This past weekend, it was all finally made official. New York City Football Club's long-awaited stadium was signed into reality by Mayor Eric Adams himself at Citi Field on Saturday night.
This marks the final approval of a project announced back in November 2022, where the club's decade-long search for a stadium location finally came to an end. In the nearly 18 months since, more and more renderings of project's design have continued to trickle out of the club.
Each rendering drop has been something like Christmas morning for the New York City faithful, with the most popular feature so far being the newly-announced main entrance known affectionately as “The Cube”.
THE CUBE (Via MLS)
We love The Cube. It’s seven stories tall, covered in 11,000 square feet of LED’s, and will provide that ‘wow factor’ you’d expect from a modern New York marvel. But above all, is just a giant f***ing cube. What more could you possibly want?
Interestingly though, the most divisive proposed feature of the new stadium so far seems to be with another entrance: The pigeon entrance.
The Pigeons Entrance (Via New York City FC)
This is, admittedly, just not nearly as cool of an entry as The Cube. Though to be fair, how could anyone compete with ~the cube~? But, the lack of LED’s and general grandeur isn’t what ruffled some fan’s feathers. That, rather, was the doing of the mascot they chose to quite literally set in stone: the pigeon.
The “pigeons” has been the club’s unofficial nickname for as long as any of us can remember. You’ll hear it from the announcers on the Apple TV broadcast, the writers on mlssoccer.com, and from the die-hards on Twitter (I’m never calling it “X” get over yourself, Elon). If NYCFC has one commonly-recognized nickname, it’s the ‘pigeons’.
But, for as widely as it’s used, it’s not exactly a nickname that every fan is on board with. In fact, as far as club nicknames go, it’s quite a divisive one. Many fans seem to like it, but there’s always been a loud undercurrent of those who really oppose it.
To learn more about these differing fan opinions, I turned to the rest of the NYCFC Twitter community and asked them straight up: “Do you like the pigeons nickname?”
The responses were great. Through 365 votes the verdict was as follows:
The Poll (Via me, so I don't think I had to credit this one tbh)
Thankfully, for the sake of my own twitter identity, it does seem like there are more fans that like the nickname than fans that don’t. But, considering the fact that twitter is not real life, and the the fact that most of those voters are already following a dude called “The Pigeons”, I can’t help but think these results are at least a little bit skewed.
So, I tried to get outside the scope of the hellscape that is MLS twitter and talk to some real life people about the matter. For this, I wanted to get two people that fell on either end of the spectrum - someone who loves the name, and someone who can’t stand it.
So, who better to fight in the pigeon’s corner than the original pigeon mascot himself?
Omari (Via Newsday)
Meet Omari, a youth advocate and social worker in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Omari is well known in NYCFC fan circles, and is the man behind the giant pigeon mask you might’ve seen in the supporter’s section since the club’s early days. In what has to be one of the coolest acts of social service I can think of, Omari uses soccer as a tool to strengthen local communities.
“I was intrigued by the idea that I could just purchase one ball, and these kids could learn something brand new together” Omari said in his Humans of NYCFC piece by Katie Cahalin.
“I knew that any great club has to have a symbol or a mascot to bring it all together. So as a joke I was like, ‘what does New York City have?’ Taxi cabs, buildings, rats … pigeons.”(1)
And thus, the Pigeon mascot was born. Omari began wearing his famous pigeon mask to team events in the club's early days, going as far back as the unveiling of New York City FC's first ever kit back in 2014.
(Via New York City FC)
While Omari made it clear to me that he did not actually come up with the nickname itself, he certainly helped promote the pigeon imagery and its association with the club.
“When you look at pigeons, they are doing their best impressions of New Yorkers: they’re just going around busy or posted up, they’re always so unaffected and they’re all so different ... and when they group and fly together united ... it’s a beautiful and overwhelming force.”
“They live off crumbs, like New Yorkers, and nothing really sweats them. Pigeons are like true G’s of New York City”, Omari rounded out. (2)
To tip my own hand here, I agree with pretty much everything Omari just said. Their abundance, fearlessness, and general association with New York imagery make it feel like an obvious nickname for me. But of course, there’s still that 37.7% that think otherwise…
Jonathan Sanchez (Via Zealand)
“Yeah I hate it. With a passion. Since day 1”, Jonathan Sanchez wrote to me via Twitter DM. Sanchez is a co-host of the popular “NYCFC Forever Podcast”, and even helped found the club’s largest supporters group, The Third Rail, all the way back in 2013. So when he says he’s hated the pigeons nickname “since day 1”, he’s not exaggerating. He’s been around for the club’s entire existence.
Before recording an episode of the pod a few weeks back, Sanchez was kind enough to hop on a zoom call for a few minutes to chat through why the mascot bothers him so much.
