One idiot's opinion.

We've been through way too much drama before the club has even kicked a ball in anger, and this morning's news about supporter's group restrictions was just icing on the cake. But if you take a step back, there's really nothing very surprising here.

We're a new club. A *homeless* new club. Sure the Yankees have a percentage of us, but that amounts to nothing more than a tax write-off with the chance for some cross-marketing money down the road. They allow our games at the stadium, during their money-making season, and their attitude towards this is just like Jefferson's attitude to Spicoli admiring his car in Fast Times: "Don't f**k with it!!"

So of course they're going to impose limitations on us. They don't give a damn about the football culture. They're not in the football industry. They're in the Yankee industry. They want to sell "The Yankee Stadium Experience", which is safe, friendly, corporate, boring as hell, but - most importantly - lucrative. And they want to sell that at baseball games, college football games, boxing cards, papal visits, and of course, our matches. That is their end-all and be-all, and thinking anything else is just a waste of brain cells. And they don't want a bunch of hooligans
lighting blockbusters at the foot of Babe Ruth's monument, or trying to smoke out the third base line. That goes against everything they stand for, and they will do whatever they have to do to prevent that from happening.

So why would they even bother then, you ask? Because they now have 17 extra revenue opportunities, and whatever "synergies" they can "leverage" from this relationship. That they control. Entirely. Just them. Not us.

It ain't good, it ain't bad. It just is. Don't blame a shark for being a shark, and don't blame a multi-billion dollar, publicity-dependent entertainment corporation for being exactly what they are showing themselves to be.

NYCFC made this deal, and we have to live with it. As supporters, we are now challenged, big-time. So let's rise to that challenge, get our own act together, and figure out how to operate in the boundaries that we're given. If we can't have much TIFO, then we have to bring the noise. No horns, but we each have lungs. Capo's can stand on the damn bleachers for a few seconds to get things started. But we need to focus on what we need to do, and not on how we "got screwed by the man".

And please lay off of the "I'm sneaking smoke in, flags in, TIFO in, whatever in" crap. We are going to depend on making nice with the ushers and cops, to show them that a Mongol horde hasn't shown up to tear the stadium apart. Once we do that, then we can "leverage" the "synergies" (see what I did there?) that we created with these folks, and go to town. But if we make their lives difficult, they will be on us like stink on shit. Promise.

So everyone take a deep breath, let it out, crack a beer, smoke 'em if you got 'em, and get your head around this. It's here, and it ain't gonna change. Now let's put it behind us and focus on the thing that brought us all together to begin with - the team, and the matches.

Here's to our own home in two years.

Again - one idiot's opinion.