The bar erupts. Patrons scream “LET’S GO!” New York City is utterly supercharged by sport right now. This small watering hole, at 38th and 2nd Street on Manhattan’s East Side, is a microcosm of the mood.
But it’s not MLS, the Premier League or even a sport involving a ball on the screens. It’s the New York Rangers ice hockey team, who have just struck four unanswered goals in the final 15 minutes of a vital play-off game to beat the Carolina Hurricanes 5-3 and reach the Eastern Conference final – a semi-final, in effect – of the unfeasibly large Stanley Cup.
In the week FourFourTwo land in New York, the city is approaching it’s-coming-home levels of excitement – the local basketball team, the Knicks, are in the play-offs, too. Four sports dominate in the US – baseball, American football, basketball and ice hockey – but 30 years on from the 1994 World Cup, football is knocking at the door again.
Shooting the ‘soccer’ breeze with locals is a charming-yet-alarming experience. One taxi driver we meet insists he’s au fait with the rules: “Like, I know the defensemen can’t cross the halfway line.” Right on, man.
In two years’ time, a World Cup final kicks off at the MetLife Stadium, 10 miles from the sports bar in which we’re sat watching ice hockey. Soccer’s glass ceiling in New York feels simultaneously close to cracking and rock solid, yet certain moments across the next 48 hours point to green shoots of growth that give the beautiful game a genuine shot at breaking the stubborn States. It just needs cultivating with more soccer-specific stadia and America’s favourite ingredient: wins.
We spend our first morning in Manhattan attempting to escape it. We’ve accepted an invitation to watch New York City FC train, after the promise of a chat with their head coach Nick Cushing. But the club’s practice facility is 19 miles north in Orangeburg, a 45-minute drive
