Sky Blue FC, the NWSL team whose majority owner is New Jersey governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy), is a disgrace—and that's a crisis for the whole league.
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Lots of blame should be handed out for the way things have been managed at Sky Blue FC. It’s very rare an organization will cease to have basic commodities for its players. Sure, I’m not one to complain of course. My high school didn’t have doors to toilets let alone working showers. The weight room was basically the gym Dwight Schrute put together in the office. To be honest, it’s sort of what you’d except for the Chicago public schooling system. HOWEVA! When a professional sports organization fails to give just basic facilities for its players, you can’t help but wonder what goes through the mind of both the NWSL and the SBFC. Lots of fingers have been pointed to Phil Murphy (the owner). I can’t imagine just living in New Jersey, now imagine being the Governor of NJ. I would not exactly expect him to be active among the board meetings. I’m sure he’s got enough on his plate having to deal with politicians and Trump and former Gov. Chris Christie talking dirty about him. So while sure, you can throw stones at him, you should realize that the Sky Blue FC is probably not even in the back of his mind. But that’s not why you’re here. As much as you want to call the SBFC execs assholes, you’re here to see how we can save the Sky Blue FC and bring back dignity to WoSo in the northeast.
Step 1. NWSL buys back the team.
Pretty simple step here, NWSL should have intervened months ago really. At first glance, when a league is overpowering its teams, things has almost never turn out great. Take for example the hate that Goodell, David Stern, Rob Manfred, Bettman, and many many more (see my hate for Don Garber here) get on a daily basis. A tale as old as time, people with too much power acting like total assholes and us peasants complaining about it. But where is Amanda Duffy when you need her. You’d think that being named President of the NWSL would lead to her being a lot more in the spotlight. But really she’s been hiding better than Edward Snowden since the NWSL draft. It’s time for Duffy and the League Execs to rearrange revenue, get yourself a big TV deal, then buy back the Sky Blue FC from Gov. Murphy. Then probably resell the team to a crazy billionaire that will create publicity or a venture capitalist that has a former athlete in it. Like maybe Kobe’s group, or Derek Jeter. Or offer former NY soccer stars a small part of the team. Like a Thierry Henry, or David Villa. Or sell it to literally ANYONE ELSE ON PLANET EARTH! Hell, I can string together a couple bucks to buy the team the way things are going.
Step 2. Relocate the team to NY
Not to shit on New Jersey for a second time, but come on. New Jersey is NOT New York. It’s not even the Kirkland Brand of New York. It will never be New York. Hey, here’s an idea! Let’s take this team in a not so popular part of New Jersey, and move it to the most popular city in the WORLD! Wait, you’re telling me that there was a team in NY that didn’t work out? Yeah, it doesn’t take a genius to see that a team literally 400 miles away from New York City would not work. Where would they play? I don’t know. Literally anywhere. Have them play in Central Park, people will show up. Well, they’d be coming home, to find people playing soccer, but the can still count as attendees. What psychopath thought it was a good idea to let the NWSL have a team in Piscataway, New Jersey, and not New York, New York.
Step 3. Rebrand the team
New logo, maybe colorway, probably go out and buy an international superstar. “Ada Hegerberg comes to the NWSL and joins the New York (team name).” No weird Frenchman here that will ask you to twerk. I promise. What a huge get it would be. Proving to the world that not only can we hang with the teams of Europe, but we can beat out Lyon in signing the superstars of the world (in this case stealing their star). Wouldn’t be the first time a gem was stolen from Lyon, ask their museum security.
If steps are done correctly, we got a team capable of winning 2 maybe even 3 games. They may not be the end all be all solutions for SBFC, but really somethings has got to change. Can’t have elite level talents fleeing the country because we can’t have decent working showers in the locker room. Using these steps, we’ll have Hailie Mace and Julia Ashley back in the US in no time. If there’s a US to comeback too.