Just three months into the 2022 season, New York City FC have already called six different venues home. The wanderer lifestyle is one NYCFC and its supporters have been forced to get used to, as the team haven’t played consecutive home matches at the same venue since the middle of March. Impressively, the club’s home form has remained excellent regardless of the setting, but the couch-hopping has reached jarring new levels.
With soccer-specific stadium progress seemingly nonexistent at the moment, this nomadic existence looks set to be the norm for the foreseeable future. The US Open Cup run has given Belson Stadium, the cozy turf-pitched soccer stadium built atop a parking garage on the St. John’s campus, its moment in the sun as a first-team venue — with less-than-stellar reviews from homeand opposing managers.
As the home stadium shuffle shows no signs of stopping, what better time than now to create an extremely subjective, non-scientific ranking of every place NYCFC has called home for a competitive match?
First, I’d like to ward off some of the inevitable scoffing and outrage this post will inspire. I’m heavily weighting the NYCFC fan’s experience. It is undeniable that any ranking of NYCFC venues from an on-the-field, playing perspective should have the grass pitches in soccer-specific stadiums in the very top spots, with converted baseball fields and plastic surfaces battling it out at the bottom. For this list, I’m focusing more on what it feels like to be in the stands, the general vibe of NYCFC’s home matches, geography (since, incredibly, California is somehow involved in this), and my personal biases.
With all that hopefully sufficiently explained, please try to be gentle and not give in to the urge to yell at me as I rank all the couches NYCFC has crashed on to date.
