Professional soccer is starting in Brooklyn.
If not yet in geographic reality, then in name and spirit.
Brooklyn Football Club launched this fall, an ambitious startup betting that a local soccer scene that includes Major League Soccer's New York City FC and New York Red Bulls and the National Women's Soccer League's NJ/NY Gotham FC has room for one more team during the sport's booming season.
Brooklyn FC's women's team, which began play earlier this month, is an original franchise of the eight-team USL Super League, the top division of the U.S. women's soccer league, which is essentially one tier below the NWSL.
Brooklyn FC's men's team is scheduled to begin play in March 2025 as an expansion team in the second tier of the USL Championship.
It's a rapid transformation of an idea written on the back of a napkin in early 2022 and is guided by a “now or never” mentality, in the words of chairman Matt Rizzetta, who also chairs the team's parent company, Club Underdog, which also runs several lower-league clubs in Europe.
“My dream is that one day Brooklyn Football Club will not only compete with MLS teams for the men and NWSL teams for the women, but beat them,” Rizzetta told the Post, “But we're going to start with small steps. We recognize that we're newcomers, we're new in the city, and we need to be very respectful. And we just want to contribute to New York soccer and put a great product on the field.”
Launching a new sports franchise is a much bigger endeavor than filling out a roster, from negotiating eight-figure league wagers to securing the right facilities and building a brand identity.
“It's an imperfect short-term thing, but the benefits far outweigh the risks in that the time for women's sport is now,” said Mac Mansfield, founder of Two Bridges FC, which is integrated into Brooklyn FC's grassroots youth academy. “Instead of waiting for the road to be paved smoothly in a few years, be part of the change. Be part of the pavement.”
About those imperfections.
Brooklyn FC has a contract to play its home games at Maimonides Park in Coney Island, which is also known as the home stadium of the Mets' affiliate, the Brooklyn Cyclones.
The club paid to have U.S. Soccer Association-certified grass installed on the field, but the grass was irreparably damaged during installation, forcing the postponement of the women's team's Aug. 31 opening game (“Defects rendered the field unplayable,” a team statement said) and ultimately abandoning Maimonides Park as a venue until the spring after the winter break.
The Brooklyn FC women's team will play its home games this fall at Columbia University's Rocco B. Commisso Soccer Stadium (capacity: 3,500) on 218th Street in Manhattan, beginning with a rescheduled home opener on Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m.
“It's disappointing that I can't make my debut in my hometown of Brooklyn, but I'm going to make the most of it,” Rizzetta said. “I'm going to do this with a Brooklyn spirit, which is never easy.”
Another hurdle was hiring the team's first head coach. On Monday, after a delay caused by visa issues, Brooklyn FC announced it had hired Jessica Silva, a Canadian who has made a name for herself as a coach in France, to take charge of the women's team.
The team began the preseason without a permanent head coach, with interim coach Kristen Sample taking the reins for the first two away games.
“When you start up at any club there are going to be growing pains and we're doing everything we can to get through them,” defender Sam Rosett told The Post before the season. “The most important thing is finding chemistry between us and the players on the pitch and I think we're doing really well in that regard.”
Despite the move, the team remains true to its Brooklyn identity — its colors are called “brownstone” and “limestone” (a reference to the Brooklyn Bridge) and its logo is a capital “B,” a nod to the old Dodgers — and Brooklyn FC supporters believe there's a market for the global sport in the culturally diverse neighborhood.
“For us, it was like, if we're going to put money into soccer, it has to be Brooklyn,” Mansfield said. “We felt like there was a huge hole for soccer there. The demand is there. So, it was always going to be Brooklyn. Brooklyn has the international appeal and recognition, wherever you go in the world, people know Brooklyn. … We didn't look or consider any other places.”
Brooklyn FC's owners paid about $20 million between the two clubs in expansion and related costs.
The ownership group also acquired soccer star Timothy Weah, the Brooklyn-born Juventus and U.S. men's national team winger.
“He genuinely wants to help,” Rizzetta said. “He wants to be involved. This isn't a 'put my name on something and use me for licensing purposes' kind of thing. He wants to be involved while also running a clinic in the community. … He's a great partner.”
The women's team, all of whose games stream on Peacock, is off to a 1-0-1 start, and while there may be some familiar names to soccer fans (Taylor Smith, for example, from the U.S. Women's National Team and more recently Gotham FC), the roster is mostly made up of players like Rosette, a Bronx native who has played overseas and coached youth players for years with the Downtown United Soccer Club program, and who is happy to see more spots open up in the domestic professional league.
“What I'm most excited about is having everyone watch the birth of something,” Rosette said. “This is a first for everybody and we get to see it happen in real time, so it's super exciting.”
