In soccer, six years can be a very, very long time.
Six years ago, Clint Mathis was the toast of the league thanks to his goal-scoring feats for the MetroStars. Now, he struggles to get playing time with the Colorado Rapids.
Six years ago, goalkeeper Tony Meola took home just about every piece of silverware imaginable after an incredible championship season with the Kansas City Wizards. Now, he finds himself riding the bench for the New York Red Bulls during their run toward the MLS Cup Playoffs.
And six years ago, Nick Sakiewicz took over the general manager and president responsibilities of the MetroStars. One of his priorities was to find a viable site for a soccer-specific stadium.
Finally, after years and years of waiting, changing plans, political maneuvering and having to jump through countless hoops, Sakiewicz found himself holding a gold-plated shovel Tuesday afternoon, breaking ground for Red Bull Park.
"It's a celebration by a group of people who wouldn't take 'No' for an answer," said Sakiewicz, now president of Anschutz Entertainment Group NY/NJ.
"We will build the finest soccer stadium this country has ever seen."
If the construction lives up to the artist's rendering, Red Bull Park will be an impressive ground. At first glance, it looks like The Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif., with the fourth side filled in.
Sakiewicz took more than his share of abuse over the past six years. He was parodied for saying "60 to 90 days" for the next step in the stadium process by some media and by many fans on the soccer message boards.
"Nick," MLS commissioner Don Garber said to Sakiewicz during the ceremonies, "this is something people will never take away from you. It will be part of your legacy."
Sakiewicz, who admitted before Tuesday that the ceremonies were anti-climatic in wake of completing the deal last year, was beaming afterwards.
"It's a great sense of pride," he said. "I look at all the friends and soccer players, past, present and future here. I'm an ex-soccer player. For me, I'm happy for my generation that played, for this generation that's playing and for the kids who have a field of dreams to play in some day. I never had one. We always were kind of looking across the Atlantic at our field of dreams. Now it's finally going to be one now for these kids."
The history of how the stadium got from here to there is too complex to mention, even for a website. Before AEG purchased the MetroStars in 2002, the club's original owners, billionaire John Kluge and Stu Subotnick, had plans to build a stadium.
The Meadowlands once was an option, so was a spot near the Ikea furniture store off the New Jersey Turnpike in Elizabeth. A site or two across the Hudson River in New York were mentioned as well.
Finally, Harrison, whose area has a rich soccer tradition (former U.S. national team star Tab Ramos grew up in Harrison and teammates John Harkes and Meola called nearby Kearny home), made the grade and then some.
Then came getting political support, making sure the ground was safe, securing the bonds and moving the tenants off the site.
On Tuesday, the area on Cape May Street hardly looked like a future soccer stadium site. But many people had visions of two years down the road.
"This is a soccer stadium," Red Bulls sporting director and coach Bruce Arena said. "Very few details about the game will be missed in the construction and design of the stadium, so it's fantastic. If you can envision the setting, it's going to be like a stadium in Europe. You walk out, you walk off the transit, you walk into the community. You'll see people around the stadium in restaurants and partying, just a great environment around the stadium itself. And inside, if we do it right with the product on the field, it's going to be fantastic."
Ah yes, the product on the field, something the MetroStars/Red Bulls have fallen short in the league's first 10 seasons. Beyond never ever reaching MLS Cup, the team has gotten out of the opening round of the playoffs but once - six years ago in 2000 -- with a third-string goalkeeper, Paul Grafer, minding the nets.
It is Arena's task to change that course in the future. After all, a brand-spanking new soccer stadium will only take you so far. You need a successful team to fill it up every week after the novelty wears off.
"Obviously, this is an important component of making a successful team in the New York metropolitan market," Arena said. "In Red Bull Park, we're going to have the finest soccer stadium in America. ... The stadium is now the easy part. The difficult part is now producing a kind of team that is worthy of this kind of support from the ownership of Red Bull and AEG and the fans from the area. That's our charge, the charge of our organization and technical staff and we're eager to deliver."
It took him six years, but Sakiewicz finally delivered. Give him some credit. Sakiewicz refused to gloat over his achievement.
"I don't say anything," he said. "It's not something that I ever paid attention to every step of the way. If I did, it might de-motivated me and not got it done. I just kept my eye on the ball with my partners and the people behind me and got it done. Those skeptics are not relevant."
Harkes, who grew up playing the beautiful game with friends in Kearny and Harrison, has come full circle. In slightly less than two years, Harkes gets an opportunity to coach a soccer team on Cape May Street, only four blocks away from where he played soccer as a kid.
"We got a chance to play as a kid," he said. "Every time there was a ball out on the field, you stay on, the winners stay on. That's all we thought about day to day and just trying to find a place where we can play soccer."
Now the Red Bulls have a place to call their own.
"Honestly, I'm overwhelmed, absolutely overwhelmed that this is becoming a reality," Harkes said. "I came here four blocks away and I still go past the courts when we played every day. It's fantastic. It's going to be something really special. The fans here, they deserve this. The support is here.
"The important thing is that this becomes a home, its own identity."
July 2008 -- that's when the stadium is scheduled to be opened -- can't come soon enough for Harkes.
"This is going to be something special, hard to come in and win games because of the crowd and the passionate support coming onto the field," he said. "They have something to believe in. You've got a place to go to see soccer games. You've got a place to go you call home. That makes every difference in the world. They take it to a new level."
For the Red Bulls and their fans, there certainly will be no place like home, even if it took six, long years to find it.
Michael Lewis who has covered MLS and the MetroStars/Red Bulls for the New York Daily News since their inception, is editor of BigAppleSoccer.com. He can be reached at SoccerWriter516@aol.com. Views and opinions expressed in this column are the author's, and not necessarily those of Major League Soccer or MLSnet.com.
