So I went to RBA for the first time tonight and wanted to share some experiences and thoughts. I'm trying to be as unbiased as possible here. Prepare for a wall of text.
I picked up a ticket to the Red Bulls home opener this morning for $6. Damn good deal. I didn't have anything to do this afternoon and I'd never been to RBA, so what the hell. I live in Park Slope in Brooklyn, so I hopped on the R to Cortland St and walked over to the WTC PATH station. It's SLIGHTLY inconvenient, but not too bad. The thing that sucks is that trains only run every 20 minutes on Sunday. I JUST missed one, so had to wait. It took me just over an hour from my front door to the gate. That's just slightly longer than the time it takes me to get to Yankee Stadium.
The PATH drops off a few blocks away from RBA. It's kind of surreal experience. You walk through this dilapidated, industrial area and then all of the sudden this big, shiny ass stadium springs up. It's sitting out by itself in the middle of nowhere. Getting in is super easy. They do have guys patting you down as you go in, but it goes quickly.
It's no secret that RBA is a fantastic place to watch a soccer game. There is not a bad seat in the house. It's fantastic. Love the roof as well. The only bad thing about the stadium itself is the concourse. Holy shit. Probably one of the most poorly designed concourses I have ever seen in a stadium. Look at this nightmare.
It was completely impassable. Terrible design flaw.
Onto the atmosphere. It was...interesting. As most saw from the feed, it was FAR from a sellout. I was originally sitting in the end opposite the South Ward. From there I thought that it was probably 75%-80% full. Pretty bad for a home opener against your biggest rival, but not the worst. Then I moved to the other side, above the South Ward. Then I was able to see how sparse the side of the stadium I was originally sitting in actually was. You could probably fit every single person sitting in the North End of the upper bowl into one section. It was pretty bad. The announced attendance was 21k, but there were probably 15k at most.
On to the South Ward and stadium energy in general. First of all, the three big SGs are completely divided. Which really sucks when they are all sitting next to each other. It seemed like the Viking Army and Empire City were kind of in sync, while the Garden State Ultras were in the corner, literally marching to the beat of their own drum. They raised up a tifo right after the anthem was over. Some RB fans gave a lot of shit to us about the quality of our tifo. Kind of riled me up, but then I saw what they came up with. Eeesh. I couldn't get a good picture of it, but I hope someone can find one. The content was pretty simple, just celebrating 20 years with a few jerseys of key Metro/RB players. But it looks like they did it on thin plastic instead of canvas. The paint didn't really stick that well, so it was chipping off all over the place. But the funniest part was the attempt to paint the World Trade Center and ESB. That is the part I need a picture of because it was so bad.
The Empire City guys had planned a Petke support rally for the first 12' of the game. They held up a banner that said, "Legends deserve better" which was cool, but from across the field, nothing about Petke really came through. I guarantee that the people around me had no idea that they were even trying to organize something. You could hear them throughout the first half, but the loudness/acoustics were not nearly as impressive as I thought they would be. Maybe that had something to do with the SGs being divided, I don't know. I moved to a section right above them for the second half. It was obviously much easier to hear them and figure out what they were saying. A lot of cookie cutter chants to be honest. Each section had a Capo or two. They also had a couple of drums. For me, Capos are a must. They are really able to get people in sync. Their guys were doing a great job. But they also had a couple of drums. I'm torn on the drums. They can keep the tempo if you have an actual drummer. But overall, they really drown out the sound of the singing.
There were maybe 50-75 DC fans there (Bara Brava and District Ultras). Not impressed. They had a drum too and it completely drowned them out. They eventually just kind of stopped. Not that I blame them, DC was shit today.
It was really great seeing the inner workings of an established team/fanbase like that. It is SO crucial that we keep the SGs united. It will be better for EVERYONE if we can all stay in sync. Capos absolutely need to come center stage. Especially for a group of people that have no idea what to say. The chants need to be SIMPLE. I like a lot of the more complicated songs, but we need some simple, booming chants that everyone can latch on to. The May 10th derby is going to be so huge for us. I don't know how many tickets we are being allotted, but we could easily bring 3k-5k people over the river and sing the place down. It would be glorious. Going to RBA in the thousands and out singing the home fans would help us shake the "plastic" fan stigma that we've been carrying.
