New York City FC president and CEO Brad Sims held a media availability with members of the NYCFC press ahead of the team's 2025 home opener vs. Orlando City at Yankee Stadium. Sims has made a habit of discussing the club with the media prior to the home opener – we had a similar interview opportunity with the CEO in March 2024. This time around, there was an air of retrospection to the conversation given the many celebrations around the 10th anniversary of New York City FC's inaugural season.
Read on for every word Sims said on the significance of the club's 10th anniversary, the progress already made on building Etihad Park in Willets Point, Queens, shifts to the team's player recruitment philosophy, how the club currently views disgraced legend David Villa, and what plans are in motion for a new training facility and youth academy.
On New York City FC celebrating its 10th Anniversary.
"Extremely special. It's a big milestone for the club and it's a time for us to reflect, for our fans to reflect about some considerable accomplishments that we've made over the first 10 years. Sometimes you forget how new this club is. I mean, 10 years is not very long in the grand scheme of things, for football clubs around the world. We feel great about what we have accomplished on and off the pitch, on the pitch, having, having a trophy cabinet outside here with a few trophies in it. Off the pitch, the first thing I think about is the community impact we've had in the New York community through our foundation City in the Community, whether that's our mini-pitch initiative, we've built to this point almost 60 pitches throughout the five boroughs. We have a commitment to build 26 more in conjunction with the 2026 World Cup over the next few years. The first of those 26...maybe I'm not even supposed to share this, but it's already out of my mouth, but the first one's coming up in late April, early May. We're excited to be working with the local New York/New Jersey World Cup organizing committee, as well, as they're also going to be doing a 26-pitch initiative. We're working together. We're matching, we're going to work to match theirs and work in conjunction with them. So they've been great partners.
So that's another thing about the anniversary, to think about the next 10 years. With the World Cup, just the meteoric rise of the sport in this country, in the New York market. And of course, in 2027 opening the new stadium at Willets Point, Queens, Etihad Park. So, so much to be proud of as we reflect and look back, and then also there's this excitement about what the next 10 years, 20 years, 30 years look like as well. Just couldn't be more excited about this weekend and what the future holds."
On if fans will get access to Etihad Park to tour the construction site and see the progress being made.
"100% doable but at this point in time, it's too early. It's just a very, very active construction site, and quite frankly, not a lot to see. I'll be honest, amazing work's been done. We're only 13-14 weeks in and we're already three to five weeks ahead of schedule. A benefit of good weather, so far, the land conditions have been better. You know, sometimes you don't know what you're going to get into. You know, we have 200-plus pilings that we had to get into in the ground. They're all in and all in place, all while ahead of schedule, and so we're doing electrical, plumbing work now, getting the foundation going. So we're ahead of schedule, it's good, hopefully that will continue. I'm not knocking on the wood here, but I think it's not likely until, I would say probably late 2025 maybe in early 2026 where we'll likely start, you know, bringing people on site, but we, 100% will have opportunities for fans to be on site before then, and then also have opportunities for our fans to come to our Etihad Park Experience Center, which is in Midtown Manhattan as well, so that that's another great opportunity to really get an immersive feel for what the stadium experience is going to be all about."
Andrew Leigh
On team's on-field evolution during the 10 years of existence.
"It's a really good question, I get asked that a lot if we're going to change back so to speak, to where we were before. I think it's from learning, learning what works and what doesn't work. I would say ambition to win trophies, we did a lot of research to understand what winning teams in MLS, teams that were winning trophies, what they look like, what their team composition looks like. A lot of credit to Dave Lee, when he came in, he had done this research. He had looked at it and said, Hey, the way to win is to focus on having better depth and being more spread across your roster and not being so top heavy, and having a locker room where everyone was very cohesive, and we had a great focus on the cultural piece.
You look at the teams that have won over time, and they really haven't been the teams that have the quote, unquote aging superstars. By the way, on top of that, from my standpoint, it was music to my ears, because I'm trying to find a way for us to run a business run, run a club in an economically feasible and sustainable manner. Quite frankly, the first, you know, the first four years of our club, we had the least amount of success on the pitch, in terms of a points-per-season basis, and getting far in the playoffs or winning trophies or anything like that. It was our worst four-year stretch of any four years that we've had, and it was by far the most expensive in terms of roster composition, and our most unprofitable roster. So there was actually a double or triple whammy where the economics aren't good and the results weren't particularly good on the field, and then all sudden, you know, we kind of instituted a new model, and we won more, and we had more success in the playoffs, and it was in a more economically sustainable manner, where the players that you are investing in not only can give you top tier production like a Taty Castellanos, but we also generated a significant return on investment with Taty specifically, and more recently, with Santi Rodríguez.
