Randall's Island is once again a destination for professional soccer, with New York City FC II debuting on the new grass pitch installed inside Icahn Stadium as part of a $3 million upgrade (paid for by NYCFC) to the track-and-field venue.
In the simplest terms, Icahn Stadium will now be a second home venue for NYCFC II of MLS NEXT Pro, joining Belson Stadium in Jamaica, Queens on the campus of St. John's University, as places where you can go to watch the next wave of potential NYCFC players break through as professionals.
It's less simple to understand exactly where Randall's Island and Icahn Stadium will fit into the long-term picture for both New York City FC and the NYCFC II team. It’s not a given that Icahn Stadium will become the “forever home” for the MLS NEXT Pro side, nor is it clear how or if the senior NYCFC squad will be utilizing the stadium.
After speaking with Jennifer O’Sullivan, the club's Chief Operating Officer, it’s clear that Icahn Stadium is now an option to host a future US Open Cup match with either the First or Second team. And it’s also now at least a theoretical possibility for other NYCFC First Team matches that can't be played at either of the club's preferred baseball stadium homes.
“The great thing is that there's now a possibility, whereas before there was none,” said O’Sullivan. “It's a lot easier to do now than it would have ever been before. It at least puts it on the table so that there could be a conversation, if there was ever a need.”
When discussing the potential for Icahn Stadium to become the primary home for NYCFC II, O’Sullivan was clear in saying it was still an open question. “It remains to be seen where we feel like the best location will be for them to succeed as a brand on their own. We're just starting those conversations. Is that in the five boroughs? Is that somewhere else? I think all of that remains to be seen.”
This echoes what the team’s CEO, Brad Sims, has said about NYCFC II. In an interview from March 2023, Sims said, “I want them to be a commercially viable, stand-alone, marketable entity with a name that’s not NYCFC II, that is its own brand, which means playing somewhere in a facility that is appropriate for that level of play, 2,500 to 7,000 seats depending on that market, somewhere nearby but probably not in Queens if we have our First Team in Queens.”
Randall’s Island fits as “nearby but probably not in Queens,” but it also does not sound like Icahn Stadium is viewed as the long-term solution for NYCFC II. When asked if NYCFC II could move into Icahn Stadium permanently, Jennifer O’Sullivan said “I think short-term, this will be a good home for us. Whether that's a long-term home remains to be seen, but it is something that we're in active conversations about, and weighing pros and cons.”
Icahn Stadium as a soccer venue
The pros of Icahn Stadium for NYCFC II become evident when you attend a match there, especially if you’ve previously visited Belson Stadium. On Randall’s Island, Matt Pilkington’s NYCFC II players get a chance to play on natural grass, a relief from the artificial turf at Belson Stadium, where the field also sits on top of a parking garage and has very little to offer in the way of concessions, or a concourse, or much of anything for fans who choose to attend. It feels more like a schoolyard than a stadium.
A proper grandstand with a concourse and food concessions give Icahn Stadium another edge on Belson Stadium, while also providing more of the feel of being at an actual professional soccer match. The new Kentucky Bluegrass pitch looked good if a little dry at the start of the game (a halftime watering took care of that), and mostly played great (save for one troublesome patch of rectangular brown turf near a corner that didn’t seem to take when installed). The setting nestled against the East River with unobstructed views of the city lives up to its reputation, especially as the sun began to set during the second half.
Summer NYCFC II matches on grass on Randall’s Island might be preferable to the sun-scorched turf and metal bleachers of Belson Stadium, though depending on which way the wind blows, the smell around Icahn Stadium can be a bit ripe. The stadium sits in close proximity to the Wards Island Wastewater Treatment Plant, and at certain points of the NYCFC II-Atlanta United 2 match, you could tell.
So far, plans only call for two NYCFC II matches this year at Icahn Stadium: The inaugural game with Atlanta United 2 on Friday afternoon, and a match with Toronto FC II on Wednesday, September 11 at 5 pm. (The final two NYCFC II home matches of the season will be at Belson Stadium.) In addition, the club's annual Local Ford Classic charity match between members of the New York City police and fire departments is scheduled for the night of September 23.
The number of NYCFC II matches at Icahn Stadium will rise in 2025 but it’s unclear to what extent. “Next year is an opportunity for a little bit more, and we'll see what works for them as partners and what works for us,” said Deborah Maher, head of the Randall’s Island Park Alliance, the nonprofit that oversees, maintains, and develops programming for the island’s parkland and its stadium.
“I would very much like to have more matches here, more practices, and more exposure. I think it's a beautiful facility, it's a grass pitch, and there's not many in the city here.”
Hudson River Blue Staff
What's the plan for NYCFC II?
The length of time NYCFC II will spend calling Randall’s Island and Icahn Stadium home remains unsettled, as the club is open in saying it is still figuring out the “master plan” for its MLS NEXT Pro franchise.
According to Jennifer O’Sullivan, questions around NYCFC II include: “How do you build a brand around your second team? How do you give them the best opportunity for success, while remaining connected from a player training perspective, and making sure that you still have that ability to move First Team players and academy players up and they're all still connected?”
Two MLS teams in California, LA Galaxy and San Jose Earthquakes, have taken on new partners as commercial operators of their MLS NEXT Pro teams while also rebranding those teams and relocating them to new homes away from their parent clubs and their stadiums, all while maintaining control over the sporting side of their lower-level affiliates.
