Season Preview 2019: A Silly Place

Detroit City FC is turning pro in August, but in the more immediate future, there remains one last romp through the league where the club has made its name, the NPSL.

There are some good aspects to the league, some bad, but it’s always been a bottomless reservoir of entertainment.

One of the great things about the league is its low barrier to entry; City was founded for roughly ten thousand dollars in 2012. That could also be seen as a negative – for every DCFC or Chattanooga there are several Pensacola Cities or Zanesvilles – but having an open market for low-budget clubs to give it their best shot is badly needed in the highly stratified, closed system of US Soccer.

The NPSL serves as an incubator for clubs with new ideas and different philosophies, and its decentralized nature allows them to grow and progress however they see fit. For the most part, the quality shines through while incompetence crashes and burns.

The constant churn of clubs coming and going has made for some weird divisional alignments and playoff quirks over the years, but for all of the NPSL’s flaws and inadequacies, it’s provided a wealth of delightful absurdity.

It would be impossible for me to provide a comprehensive list, so the following examples are limited to those involving City. Some I experienced in person, and some were lived vicariously through various media and secondhand accounts:

(1) The 2013 regular season opener in Berkley against FC Sparta Michigan. Before the match, Sparta issued a laundry list of items that would not be allowed into the stadium, some of which were reasonable (guns), and some which were head-scratchers (confetti). City supporters were subjected to invasive pat-downs…

…delaying their entry into the stands, and a group of police cruisers circled the stadium for the duration of the match, presumably to deter the villainous Northern Guard from its typical activities of arson, terrorism, and pushing old ladies down flights of stairs. Despite the extra security measures, copious amounts of confetti were smuggled in and freely dispersed into the air. City won 5-1, prompting me to dub it the Mother’s Day Massacre™.

(2) The 2014 Fourth of July match with Michigan Stars, which started at 10 pm to accommodate the Stars players who were observing Ramadan. Fireworks went off throughout the entire match, giving it a strange and unique backdrop. City got hit with a soft red card, Stars won, and their ownership and coaching staff proceeded to challenge everyone to a fight.

(3) Cincinnati away in 2015, where fire trucks showed up to the stadium because the smoke set off by City supporters caused someone to report a fire.

The more I think of it, the more I believe the CFD did an excellent job responding in a timely manner to what very well could’ve been a serious situation. It was still really funny, though.

(4) Kalamazoo away in 2016, two days after the first match at Keyworth Stadium. For whatever reason, City supporters were directed by KFC staff to occupy on the side of the field where the player benches also happened to be. Predictably, shenanigans ensued.

(5) FC Indiana away in 2017, literally played in the middle of a cornfield. The toothless, morbidly obese owner of FCI threatened to call the police on City supporters for trespassing, despite the fact they’d all purchased tickets for entry. He proceeded to call said police, but they didn’t deem this particular emergency worthy of their time and declined to show up.

(6) My personal favorite: The 2016 regular season opener in Pontiac against Michigan Stars, in which the Stars hired a local band, The Dirty Elizabeths, to play on a stage behind one of the goals for the duration of the match, ostensibly with the purpose of drowning out the sound of the City supporters. Shockingly, this did not work. They did play this song, though.

(7) The entire existence of FC Sparta/Michigan Stars in general. Word on the street is that the coach who was set to lead the team this season got into a dispute with club ownership, quit, and went back home to Germany. I would send their front office a Thank You card for providing me with such a steady stream of blog fodder over the years, but they’d probably hurt themselves trying to open the envelope.

Many more moments came to mind, but I kept the list short to avoid rambling on and on.

While I’m excited to see City continue its growth and move up to the professional level, part of me is worried about some of the changes that might bring. Namely, will it still be as fun as it’s been these past seven summers?

Witnessing the detrimental effects that hyper-corporatization and monetization have had on sports at all levels has made me acutely aware of how different the City experience is, and I’ve tried to constantly remind myself to enjoy it as much as possible because there’s no guarantee it will last in its current form forever.

Then again, the club is in good hands, and the similar worries I had around the move to Keyworth never materialized. In any case, that can all wait until August. For now, there’s another summer of silliness to enjoy.