A Few Random Notes and Updates

As the club enters the home stretch towards the MLS Cup Playoffs, the "project" end is put on the backburner a bit. All the focus is on the sucess of the team.

But the ironic thing is that the sucess of the team is one of the most important parts of the project.

Here's a few updates since I last left...

- Red Bull Park's Website is innactive. This is probably due to Red Bull's buyout of AEG, as the site looked to be primarily run by AEG itself. The webcam no longer updates, and I emailed the contact on the website for questions awhile ago and never got a response. In the future at a high publicity time like the playoffs or MLS Cup for Marc De Grandpre and the rest to release a new timeline of sorts and maybe throw up a new, Red Bull only, website.

- Before the site went practically dead, the stadium finally started to be making some good solid progress everyday with a noticable increase in workrate.

- Although the club has yet to win any silverwear in it's history, one way to continue to add to the prestige as they get closer and closer to bringing home the MLS Cup is to take home some individual awards for the Red Bull trophy cabinate. As they head down the stretch, Juan Pablo Angel is considered one of the favorites for the MVP, Golden Boot, and Newcomer of the Year award. Not to mention he already took home All-Star Game MVP. Dane Richards is also in the race for Rookie of the Year.

- The news of the week was that Amado Guevara wants back in to the club that he once called home, but not until the 2008 season. With the increased cap space and Red Bull's desire to make some big moves with the space, look for Guevara to be a "Plan D". With a whole offseasn and boatload of cash, Red Bull should be able to come up with some better punch than an aging Amado Guevara.

Project RBNY

The New York/New Jersey MetroStars were created in the inauguration of Major League Soccer in 1996.

Over the course of the first decade of the franchise's existence, the at-first large fan base began to decline as the club was unable to produce successful soccer, never making it farther than the MLS Cup semifinals in the year 2000.

On March 9, 2006, the MetroStars were bought by Austrian energy drink company Red Bull and their billionaire founder Dietrich Mateschitz for a sum of 100 million dollars.

The clubs strongest supporter's group, the Empire Supporters Club, along with much of the teams fan base, was outraged at the fact that their club was to now be a promotion vehicle for an energy drink.

The club was re-branded to be called Red Bull New York, featuring the company’s logos prominently on everything in relation to the club.

Although the disgust at the ownership change, Red Bull used their renowned promotion skills for the clubs first home match as the Red Bulls in the 2006 season.

The attendance at Giants Stadium that day was 35,793. The game featured a pre-game ceremony featuring the Cosmo's legends Pele and Franz Beckenbaur, as well as a half time concert by Shakira and Wyclef Jean.

Marketing of the sort, or close to it, has not been seen to this day. The home opener was a blip on the radar; attendance has continued to be the most disappointing for the region in the league.

The Red Bull ownership group played a large part in securing the soccer specific stadium deal for Harrison New Jersey, said to be the savior of the club's recent attendance woes. The Red Bull Park's scheduled opening was recently officially delayed to 2009 due to foundation issues.

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When you put a billionaire owner with a promotional drive for his company with the local pride of a club in the soccer rich metro area in a league with only a reported 2.5 million dollar salary cap that is known for not being relevant in the American sports landscape, you create a perfect storm of money, questioned incentives, instability, pride, failure, success, and soccer.

We are in the midst of a project in the metropolitan area to make soccer matter, to make Red Bull New York matter. This is: Project RBNY.