When the 90 minutes are up, the soccer conversations don’t stop there. New York’s soccer fans take the match events back to discussions in bars, around living rooms and online. For a few fans of the New York Red Bulls (RBNY) and New York City FC (NYCFC), they bring post-match talk to the mics, blending tactical breakdowns with wit in snappy episodes.
Though they may represent different sides of New York, these podcast shows reflect the growing sense of community, online and offline, around New York soccer. Ahead of the Hudson River derby, amNewYork spoke with a few podcast shows from both teams to understand what it means to be the voice of the fans.
Seeing Red: The NY Soccer Roundup
Having just hit a million audio and video plays across all platforms, Mark Fishkin and his “Seeing Red” podcast team have spent the better part of 15 years working towards giving RBNY “fans something to hang onto in between games,” according to Fishkin.
“When you’re the 11th or 12th professional team in the market, there’s very little major market mainstream media covering MLS in town,” Fishkin told amNewYork. “Red Bull fans deserve professional style coverage every week, and we’re here to provide that to them.”
With the iPod’s release in 2009 and the Red Bulls’ moving from the old Giants Stadium to Harrison, Fishkin fell in with “Around the League,” a show that covered the MLS back in its inception, and became the Red Bulls correspondent.
Two friends and a $50 microphone later, Fishkin and his team have made such an impact on the RBNY community that they interact with fans on the show weekly, asking for feedback and even interacting with them during live shows the “Seeing Red” pod has hosted in arenas.
“Having the fans feel like they can make an impact on the show is incredibly important,” Fishkin said. “It’s literally who we’re making the show for. We have funny emails, sad emails, angry emails and we have songs that have been written to sing on the show.”
“The fans are literally the lifeblood of the show,” Fishkin continued. “If we didn’t have them, there wouldn’t be a show. For us, it’s really important that Red Bull fans feel like that.”
Brought to you by the fiery personalities of Nico Tobon, Felix Palao and Cesar Hernandez, the “NYC Nobodies” podcast gives you the entire rollercoaster of being an NYCFC ultra.
“If the guys want to give me credit, I named us because who are we really?” Palao, a Third Rail Board Director as well, told amNewYork. “When it comes to our community, we’re just regular fans. We’re just regular supporters who love our club, who are we to give our opinions about anything?”
“It’s also a little bit of a double entendre,” Tobon, affectionately known by all City fans as “Chop Cheese”, chimed in. “Because a lot of New Yorkers get stereotyped for thinking they are somebody, when in reality, they aren’t really anybody. They’re just like everyone else.”
The triad’s personalities bounce off each other seamlessly in the stands and on camera as they try to grow the fan culture surrounding the 10-year-old team. However, it hasn’t been easy balancing full-time jobs, family commitments and life.
“We’re willing to go outside of what we’re supposed to be doing, and go in depth, because we really care about voicing our opinions,” Hernandez explained. “We really care about showing people the NYCFC culture. At the end of the day, that’s kind of a sacrifice you got to make for every kind of passion project. And, for us, it’s not really hard work, we’re willing to do it out of the heart.”
They talked endlessly about what the city meant to them not just as soccer fans, but human beings as well.
“What we bring is like a unique voice to the table, it’s an authentic voice,” Palao said. “It’s a voice that may not be the most stat-laden, but I think when we do speak, we speak from the heart, and we always speak from the perspective of the supporter. We always do this for the supporters.”
“The Exchange FC” focuses on just that, the exchanging of jerseys between players, fans and everyone involved in the soccer community.
It started with Jorge Martinez, known as Jumpy, and Mohamed Hassan, the avid jersey collector who is attempting to get his collection verified to be the largest in the world.
“Once you start talking to these players, some of these guys have amazing stories of the exchanges that happen,” Martinez told amNewYork.
Over the last three years, Martinez, Hassan and Roger, their photographer, have captured and spread the word of the New York soccer teams, deciding to highlight NYCFC, the Red Bulls and Gotham FC. In addition, they’ve interviewed stars such as Zlatan Ibrahimoic, Iker Casillas and Diego Godin.
“You’re going to be very limited to subscribers,” Hassan explained about their coverage. “We don’t only technically cover both, we cover the whole MLS. We cover all of football, these are our local teams and we are all about supporting local teams.”
Martinez and Hassan have a vision of “raiding players’ closets” to showcase their jersey collections and tell the stories of the exchanges.
“When I see some of these jerseys, to me, it’s so much more than just the game, just a shirt,” Martinez said. “We have some guys that tell us that it’s more of a sign of respect at the end of the game with somebody that just battled you for the entire time and would like to have that interaction with you.”
Started by Daniel and Javier Gutierrez, two brothers from the Bronx, “The City Boys” show allows fans to laugh after a game.
“We’re kind of newbies to soccer in general,” Danny, as his brother calls him, told amNewYork. “But we’re from the Bronx and we really know how to make fun of people. They’re also looking for funny things or inside scoops that you wouldn’t get anywhere else. The NBA and NFL have tons of accounts that do that, and we said we weren’t going to be deep analysts on ESPN, so we wanted to fill that gap.”
The Gutierrez brothers started the show after NYCFC’s 2021 MLS Cup-winning season, wanting to “keep talking about this team.” However, Javier had grown fatigued of his job at a radio station and, despite Danny’s urges, did not want to immediately jump back into producing content.
“He kept pushing and pushing and pushing, and I’m like, ‘All right, let’s do this,’” Javier recounted. “We had to do this because we just love this team so much, and we just wanted to really talk about it. [Danny] did some convincing, I put in some work, and now we have what we have today.”
How are they different from the other Blue podcasts in town?
“Our meme content is top tier,” Javier immediately said. “We like to have fun while producing good content. And I think that’s what fans want to enjoy. It’s not always the hard-hitting stats — you’re not going to get that from our show, but you’re going to but you’re going to get some fun stats. You’re going to get some funny memes, and we’re going to be able to tell the story of this team, which we do every week. It’s a blessing that we get to do that.”
Dave Moncion, Jonathan Sanchez, and Yousef Ricart bring NYCFC into the cultural melting pot that is New York. On the show, the trio goes over matches, rumors, and fan cultures while sounding like you’re sitting around a table drinking beers with them, talking about the game just past.
“You don’t really have a lot of folks like that sound like us talking about the game, it’s two Dominicans and an Ecuadorian from New York talking about soccer,” Ricart said.
Ricart explained that over the last five years, the three of honed their coverage. As soon as the season schedules are out, they plan their vacations, PTO and away matches they can attend.
Through their dedication, the podcast Instagram has grown to over six and a half thousand followers, and the hosts feel they have an obligation to report on everything that goes on in the stands and on the pitch.
“Sometimes the supporters are looking to us to talk about something they and the team are butting heads on,” Ricart said. “I don’t want to say that we’re the voice of everybody, but we’ve been around since day one of NYCFC, so we take a responsibility sometimes of, if there’s a message that needs to be put out from the supporters, and we are a voice for that. We take pride in that.”