That kind of model where you can get high-caliber production from players that you can win games with and be consistent winners near the top of the table, put yourself in positions to be able to compete for trophies come playoff time, and do better financially, especially given the limitations that we have, being a tenant and only being a tenant for 17 days a year where we can generate revenue, versus in your own stadium where you have 365 days a year where you can generate revenue. You add all those things together, and it's been a no-brainer for the direction of the team. We're proud that we're one of only two teams in all of MLS that have made it to the Eastern Conference Semifinals or better in seven of the last nine years, the only team in the Eastern Conference that has done that, and Seattle is the only other team in MLS has done that. Having a consistent winner, doing it more in an economically sustainable way, putting ourselves in a position to win trophies, and actually winning trophies, which we didn't do our first four years. To me, it's made a ton of sense.
Dave said it before, we're not set on one specific strategy. It's not "Never say never," rules change in this league, sometimes on an annual basis. I expect this league to be even more aggressive than ever before in the next few years in terms of player investment. We just know there's going to be this rocket fuel added to the sport and the league with the 2026 World Cup. You don't know what it's going to look like in the future, we'll never rule anything out, but we feel that the path that we've been on the last six, seven years has been a really good path, and right now that's how we're building the team, and we reserve the right to change that in the future."
On why the team ignored David Villa on social media following allegations he sexually harassed a team intern, and why NYCFC is now sharing more of his highlights and images.
"Well, the 10th anniversary, going back to the first question, is a time to reflect on the history of the club and everything over the first 10 years. From a sporting standpoint, as you mentioned, that's the focus. If you think about our day-to-day, you know, if you go three months out from now, or six months or nine months out from now, we don't really focus a lot on the past. You know, you may have an "On This Day" post, if something amazing happened on that day in the club's history. Other than that, our coverage is what's happening now, really, and what stories are we telling now? So there isn't, you know, maybe there hadn't been, over the last, you know, number of years, or number of months, or whatever, you know, time frame. I'm not following it that granularly, posts of David, but also probably not that many posts of Jack Harrison or Frank Lampard or whoever else.
In terms of a count of social media posts of all of our alumni over the last, you know, nine to 12 months, I can't imagine it's very many posts. Very different, as we are reflecting on the 10-year anniversary of our club, and that's what we're been doing over the last few weeks and months, and engaging our fans and asking them, what they want to see more of, who they want to hear from, who had the best goals of all time, who had the most, you know, memorable moments, who had all these things. So a lot of these are fan-driven.
I think it's impossible to tell the story of the first 10 years of this club, without including the all-time goal scorer in club history, a guy who won the league MVP, guy who made 100-plus appearances, who was a team captain, etc. When it has made sense, you know, it would be almost impossible not to have him in there. By the way, our fans are speaking, and I'm sure you've seen that the comments have been overwhelmingly positive from a fan standpoint. We know that fans have strong feelings towards David. Will that change our approach in the future? I don't, we haven't discussed that. I think that what we've discussed is, it's the 10th anniversary. We're celebrating the first 10 years of the club. We want to give the fans what they want to see and hear and consume, and the response has been positive."
On NYCFC's ambition to build a new academy and training facility.
"Yes, actively looking, including meeting on it yesterday and pretty regularly. We're looking at a number of different sites. We do have, and we do believe we would have an opportunity here in Orangeburg, [New York, site of current City Football Academy (CFA)] to expand. We own more land adjacent to our CFA, and there's even more land that we believe that we could potentially have access to.
So the question is whether we want to do it here, or if it makes sense to do it elsewhere. But we're looking at a number of different opportunities, a number of different options, and it's definitely a priority. Our Academy, for the infrastructure situation, much like our First Team, much like our entire club, we've been very scrappy. We out-punched our weight big time. The amount of talent that we've developed in 10 years. We had our ninth Homegrown debut with Jonny Shore in Miami to start the year. To produce nine MLS players in 10 years in the Academy, to win trophies, many trophies at the Academy level, to produce a player, Christian McFarlane, who played at every level of our Academy, played at our Second Team, played our First Team, and then gets signed by Manchester City. There's been so many wins, and we have a ton of young players that are signed to First Team contracts, or Second Team contracts that likely will become First Team contracts.
Our pipeline is so strong, and to do all that with the kind of headwinds and challenges from an infrastructure standpoint has been unbelievable work. Tons of credit to everybody in our Academy, all of our coaches, our academy director, we've had so many top coaches in that group who have developed players, and it's been an amazing story. Just think about what it would look like if we had the best-in-class facility for them as well, that's what we're hoping to do, and it definitely is high on my radar, for sure."
