Soccer Home Companion
Since April of 1996, when I attended the first home match for the New York/New Jersey MetroStars of the then-nascent Major League Soccer, I’d been demanding a new, soccer-only home for the local side. The new MLS was a wobbly affair, trying to coattail the “frenzy” of soccer enthusiasm which bubbled up during the blast-furnace summer that was the 1994 FIFA World Cup, hosted by these United States.
Giants Stadium was an embarrassment for soccer. The pitch, which varied from turf to grass back to turf, was barely fit in the lower bowl of the concrete mess known by fans as The Swamp. “The Meadowlands” in East Rutherford had kind of a Phillip K. Dick other-worldliness to its geographic locale. And to watch Cobi Jones of the Los Angeles Galaxy struggling to find spare inches between the corner flag and the wall of the lower stand in order to take a corner kick, was a laughably morose sight.
The MetroStars became New York Red Bull when the Austrian energy drink giant bought the club in 2006. In 2010, the RBNY MLS staff moved their cardboard boxes away from their NFL facility near the Hackensack River to a new Euro-style, soccer only home called Red Bull Arena, hard by the Passaic River in Harrison, NJ.
So after years of whining in columns about Giants Stadium, my wish had been granted for the local soccer outfit. But as the Red Bulls settled in, I had settled out and moved to upstate New York. It wasn’t until mid-July of 2024, some 14 years after the new arena opened, that I finally stepped foot in it. And it was an unlikely opportunity.
Through the years, I had chances to attend Red Bull soccer commuting from Dutchess County, NY, but raising a child and driving a taxi always outweighed the trip to Jersey, even with French superstar Thierry Henry tearing up the Kentucky Bluegrass of Red Bull Arena. Part of that upstate quality of life was youth soccer for my daughter. She thrived on the ball, evolved into an attacking midfielder and by her senior year of high school was captain of the girls soccer varsity. Along the way I got to know her teammates and therefore her teammates’ parents, all of them small-town neighbors. One is a U.S. Women’s National team superfan and with a sports frenzy weekend in mid-July (Euro soccer final, COPA America soccer final, Wimbledon tennis final, NPSL North Atlantic Conference final) she offered me a stray ticket and a ride to and from the USA women’s Olympic warm-up friendly against Mexico. The venue?
Red Bull Arena in Harrison, NJ.
The trip included one of my daughter’s earliest coach/influencers, a Vassar College professor whose daughter was a stalwart teammate, and the women’s soccer superfan and map specialist husband whose daughter was a top defender for the scholastic squads of Rhinebeck. We sat in the SUV bound for Jersey while our kids, all at college now, frolicked with friends during summer break returns. It was a soccer version of The Big Chill, but without the funeral. We’d all missed the Los Lobos 50th anniversary concert the night before in nearby Accord, NY, but that was okay because we had to save our energy for this sojourn.
Since I’d moved away from Rhinebeck and into Kingston early this year, it was good to catch up with the people who used to bring orange slices and portable canopies to games and practices. As we made good time southbound on the New York State Thruway, soccer nostalgia set in as the New Jersey border loomed.
Newark unfolded in its usual pugilistic, weary post-industrial fashion. At a traffic light there was a white bicycle chained to a lamp post covered in plastic daisies withering with each passing vehicle. A Mickey Rooney lookalike wandered around a Sunoco lot carrying a fresh-looking Ping golf bag, void of a single club. I like approaching grounds, spotting the light towers, eyeing the freelance parking lot/yard folks with dreams of matchday riches.
But there was nothing grand or dramatic surrounding my first glance of Red Bull Arena. Many luxury apartment complexes have been erected near the facility, which has proximity to the Harrison station of the PATH train. Stuck in a single-lane traffic jam, we finally turned a corner off of Guyon Drive and there at the end of a blank, Cleveland-style two blocks, was what looked like a 25,000 seat bouncy castle. I was expecting more of the Euro look, which it has from aerial footage (which I had seen on TV). And if you view it from the Passaic River side (impossible unless you have a skiff to dump bodies) it looks like you could be in Qatar or at least Belgium. The arena was originally done up by a Detroit-based architect, so they could’ve opted for influences from the film The Crow to enhance the Harrison futbol vibe. But they didn’t.
The slogan flags fly from ignored poles “Red Runs Deep” with the NY Red Bull logo on them. There’s very little acknowledgement of the National Women’s Soccer League champion New York/New Jersey Gotham, which pisses off my superfan hostess. She’s got season tickets for Gotham matches and finds the on-site promotion of the franchise lacking.
The US women were using this match to honor the 1999 Women’s World Cup championship squad, the Y2K darlings who beat China in a penalty shootout. They called it “Impact 99” (sponsored by New York Life, of course) and the pre-game intros of the old squad were fun, despite the Saharan-style heat wave that had settled over Harrison for the afternoon. The players stood on a tarp with the old US soccer crest (I hate the new version which is basically a K-Swiss sneaker logo rip-off). Scanning the pitch, it was great to see the moral victory of corner flags casting shadows deep into the ample space where players could rightfully perform their corner kick duties.
The full interior of Red Bull Arena is two-tier simplicity. The upper stand facing the tip of the Newark skyline is opposite a taller single stand featuring just a few seats down low and the rest is a wall of hospitality and press areas. With the excessive heat it was hard to watch sideline reporters interviewing the ‘99 squad while wearing traditional wool supporter’s scarves. There’s a reason the rest of the world doesn’t play soccer in the dead of summer.
Watching women’s soccer is to be hypnotized by ponytails. The bob and weave and swish can be used as decoys for faking out an opponent not watching the ball. The hair goes one way, she goes the other. It was enjoyable to see the scoreboard portraits of the US squad done without matchday ponytails. With hair down, it was easier to see individual personalities emerging from these women who will take on Zambia in Nice on July 25 to open the Summer Olympics women’s soccer tourney.
In Harrison, the US women spent the first half trying to muscle their way through the Mexican backline. They had a few shots on target, but the sun-splashed teams headed for the dressing rooms 0-0 at half. Earlier this year, the US women were shut out by Mexico 2-0 in the Gold Cup tournament. This was a revenge match, then, but it was a younger squad with a new coach. And in the 64th minute, Sophia Smith, the only player with her hair in a Charlotte Bronte-style bun, rifled in a goal after getting great help from Trinity Rodman and Mallory Swanson. It was Smith’s 20th goal of her international career.
After Smith’s crisp tally, the upper deck of Red Bull Arena had a slight vertical sway as the sold-out crowd celebrated. It was reminiscent of the old Yankee Stadium upper deck when David Justice homered in the 2000 ALCS against Seattle. A test of architectural and engineering fortitude. USWNT fans went home happy on July 13, but it wasn’t easy. Red Bull Arena might’ve corrected the pitch infrastructure issues and given the term “soccer-only” a lot of cred, but the Jersey traffic woes, just like post-game Giants Stadium, continue in Newark. It took an hour to get out of the lots, but, hey, when you’ve got a perfect Kentucky Bluegrass field and room for corner kicks, who’s counting?