If you've made it this far, thanks for reading my random thoughts! See you guys on Saturday in the Bronx.
I picked up a ticket to the Red Bulls home opener this morning for $6. Damn good deal. I didn't have anything to do this afternoon and I'd never been to RBA, so what the hell. I live in Park Slope in Brooklyn, so I hopped on the R to Cortland St and walked over to the WTC PATH station. It's SLIGHTLY inconvenient, but not too bad. The thing that sucks is that trains only run every 20 minutes on Sunday. I JUST missed one, so had to wait. It took me just over an hour from my front door to the gate. That's just slightly longer than the time it takes me to get to Yankee Stadium.
The PATH drops off a few blocks away from RBA. It's kind of surreal experience. You walk through this dilapidated, industrial area and then all of the sudden this big, shiny ass stadium springs up. It's sitting out by itself in the middle of nowhere. Getting in is super easy. They do have guys patting you down as you go in, but it goes quickly.
It's no secret that RBA is a fantastic place to watch a soccer game. There is not a bad seat in the house. It's fantastic. Love the roof as well. The only bad thing about the stadium itself is the concourse. Holy shit. Probably one of the most poorly designed concourses I have ever seen in a stadium. Look at this nightmare.
It was completely impassable. Terrible design flaw.
Onto the atmosphere. It was...interesting. As most saw from the feed, it was FAR from a sellout. I was originally sitting in the end opposite the South Ward. From there I thought that it was probably 75%-80% full. Pretty bad for a home opener against your biggest rival, but not the worst. Then I moved to the other side, above the South Ward. Then I was able to see how sparse the side of the stadium I was originally sitting in actually was. You could probably fit every single person sitting in the North End of the upper bowl into one section. It was pretty bad. The announced attendance was 21k, but there were probably 15k at most.
On to the South Ward and stadium energy in general. First of all, the three big SGs are completely divided. Which really sucks when they are all sitting next to each other. It seemed like the Viking Army and Empire City were kind of in sync, while the Garden State Ultras were in the corner, literally marching to the beat of their own drum. They raised up a tifo right after the anthem was over. Some RB fans gave a lot of shit to us about the quality of our tifo. Kind of riled me up, but then I saw what they came up with. Eeesh. I couldn't get a good picture of it, but I hope someone can find one. The content was pretty simple, just celebrating 20 years with a few jerseys of key Metro/RB players. But it looks like they did it on thin plastic instead of canvas. The paint didn't really stick that well, so it was chipping off all over the place. But the funniest part was the attempt to paint the World Trade Center and ESB. That is the part I need a picture of because it was so bad.
The Empire City guys had planned a Petke support rally for the first 12' of the game. They held up a banner that said, "Legends deserve better" which was cool, but from across the field, nothing about Petke really came through. I guarantee that the people around me had no idea that they were even trying to organize something. You could hear them throughout the first half, but the loudness/acoustics were not nearly as impressive as I thought they would be. Maybe that had something to do with the SGs being divided, I don't know. I moved to a section right above them for the second half. It was obviously much easier to hear them and figure out what they were saying. A lot of cookie cutter chants to be honest. Each section had a Capo or two. They also had a couple of drums. For me, Capos are a must. They are really able to get people in sync. Their guys were doing a great job. But they also had a couple of drums. I'm torn on the drums. They can keep the tempo if you have an actual drummer. But overall, they really drown out the sound of the singing.
There were maybe 50-75 DC fans there (Bara Brava and District Ultras). Not impressed. They had a drum too and it completely drowned them out. They eventually just kind of stopped. Not that I blame them, DC was shit today.
It was really great seeing the inner workings of an established team/fanbase like that. It is SO crucial that we keep the SGs united. It will be better for EVERYONE if we can all stay in sync. Capos absolutely need to come center stage. Especially for a group of people that have no idea what to say. The chants need to be SIMPLE. I like a lot of the more complicated songs, but we need some simple, booming chants that everyone can latch on to. The May 10th derby is going to be so huge for us. I don't know how many tickets we are being allotted, but we could easily bring 3k-5k people over the river and sing the place down. It would be glorious. Going to RBA in the thousands and out singing the home fans would help us shake the "plastic" fan stigma that we've been carrying.
If you've made it this far, thanks for reading my random thoughts! See you guys on Saturday in the Bronx.