I'm UK-based, a MCFC fan all my life. Never even been to the USA before (not yet, anyway).
When City created NYCFC I was intrigued - I love clubs with history, but there's something fascinating about building a club up from nothing, seeing it have to create its very identity and put together all the infrastructure that we take for granted. When one of their season ticket holders made a forum for the new team I signed up, planning on just sitting back, watching the project build itself and occasionally commenting from the wings. I made a few more comments than I intended, talked more sense than I was expecting, and ended up getting invited to join their admin team. After that I thought I'd better throw myself in with both feet. I'm going to their match against Brondby on Sunday, too (and I was at City v Hull, so that's three 400-mile round trips to Manchester for me in 9 days) and I've got my flights booked to be at their first ever (home) league game. After this, though, I probably won't be able to afford to visit them more than once every 2-3 years, so this is like Christmas for me right now.
As for your brand new team - yeah, I heard about them. I didn't know they were called "Rangers" though - wasn't that the name of a grand old storied club? I thought the new club was called Newco F.C.?
Yeah, the franchise fee was extortionate, although apparently it's now been topped by the new Los Angeles team, who aren't due to start until 2017 and have Vincent Tan as a co-owner. If that's not something to make people sweat, I don't know what is. I'm aware of St Mirren's budget constraints, though, and the way that much of Scottish football is run on a shoe-string. It's always good to have a team you've brought up from within. I've wanted City to play more of their academy players - we have some real talents who are just asking for some game time, such as Denayer and Guidetti just down the road from you at Celtic, but the management is too scared to play any of them for fear that it'll cost us the match and as a result value league points. Well, maybe we've thrown the title away we'll have more opportunity...but anyway. NYCFC have only a couple of days ago announced that they're creating an entire league as part of their academy system, with under 9s/10s/11s playing in tournaments to basically play their way into the academy proper - apparently no MLS team has ever looked at players below u-12 level before, so for once we're getting some positive press, and the guys on the forum are going nuts about how exciting it would be to watch a team half-filled with native NYers who have spent half their lives in the development system run out for a match. Exciting times ahead. I hope that we can bring through as many as you've managed, although the circumstances are understandably completely different, so we'll have to see.
The NYCFC is looking very interesting - and they poached manager Jason Kreis from Real Salt Lake back at the end of 2013, a man who is regarded as one of the, if not THE, brightest prospects in American football at the moment, so he already comes with a lot of expectation of good things. As for style, CFG (the organisation running City's various teams around the world) has a stated intention of getting all of their teams, from the greatest to the smallest, of playing the same brand of possession-based attacking and fluid football, so win, lose or draw the team should be entertaining to watch. We'll just have to see how much can be achieved in our first season. No-one quite knows how high to aim. Making the play-offs at least (one more element of American sports that I will never quite buy into) is regarded as being a decent target, but it could go either way.
As for coming to visit you - thanks for the offer. I'll have to see. I'm always up for doing something unusual as a one-off just for the experience, but travelling to Paisley wouldn't be the easiest thing I've ever done. That said, of course, if I can travel to Manchester several times in a week then I should be able to pull it off. Maybe if you come south of the border for a friendly or somesuch then I might come along and watch you then. We'll have to see. If I can make it work then I'm up for it, though.
