New York Red Bulls town hall does little to appease fans

The New York Red Bulls are learning that they have lost some fans for good.

The unexpected firing of New York Red Bulls icon and beloved figure Mike Petke continues to be the biggest news hovering over the club. In an effort to, at the very least, answer the understandable questions had by some of the team’s most devoted supporters, the Red Bulls thought it wise to host a town hall this past Friday night. It was, in short, as much of a disaster as any reasonable person expected it to be. Some who made the journey to Harrison, New Jersey to start their weekends went only to yell out obscenities. Others were given corporate answers from Red Bulls General Manager Marc de Grandpre and from Sporting Director Ali Curtis, the latter being the man who replaced Petke with Jesse Marsch.

There was one main talking point to take from Friday’s event: Those of you who were, as of 7:00 pm ET on Friday evening, no longer keen on giving the Red Bulls your money did not have any reason to feel differently following the town hall. Red Bulls fans, who are also customers, who felt burned by the way that Petke was unceremoniously bounced from the club following two successful campaigns still feel that way today; and they are probably going to continue to feel that way for days, weeks and months to come. No town hall was going to change that, and anybody who believed otherwise was kidding himself all along.

Nobody inside of the room on Friday night offered any real answers for why Petke was fired before being given a chance to truly retain his job, and what Curtis and company thought of the former coach has been made clear since the news first broke. What Curtis indirectly told those at the town hall and those of us watching the event via stream was the following: The people running this particular Major League Soccer outfit deemed Petke to be utterly incompetent, the worst coach in MLS and a man who is thoroughly unable to help younger players within the Red Bulls improve to the point that they are worthy of being first-choice starters.

In Petke’s place is now a man who literally could not get a coaching gig until Curtis came calling. That is not an opinion. There were several clubs who passed on Marsch for other options after he and the Montreal Impact parted ways in 2012. Included in that list are the Red Bulls, who instead went with Petke in January 2013 after at least one of the club’s top choices did not accept/win the job for one reason or another (different story for a different day). There is zero evidence, none whatsoever, that Marsch will be an improvement over Petke, and those who would say otherwise are reaching in attempts to prove some point.

Comparing the coaching resumes belonging to Petke and Marsch is an exercise that leads one to shake his head and laugh at the people running the Red Bulls. Montreal won 33 percent of their games and no trophies with Marsch in charge. The Red Bulls, meanwhile, won the Supporters’ Shield, the team’s first ever meaningful trophy, and they were a goal away from playing for MLS Cup this past fall under Petke. Believing Marsch to be a better tactician than Petke is fine, but the reasons for why those beliefs are held by Curtis and others within the Red Bulls remain a mystery to everybody other than those gentlemen.

The Red Bulls town hall did not address the following matters: Was Curtis firing Petke always the plan from day one? What, if that is the case, did Petke do wrong? What happened from December 23 to the day that Petke was fired to warrant Curtis hiring Marsch if that was not Curtis’ intention from the start? Why do Curtis and others within the Red Bulls view Petke as being nothing other than a cheerleader who was carried to a regular season championship by the likes of Thierry Henry and Tim Cahill? Why, two decades into the MLS experiment, does such a disconnect separate the Red Bulls from their fans?

Anybody who possesses even the slightest of knowledge on this club knows what Petke has meant to the MetroStars/Red Bulls and thus could have foreseen the inevitable outrage that was to come because of the team firing Petke following his work over the past two years. Curtis appeared downright arrogant over the firing of Petke at the town hall, politely telling Red Bulls fans the following without ever actually saying these words: “Your hero worship of Petke was cute and all, but now the smartest guy in the room is running the show. I hired my guy, and you are all going to have to live with it.”

The reality of the end of that fictional statement is that fans of the Red Bulls do not, in fact, have to live with what has happened. No MLS fan base has been stomped upon again and again by club ownership and by regimes than that of the Red Bulls. Any supporter of the Red Bulls who decides to financially tap out for some time following this mess could not be blamed for making that decision. Even a die hard fan has his breaking point, and summer days can be spent in ways that don’t involve sitting or standing inside of a soccer arena. The idea of the Red Bulls offering refunds for ticket purchases was scoffed at during the town hall, an additional injury to every insult this franchise has delivered to fans over the years.

Enough is now enough for some.

That there are Red Bulls fans who are seriously considering no longer spending money on the club and on MLS says all you need to know about how bad of a business decision was made in the firing of Petke. While expansion side New York City Football Club and the New York Cosmos continue to make moves in the right direction, the Red Bulls remain a franchise that is painfully out of touch with the team’s fan base. The town hall informed Red Bulls fans that their opinions and emotions, not to mention the history of the team, mean little to those running the club.

Funny. Some loyal fans now feel the same way about the Red Bulls.

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