New York City FC will have a place to call “home.” It won’t be a home of its own, but it will be a home, nonetheless.
N.Y.C. FC, a Major League Soccer expansion franchise that will take the field in 2015, will play home games at Yankee Stadium for its first three seasons, according to the New York Times.
“The team, which is jointly owned by the Yankees and Manchester City of the Premier League, is expected to make the announcement next week,” the report says.
A December report claimed that N.Y.C. FC hopes to build a $400 million, 28,000-seat soccer stadium in the Bronx near Yankee Stadium. Yankee Stadium will temporarily house N.Y.C. FC, while the team tries to reach that goal.
The MLS and Major League Baseball seasons overlap, and there are concerns that soccer will damage the field at Yankee Stadium. Yankee Stadium groundskeepers would cover the infield diamond with grass to accommodate the soccer field’s dimensions — a process which would take several days before and after N.Y.C. FC’s games.
In February, Yankees executive director of non-baseball events Mark Holtzman said Yankee Stadium could host two professional teams with few problems.
“Technology has gotten to the point where I think we can turn it around pretty quickly,” Holtzman said.
“Baseball is clearly the No. 1 priority. We wouldn’t do anything to put anyone at any risk. There’s a major investment here in the players. At the end of the day, we look at these opportunities very carefully, and we wouldn’t get into these opportunities unless we were confident in the end result.”
Should N.Y.C. FC exist comfortably at Yankee Stadium and encounter more hurdles in its quest to build a soccer stadium, it could feasibly extend its stay beyond the 2017 MLS season.
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Photo via Twitter/@MLS