“They’re basically just rats with wings”, he quickly pointed out. “Its disgusting. We got the train over our heads … I grew up by the 7 train … you walk by and you’re getting shitted on. Those are not things I want to relate to the team I love and adore.”
And, to be fair, he has a point. Why would we name our beloved team after something that most people don't like? It’s like naming your team after Scrappy-Doo or Jenny from Forrest Gump.
(Via Live Science)
But Sanchez’ distain for the nickname runs deeper than just the bird’s appearance. He has a problem with the symbol.
“I don’t associate pigeons with New York City. I associate pigeons with everywhere. You go anywhere in the world, any metropolis … even small towns … there’s pigeons everywhere.”
That’s when he began to walk me through his burgeoning theory on the nickname...
“The people who like the name “Pigeons” are not native New Yorkers … if you’re coming to live in New York City, you can just associate it with that ‘Home Alone 2’ pigeon lady, and think ‘that’s New York’.”
So, rather than not liking the nickname just because he doesn’t like the bird itself, his suggestion was that pigeons are just a lazy association with the city in general, and not actually representative of its culture.
Home Alone 2 "Pigeon Lady" (Via People)
And, given the how proudly Sanchez wore his adoration for his hometown on his sleeve, I couldn’t help but hear him out. The trouble then, however, is what does represent the city better? If pigeons shouldn’t be the nickname, according to Sanchez, then what should be?
“I kind of like Los Celestes”, Sanchez offered as a non-pigeons suggestion, “I think that works in English and Spanish speaking broadcasting, and I don’t think anyone else in the league is being called that.”
Los Celestes would translate to ‘The Blues’ from Spanish, but more specifically to the sky blue that New York City FC have donned as their primary color since day one.
(Via New York City FC)
“Just like how Liverpool are called ‘The Reds’, right? They just get called by their color, but that’s a good nickname - that’s enough! Sometimes you don’t need a gimmick, you know?”
Simple? Yes. Maybe even too much so for some. But, I don’t hate the idea of picking something that formed organically, is representative of our Latino fanbase, and isn’t trying too hard to be a symbol of something greater than itself. Its just, ‘Celestes’.
It’s even a nickname that the club has acknowledged themselves, using the phrase occasionally in their social posts. But, they certainly haven’t utilized it as much as ‘pigeons’, which the club has leaned into heavily of late.
As part of the club's “brand refresh” launched last month, new supplemental club colors were announced, along with a custom typeface, and a handful of club icons to be included in future messaging. And, of course, one of these “iconographic designs” happens to be a little cartoon pigeon, which has since popped up online in club social posts, and in-stadium on jumbotrons and other promotional spaces.
"New York City FC's" Brand Refresh Elements (Via New York City FC)
Between that and the giant pigeon entrance at the future stadium, it has been made abundantly clear which ‘official’ nickname the club has chosen to embrace. Like it or not, ‘The Pigeons’ are certainly here to stay.
And for me, that’s important. Having a commonly-recognized nickname is sign of good club culture, and offers far more personality than just ‘New York City Football Club’. It serves as proof that, after a decade of MLS play, this club belongs to its fans.
So, to those that are pro-pigeon ... congrats! Your beloved nickname isn't going anywhere any time soon. But to those who fall on Sanchez' side of the coin, Omari offered me the following:
"What I think the haters miss about the pigeon thing is that it's not about picking some faux scary, macho symbol like a bull, or borrowing lingo from another country's football heritage. It's not about one bird...its about the numbers. A bunch of pigeons together is way more intimidating and powerful than a single one. The club will always remain bigger than any one of us. You can't get rid of pigeons....and they have tried (look it up).
At the end of the day, maybe it's just not in the New York DNA to agree on this sort of thing in the first place.
“New Yorkers, whether its through birthright, inheritance, or by learning it through their time being here, are all alphas.” Sanchez rounded out, “So the pigeon, the mascot debate that’s been going on for 11 years, is correlated directly to our supporters. Just like the fans not agreeing on which songs to sing at times, It’s hard for all of us to choose something or follow the same thing, because we’re all the main character.”
(Via New York City FC)
So whether you’re calling us 'The Pigeons', 'Los Celestes', 'the Night Owls', the 'Blue in Blue', 'City' or anything else you might’ve come up with, you’re giving the club an extra little bit of culture that it wouldn’t have otherwise, and culture we can continue to carry into our newly-approved home in 2027.
And hey, if we ever get tired of the nickname debate I'm sure we could spark up some arguments on what we're calling the news digs. What do we think: the Valley of Ashes? Or the Pigeon Coop?
(1) MLS Season Pass; The Ritual; "The Pigeon"
(2) Juice Groove Films, "The Pigeon: A True G of NYC"
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