I don't recall hearing it at all. Most people I've talked to didn't hear it, including friends of mine who have very strong negative feelings about the chant. Some people have said they heard it sprinkled here and there throughout the game and in isolated parts of the stadium. Yet it is characterised as follows:
In a marked departure from the night’s celebration of the LGBTQ community, NYCFC fans chanted “puto” throughout the match, particularly in the second half
To be fair, the author linked out to a couple of tweets as evidence, but I don't think they quite justify the description. To somebody who didn't attend the match, they might well expect that the whole stadium was singing "puto" repeatedly and in grandiose rolling waves to the tune of "Come on New York".
The article has a pretty clear agenda but I felt like the author was trying to squeeze blood from the stone. By mentioning that neither HoO or Los Templados responded to requests for comment, it's implied (admittedly only IMO) that they were involved in the chant.
In May 2015 – two months into NYCFC’s first campaign – Ben Jata of Upper 90 Soccer tweeted that “NYCFC is implementing a zero-tolerance approach for flares and the Puto chant,” adding, “Fans caught doing either will be ejected.” While other clubs – including Atlanta United, LAFC, and the San Jose Earthquakes, among others – have issued statements condemning the chant (“We are extremely disappointed and shocked at the behavior of a portion of our fan base,” the Quakes said), NYCFC has not provided a similar declaration.
^
I will admit to totally misreading this. I ascribed the Ben Jata quote to NYCFC official channels, and thought that not giving them credit for saying they had a zero-tolerance approach to the chant was not up to the official statements from Atlanta / LAFC / San Jose. This was the crux of my comment about "bad faith interpretations of fairly benign statements", so consider that comment somewhat misinformed
I didn't grow up hearing the puto chant, so as an outsider I was really curious and asked a few friends of mine what the chant meant to them. There are definitely people I spoke to who think that it is a homophobic chant which is tightly coupled to a homophobic culture, but there are also people who say that the term is used interchangeably with "chicken" or "coward". I don't think that this is conclusive at all, but I'm not a journalist and it wasn't too difficult to find other sides to this story. I only see one side, very strongly represented, in the HRB article.
It feels like a sign of the times for people to state their opinions very strongly to people who agree with them in a time when it's easier than ever to ask questions to people that one may disagree with. Again, I'm relatively new to the topic, but I don't really see how this article constructively engages with the issue or moves the dialogue forward in any way. So far it seems that, if anything, it's reinforcing entrenched views.