Today marks one year since the MyFootballclub.co.uk takeover of Ebbsfleet United FC.

And overall, it's been a decent year in my eyes (though my own involvement has been pretty limited at times). A trip to Wembley, a WIN at Wembley, the 3700+ attendance for the free cup match recently, holding a spot somewhere around mid-table, wholesale creation of a new culture - part local and part global, part net-based and part community-based...all seem to be very bright spots.

It hasn't all been ideal, of course, but you had to be awfully optimistic (or delusional) to think that there wouldn't be any bumps in the road. We're still lingering too close to the drop, for one. "Pick The Team" is still a dream deferred, and while that's pissed off some (hard to ascertain just how major or minor the vocal contingent on that is) it hasn't really ruffled others - including me. PTT would be fun, interesting even, and maybe will come into play if Daish totally loses the plot on us, but that isn't the case right now. There's lots I'd like to see done yet on a number of fronts. Certainly this is a work in progress.

Most importantly, with renewals sure to come in well under the original 30k mark, there's gonna be a shakeout and everyone knows it. That's gonna pose a major financial challenge, especially in the thick of the global economic shitstorm. But if there's a silver lining to be seen, it's the sense that those who remain (those who weren't so naive as to think MYFC would be buying Leeds or something) stand to have a more cohesive vision of What It's All About as we go forward.

What is it all about, then? For me, the reason why I renewed (for 30 bucks less than it cost last year - thank YOU, strengthening dollar!) is that, despite whatever squabbling goes on, despite whatever ways EUFC-MYFC falls short of being the perfect open-source club, it's still the most interesting and engaging way to support local club football on a week to week basis that I know of. Because I for one am so damn sick of creepy gazilionnaire arms dealers, oligarchs and private equity cowboys profiteering off the game at its highest level, while MLMers and soda-pushing slimeballs contrive an ersatz "soccer experience" in my own country.

My mantra on this has become - Support local clubs, though it doesn't matter so much whose "local" it is.

Better my money, attention, and affection goes to a real team and club down the ladder somewhere else. Better we try and build something different, if we can. Happy first year, MyFCers.

Labels: Ebbsfleet United, MYFC, soccer

Just for old times' sake, The Metrologist pops up for a moment with a word or two.

Labels: MLS, soccer

I wait, not with breathless anticipation, but mild curiosity for the clock to strike five today. That will mark the supposed deadline for the supposed application process to become Major League Soccer's supposed 17th and 18th franchises (you need to be put a "supposed" before most things MLS does. A Keatsian enterprise, their rules are writ on water, and Dubuque or Waterbury could waltz in with a billionaire next week and waltz out with a team.)

With Philly and Seattle already onboard for the next couple seasons, and up to 8 cities vying for the next two spots, expansion has become the MLS geek's white-hot topic.
More Canadian teams!
No more Canadian teams!
------ is a Soccer City, which deserves a team above all others!
Etc.

It's a bit tiresome once you've heard the arguments the first thirty times, and completely, totally ineffectual on top of that. As Bill Archer notes in the Bigsoccer blogs.

As for me, over the next couple hours I'll be waiting to see if pro club soccer - in its charmingly hinky MLS form - has a shot at returning to the NYC area after a five-year absence, likely in the form of a new club run by the NY Mets.

I would like that.

IF it's the picture of best-practices among MLS organizations; avoiding the missteps of teams past and present, taking full advantage of where it is - one of the greatest soccer areas in the world.
IF it's an organization with symbolism and integrity of its own, not just a means to cross-promote a baseball team, a foreign team, or some crappy product.
IF it aims to represent the city and the area in some meaningful, inclusive way.
And IF the soda ad in NJ hasn't already run its course by then.

I've been an MLS fan, observer and critic to varying degrees over the past 13 years, a decade of that spent supporting the late, not-so-great Metros. It was a open-top bus tour of hell in a handbasket. Yet it was great fun, shared with some great people, and I cherish a lot of memories from that time.

A few years back, I was anxious to seize some of the fame and fortune that comes with academically-inclined niche sports blogging. I was also enamored with how a team so dysfunctional, forgotten and pathetically misshapen could still be funny, galvanizing and occasionally meaningful. I started The Metrologist. Impeccable sense of timing I had there. Within months the taurine takeover had occurred. With the hijacking of the name and identity, all the shaky, make-believe pretense of it being a "club" was obliterated. And then my little baby blog became the strangest of all creatures - a fan blog whose constant underlying assertion was that my team had to lose, had to fail, had to collapse for it to be saved. That was my stance.

It still is. It just isn't very much fun to write about, not for very long, anyway.

Thus the Metrologist, sadly, has gone by the wayside. The lack of posts in a year should have told you that. I've got one more superbly self-indulgent yet useful and informative M'gist effort left in me, and I'll take care of that in the coming days.

Also diminished, my appetite for dissertating on the message boards. Having said my piece too many times, having grown enough wisdom and lost the time to skirmish around and around and around with people speaking a fundamentally different language, I stay out of the mire now. Mostly. There isn't much else for me to say now besides this; RB out, or NYC2 in. Whichever comes first. That's where you'll find me. And here, of course. Where I find it hard to keep my mouth shut.

So we wait, curious but not exactly hopeful. Because what happens next, and what happens in the years to come, is going to be mostly out of our hands. Why get agitated? Either we get a couple more months of waiting, wondering and reading the tea leaves before another deadline day, or we go back to our regularly scheduled program of not caring much what the hell happens in the world of MLS. Along with most of the area and most of the country. There isn't much in between. In the meantime we hold on to what money we're lucky to have now, spend it on teams and entities that, however imperfect, take seriously the idea that as soccer clubs they mean culture, locality, membership and tradition.

In the meantime, here's just a couple of my favorite Metrologist posts, and my post here, written shortly after MLS swapped the likes of its diehards for a joking experiment.

Labels: Metro, MLS, NYC2, soccer