Inter Miami are gonna get a stadium before NYCFC does

Yeah, that headline is correct. Despite not being due for MLS play until 2020, Inter Miami — the brainchild and long-awaited club owned in part by footballing legend David Beckham — is closer to a stadium than New York City FC is.

According to the BBC, 60% of Miami residents have decided to allow Beckham’s ownership group to negotiate for a 73-acre site that is currently home to a golf course. If all goes according to plan, the site will eventually include Inter Miami’s stadium, a shopping mall, a public park, and a hotel.

As an NYCFC fan, this is nothing short of embarrassing.

The argument that our club shouldn’t have been allowed in the league prior to procuring a stadium site is one that has been made more times than I could ever hope to remember. So, I’ll say this:

How in the hell is a club owned in part by the New York Yankees and City Football Group still searching for a stadium site? I get that New York real estate is hard to come by and I would never pretend that getting a site big enough to build a desirable stadium is an easy task. But we have technically been a club for over five years now, and the closest we have gotten to putting a shovel in the dirt is when NYCFC had a bidding “war” against the NHL’s New York Islanders for land in Belmont last year.

Since the Islanders were granted the Belmont site, the only significant news regarding a stadium we’ve had was back in April when news broke that NYCFC had pursued a site at the Harlem River Yards. This site would’ve had everything pretty much: a nice 26,000 capacity stadium, a new hospital, and affordable housing. But within a week, Jon Patricof — club president at the time — squashed all of our dreams and said that Harlem River Yards was “not an active site.”

Within the last year, we’ve seen Los Angeles FC build the beautiful Banc of California Stadium, D.C. United completed their gorgeous Audi Field, Minnesota United are all but ready to move into the nearly-completed Allianz Field, and now Inter Miami have been given the green light to negotiate for their own piece of land.

Well, at least we’ve had some focus groups recently.