Inter Miami head coach Phil Neville can’t quite comprehend how, five days before kickoff, his side’s playoff match against New York City FC doesn’t yet have a set location.
The two teams will square off on Monday in a game that is currently scheduled for Red Bull Arena, with NYCFC’s usual home of Yankee Stadium unavailable due to the Yankees’ MLB playoff run.
But when the New York Mets were eliminated from the MLB playoffs on Sunday, suddenly their home of Citi Field became available. Though it’s a baseball stadium, Citi Field does offer the distinct advantage of being located within New York City and, crucially, it’s not the home stadium of NYCFC’s biggest rivals.
An email from NYCFC to season ticket holders on Tuesday purportedly said the game was being moved to Citi Field but as of his press conference on Wednesday, Neville was not aware of any official change.
“I got an email yesterday saying the game was at Red Bull [Arena],” he said. “That was from our official match email that we get every week.”
Neville said the location of the game didn’t matter much to him (“we’d play at the top of the Empire State Building in a playoff game,” he quipped), but the uncertainty was presenting a major logistical headache for the Inter Miami organization and the team’s fans.
“What people probably don’t understand is that we’ve got a traveling party of probably 55 people to get hotel rooms in New York [for] — 55 people with three days to go is near impossible.
“It’s just the logistics, the inconvenience for supporters and for families that have already bought tickets at the stadium. They’re probably staying in hotels out in New Jersey, in Harrison. I suppose that’s the biggest gripe is that we cannot book a hotel or travel yet, and we cannot let, more importantly, our supporters know where the game is.”
Neville ended with a challenge to the league and the larger organizational apparatus in a country that is getting set to co-host World Cup 2026.
“It’s not a preseason scrimmage, this is a playoff game,” Neville said. “In four years time we’ve got a World Cup coming to this great country. And I think things like this need to be looked at because this is organization — it has nothing to do with football.”
[lawrence-related id=8206,8175,7079]