Why is the US letting Spanish invaders in?
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AT 250 Park Avenue, near an entrance to Grand Central Station in midtown Manhattan, sits the New York offices of Futbol Club Barcelona. And, frankly, who cares?
The club employees their American fans would like to see do not reside there. Lionel Messi, or Luis Suarez, are quite literally an ocean away.
Instead, Barcelona’s plot is home to brand experts, marketing specialists, men and women who sit at desks and mine commercial revenue. Their big signing this summer was managing director Xavier O’Callaghan Ferrer, who was a Barcelona player, but not one New York will recognise.
He was a very gifted member of the handball team, winning 54 titles, and a bronze medallist for Spain at the 2000 Olympic Games.
Handball is primarily a European sport. Indeed, America haven’t had a team at the Olympics since 1996 in Atlanta — and their best finish is the women’s fifth place in 1984, in Los Angeles.
So, as America favours sports in which it wins, and Barcelona has no physical presence in the country beyond a swanky office, one imagines they are not high on the nation’s news agenda.
This explains why they are so willing to head to Miami in January to play a genuine league match against Girona. What it does not explain is why the United States Soccer Federation would let them. Having fought so hard to get Major League Soccer taken seriously, why then let the marquee domestic match of 2019 be played by teams from another country?
If Girona versus Barcelona is successful and is followed by competitive matches between other elite clubs, from other elite European leagues, where is MLS in this brave new world?
It becomes the undercard, the support act, the matches that draw unfavourable comparisons to the thrill of watching the best, firsthand.
It will be argued that American sport exports its matches and no harm is done, but this is different.
When the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox come to London next summer, they are not distracting from a successful British baseball league. The same with the NFL. If anything, NFL visits may inspire a London-based franchise soon.
By contrast, America already has a soccer league, with Atlanta United and Seattle Sounders averaging more than all but seven Premier League clubs this season. Why do they need La Liga invading their territory?
English football remains scarred by its dalliance with the idea of a 39th game, so each time a foreign league moves closer to it, the fear is the Premier League will follow suit. And Girona, who volunteered to be considered as Barcelona’s opponents in Florida, are part of the City Football Group — giving rise to the fear that at least one English football club would be open to the plan.
Yet Girona are different to other members of CFG, because it is almost unthinkable that they could rise to dominate their domestic league. This is not true of New York City, or Melbourne City, clubs that wear light blue colours, and whose ambition is plain. That is the weakness in La Liga’s grand designs on America. Everything is so temporary.
Barcelona come, they play, they fly home again. They leave nothing lasting behind. No roots, no loyalty. They are an office on Park Avenue. Their match is a cash deal.
New York City are embedded. If soccer takes off in America, as it is increasingly doing, they are a permanent fixture, one of New York’s two teams. They will be part of New York’s sports culture, like the Yankees and the Mets.
This is a legacy far greater than any 39th game. And New York City fans will be fans of Manchester City, too — and maybe even