San Jose Earthquakes II were the first to make this move, becoming The Town FC and leaving PayPal Park in San Jose, CA for Saint Mary's Stadium on the campus of Saint Mary's College of California in Moraga, CA, in the East Bay. Not long after, LA Galaxy II, who once played on the same field as the Galaxy in Carson, CA, announced plans to become Ventura County FC while moving a portion of their schedule to Thousand Oaks, CA, on the other side of Los Angeles County.
Hudson River Blue can confirm that NYCFC has held talks with external groups over developing a similar arrangement for NYCFC II, though no agreements have been reached, with the need to maintain control over player movement and sporting decisions mentioned as a sticking point.
It’s possible MLS Commissioner Don Garber provided a hint as to where NYCFC II might, hypothetically, eventually, land. In May, Garber told Newsday that NYCFC’s permanent move to Willets Point made him bullish on NEXT Pro expansion to Long Island. “It will open up the Long Island area, which is a big soccer hotbed. I think there’s minor-league opportunities there for us. We should be thinking about Long Island for MLS Next Pro,” Garber said in an interview from May (subscribers-only).
This could bring us back again to Brad Sims’s comments to the press from March 2023, in which he also said “We really need a space to be built for our First Team, Second Team, and all of our Academy teams together.” Might that be another project that begins to take shape—possibly somewhere on Long Island?—now that the Willets Point soccer stadium will soon reach shovels-in-the-ground status?
(Asked about the Queens stadium's groundbreaking, Jennifer O'Sullivan said "There's a lot of time-consuming work that's going on in order to get everything finalized…We'd love to have it certainly before the end of this year, and that's our target.")
A mutually beneficial pitch
NYCFC is in a position to shift focus to finding things like a new stadium for its reserve team in part because of the clarity they’ve reached in the saga that was the decade-long search for a soccer-specific stadium to host the main MLS team.
Jennifer O’Sullivan said the Willets Point stadium project’s approval “Allowed us to then turn our attention to some of these other projects and to say, these are things that we think are important, that we think in the long run could be good for the club, could be good for NYCFC II, and could be good for this community.”
Andrew Leigh
All of Hudson River Blue's coverage of the NYCFC stadium search.
The installation of that new grass pitch sounded like a move made to benefit both NYCFC and the stewards of Randall’s Island. The return of soccer to the island could alleviate some of the pressure that gets put on NYCFC’s training facility in Orangeburg, NY. As Jennifer O’Sullivan put it, “There just are not that many grass pitches available for professional teams to train on in this area. We get a lot of folks that come to us wanting to use our training facility. It's hard for us, just given the traffic that we have there, but this [Icahn Stadium] is another great option.”
The example NYCFC’s COO used was Manchester City FC, who came through New York City during their preseason tour of the United States and held training sessions at NYCFC’s facility up in Rockland County before playing AC Milan in a star-studded friendly at Yankee Stadium.
Deborah Maher wants that new Icahn Stadium pitch to host teams of the ilk of Man City, and Randall’s Island has already gotten a head start on welcoming back European clubs who also played a part in the island’s deep soccer history.
German Bundesliga club Eintracht Frankfurt visited Icahn Stadium for an open training session on August 1, a nod to the historic summer tour of America the Frankfurt club took in 1951, which included playing games at the then-Triborough Stadium against the likes of Celtic FC from Scotland.
The new pitch at Icahn Stadium also arrives with time to ramp up its use ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which will include a World Cup Final played across the Hudson River at East Rutherford, New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium.
Randall’s Island Park Alliance leader Deborah Maher said “Absolutely, yes,” when asked if the goal is to host World Cup-related events and activities on Randall’s and at Icahn Stadium. Whether that means a national team using the grass field inside the track stadium as a training ground, or fan fests on the park grounds, or something else, remains to be determined.
Complicated times for Randall's Island
Maher also acknowledged that all this planning around soccer and Icahn Stadium is happening while Randall’s Island makes headlines as it plays host to a shelter for asylum-seeking migrants erected by the City of New York. More than 2,000 people are currently living in a shelter erected across four of the island’s 60 soccer fields, a situation highlighted expertly in this report on life at the Randall’s Island shelter by Arya Sundaram of Gothamist.
This huge humanitarian crisis has touched all parts of New York City, and it’s front-and-center on Randall’s Island. The Randall’s Island Park Alliance has threatened to sue the city over the shelter. Maher of the Park Alliance said “We've been very vocal that it shouldn't be there, that it's parkland alienation in our point of view. We’re working closely with City Hall, the Mayor, the Parks Department, and we are working to get it removed, and my hope is in 2025, it will be removed.”
The Randall’s Island Park Alliance has been clear about wanting to reclaim those soccer fields, but it’s a massive question as to how that would happen, and if there’s any realistic chance the shelter and its occupants will be relocated in 2025.
It’s still the earliest of early days in this new phase of "Randall’s Island: Soccer Destination." Both NYCFC and its new partners overseeing activity on the island stressed that there is much to still be decided about how much soccer will end up inside Icahn Stadium.
“I think it's just the beginning stages for us for how can we utilize this space in the best way for NYCFC, for our fans, for the NYCFC II team,” said NYCFC COO O’Sullivan.
It's also not clear if further enhancements might be in store for Icahn Stadium. When asked if there were further plans, Deborah Maher of the Randall's Island Park Alliance said, "I'm not saying this is the final chapter, there might be more. We’ve looked at designs for adding another 5,000 seats to make it a 10,000-person stadium, but I really think it's important to not over-expand too quickly and to just celebrate today."
The team and its new partners on Randall's Island had a new field to celebrate, though a lot of questions still linger over Icahn Stadium and the MLS NEXT Pro team now calling it home, sometimes.
