatively) about why MLS soccer - be it under the name Metro or RB - has failed to really take off in the NYC area, and why I think it will always have problems as currently constituted. There are perennial threads on here (and in all MLS-related forums) about "what can we do to make more area soccer fans care about our team? How come more soccer lovers don't understand that this is their local team? That's good enough for me. It should be good enough for them." Time has shown being local isn't good enough. Nor is a Big Star. Nor even is playing decently. All these are factors, but then there are many factors at work, some of which rarely ever get talked about. I'm sure my contrarianism hasn't won me many friends here (and perhaps lost me a few along the way). And I'm absolutely sure that nearly no one was interested in the little flight of critical/cultural and sociological theory I went off on the other night. But strong differences of opinion, ideas and approaches are important if the discussion here is going to be as meaningful as it could be. To my mind, anyway.
Though I didn't see them last Saturday, most RB home matches I get the chance to pay my respects to Eskie and Birkenmeier. They sit a couple of rows in front of j1m. Markovits & Hellerman is already in desperate need of revision. Reading Goldblatt, it becomes clear to me that nostalgic notions of an Edenic footballing past are just that, romantic fiction. Franklin, as a father of two I would hope you are at the hospital with your family right now, rather than wasting your time offending people in a dedicated sub-forum to members of Red Bull Nation. You obviously came here looking for a fight, but I won't psychoanalyze why you would do so at this crucial time in your life... Though I don't sit with either group, I think the small dues ESC & RBN charge a most worthy expenditure. I think it wrong, Michael, to apply your ethical standards in a way that condemns their passion. I'm not sure why the investment Red Bull has made in local soccer is the line you're drawing in the sand. You accuse j1m of socio-cultural ignorance, but he's making fair points that demonstrate this isn't a simple binary of gemeinschaft/gesellschaft (I disagree that this is "incongruent"). Red Bull hasn't taken away the community. They're sponsoring the community. You've chosen to leave the community of supporters. Red Bull, if anything, is a threat to the hegemonic forces at work in our culture. The sale of the energy drink allows Mateschitz to fund free-spirited sporting adventures. I wish you would channel your energies in a more positive way than just condemning (you completely ignore all the good that has come to grassroots soccer from RB's investment), and perhaps propose some model whereby supporters trusts could factor into the MLS set-up. Last night, after coaching my son's MetroStars team, wearing red & black vertical striped jerseys and, yesterday, losing like their namesakes , I went to a friend's retirement party and saw another old friend, who I haven't seen in three years. She used to be an absolute scarf-wearing, bumper sticker proselytizing, Metrofanatic. "I can't bear to go," she said, "I miss the greatest name in MLS." Obviously, my son's jersey is a testament to my soft spot for the Metro, but what was clear to me, face to face, was that my community - not some abstract notion of corporate greed - was being rejected. The local community of soccer supporters have a consistent Cosmos->Metros->Red Bulls genealogy. I wouldn't be rejecting capitalism and globalization if I stopped cheering this team. I would be rejecting my friends, who have the common bond of being NY sports fans whose favorite sport is soccer. Watching FSC home alone is no substitute for that. Michael, you say "If only it could be something more than a product." Since this is the RBN sub-forum, I'll say this: take a look at Johnny Toro, have a chat with him, celebrate with him and suffer with him, and try telling me it isn't more than a product. p.s. Michael, anyone who admits to being "bored" hasn't any right to call another "stupid."
Good post. But after Sons of Ben, after AFC Wimbledon, after myfootballclub.com, maybe it's high time for a bunch of knuckleheads to pool a bunch of money and start a team.