As you likely have heard by now, New York City FC is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the team's on-field debut in 2015.
The 2025 home opener was played on the exact date of the first-ever match 10 years ago against the same opponent and the lead-up to the game featured lots of different commemorations of that inaugural match and the inaugural 2015 season.
Much was packed into these pre-home opener anniversary celebrations, like fan events, media availabilities, on-field ceremonies during the pregame, and many social media posts highlighting various big 10th-anniversary things.
Here is what stood out the most, for better or worse, about all that was done around the 10th anniversary of NYCFC's on-field debut.
The Founding Members
A great, necessary thing the team did across its many 10th anniversary celebrations was put the remaining Founding Members first. They used the sizable digital screens at Yankee Stadium to display a continuous scroll of names of all the remaining Founding Members, the season-ticket holders who signed up during the inaugural 2015 season, a group that numbered as high as 20,000 back in October 2015.
The number of Founding Members still in place without lapsing on season-ticket ownership and losing their status in the eyes of the team: 1,686, according to an announcement made by NYCFC public address announcer Mark Fratto before the home opener vs. Orlando City SC while introducing the visual scroll of all Founding Member names.
This specific match-going core of the fanbase is much smaller than what it was 10 years ago, and not indicative of the total number of existing "City Members" who have signed up at other points and persist as NYCFC season-ticket holders today.
The Founding Members, though, are a special diehard group that has hung on through some extremely disruptive things: The team's longer-than-expected search to secure a soccer stadium in the city, a global pandemic that shut down a season's worth of matches for attending fans, and a nomadic existence jumping from stadium-to-stadium as scheduling home games got more and more complicated post-pandemic. It's cool to see the time-lapse photos taken by fans 10 years between home openers, like this one the team highlighted on the night of the Orlando game.
This anniversary should have been a big one for these fans, as will be the day now fast approaching in 2027 when the club delivers on a promise made back during and before the 2015 season: If you signed up to be a Founding Member, you get your "names etched in stone at the Club’s future soccer-specific stadium," something the team was still promoting while trying to sell Founding Member spots in October 2015.
They're the bedrock of the team's fandom and the team's president and CEO Brad Sims told the media last September that they've already identified the place in Etihad Park where they're going to commemorate the Founding Members with those "names etched in stone," so this anniversary is one part of an exciting few years in store for a small but significant part of the NYCFC family.
Pirlo's prominence
The third Designated Player in New York City FC history, Andrea Pirlo, was heavily featured in the team's 10th anniversary celebrations.
He participated in a former NYCFC player Q&A at a season ticket holder event, visited the Empire State Building with Matt Freese and Maxi Moralez, then appeared on-field at Yankee Stadium before the home opener to meet with members of the media and to go onto the field with other former NYCFC players including his 2015 teammates RJ Allen and Kwadwo Poku, plus Tony Rocha for obligatory 2021 MLS Cup reasons.
Asked Pirlo how he remembers his MLS debut and what stands out looking back on his time in NYC: “I remember everything because it was a wonderful day in my career. It was an objective that I really wanted to achieve, to play in America. I did it and it was wonderful.”
— Hudson River Blue (@hudsonriverblue.com) March 8, 2025 at 7:34 PM
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Having Pirlo serve as the celebrity face of the 2015 celebrations is slightly ironic for a few reasons. Pirlo was prominent just as current team president and CEO Brad Sims was saying of the team's early days under different leadership spending big money to sign players like Pirlo: "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."
Pirlo, Frank Lampard, and David Villa got the team lots of attention during those early seasons, but only Villa consistently drew headlines for his play for NYCFC. Pirlo in particular more often got criticized or turned into a meme for his efforts, or lack thereof, while playing the last games of his career in MLS.
When celebrating a symbolic anniversary, though, it matters not that Pirlo did little to justify his exorbitant salary during his time playing for NYCFC. Nor is anyone focusing on how the 2015 squad was one of the least successful in the team's 10-year history, they're just happy to see Pirlo and Poku together again.
A soft David Villa relaunch?
Another person you saw again for the 10th anniversary: David Villa, the first player ever signed by NYCFC and the club's all-time leading scorer, re-emerged on the official team's social media channels following a lengthy absence that began with accusations emerging in 2020 that he sexually harassed a club intern during his time with the team.
Brad Sims gave a circuitous answer when asked by The Outfield about the team’s decision to again start showing Villa highlights, photos, etc., on their accounts, never acknowledging the accusations against Villa while trying to downplay the significance of not mentioning the team's leading goalscorer and former MLS MVP on any official team channels for multiple years.
There was some expectation Villa might attend the home opener or be even more involved in these 2015 celebrations, but he made no appearances beyond some highlights and a taped message he made addressing the fans as part of a social video. That's not to say he won't do more in the future – Brad Sims was noncommittal, saying "We know that fans have strong feelings towards David. Will that change our approach in the future? 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."
Hudson River Blue Staff
The total Villa blackout has ended, but the question now seems to be if this was a true one-off for this special anniversary, or if this is the beginning of a gradual re-introduction of a player who was accused of doing some hugely inappropriate things while with the team, and who has never publicly expressed regret or apology or made any acknowledgment of wrongdoing since the accusations against him emerged.
Villa was beloved for his many on-field accomplishments while with NYCFC and that apparently was enough to get him eased back into the team's public-facing content for this big anniversary to-do, but the troubling accounts of his inappropriate behavior toward a team intern should not be brushed aside and forgotten. You don't have to just take my word for that, you can go to The Athletic and read the full account from the team intern who experienced it.
The cult heroes
The choice to get back into the "promoting David Villa" game was a debatable one, but it's much less complicated to bring back fan favorites like Kwadwo Poku, a player who is in a tight race with Tommy McNamara for the biggest cult hero in New York City FC's history.
POKUUUUU 🗣️
— New York City FC (@newyorkcityfc.com) March 8, 2025 at 5:47 PM
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Poku plus RJ Allen and Tony Rocha drew a sizable crowd for their pre-Orlando meet-and-greet, which got slightly more complicated when Ticketmaster crashed and stadium entry was held up at Yankee Stadium – somewhat amazing that the two most recent home regular season matches NYCFC played both featured pre-match issues that delayed stadium entry for fans, this snafu for the home opener following a suspicious package requiring a sweep of Red Bull Arena by Harrison police for the final "home" match of 2024 vs. Nashville SC on October 6, 2024.
Mix Diskerud was not at the game but he marked the occasion of his scoring the first goal in NYCFC history. New York City FC's first-ever No 10 returned to a familiar art form to honor his goal anniversary, writing an original poem. It's akin to the one he somewhat infamously wrote in February 2017, but 2025's poem strikes a very different tone than what Mix wrote while on his way out of NYCFC.
Perhaps the choice of a poem is a subtle nod to a squashing of any possible lingering beef between Mix and the team, eight years after the player foretold his exit from the team in verse. While Pirlo was the famous face that made the most media rounds before the 10th NYCFC home opener played at Yankee Stadium, little things like a poem from Mix, appearances from fan-favorite players like Poku, Allen, and even Tony Rocha, and the steps taken to honor the Founding Members are all collectively what struck the most tingly nostalgic chords while celebrating hitting the 10-year mark.
