EmailPrintOpen Extended ReactionsFLUSHING, N.Y. -- The skies of blue that the late jazz musician and longtime Queens resident Louis Armstrong famously sang about were a muted, hazy orange brown on Wednesday at Citi Field, as smoke from Canadian wildfires created more of a real-life Batman atmosphere. But Gotham FC still got exactly what they wanted out of their launch into a new, wonderful world as future tenants in the borough.An announced sellout crowd of 42,175 fans (with a few visibly empty seats) turned up for the NWSL team's first match in Queens, a 1-0 victory over the Washington Spirit in a rematch of last year's final.Literally across the street and visible from the open ends of the outfield concourse stood Gotham FC's future home, Etihad Park. The team recently announced that it will move into that soccer-specific stadium in 2028, relocating from New Jersey after nearly two decades across multiple leagues in the Garden State.Plenty about Wednesday's game cannot be replicated. The crowd of 40,000-plus was there for a one-time spectacle that had not been done before, in a city and country experiencing a wave of soccer fever culminating with the men's World Cup final in New Jersey on Sunday -- "serendipitous" timing that "puts us on the map in a different way," NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman told reporters at halftime.Other elements outside of the control of Gotham or the league hopefully will not be repeated. The discolored sod laid over the baseball infield ended up as a backseat talking point to the extreme heat and dangerous air quality that led the league to implement four hydration breaks for the first time this year and in the careers of the two coaches."That's showbiz, baby!" Gotham star and goal scorer Rose Lavelle quipped after the match.Still, it was clear to see why Gotham and NWSL executives are so bullish on the team's impending move to Queens.The crowd was the second largest in NWSL history and the largest for a women's sporting event in New York City. It was easily the largest crowd in the history of Gotham FC, which toiled in oblivion in central New Jersey for over a decade before moving to what is now Sports Illustrated Stadium in Harrison, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York. Crowds there improved, but still ranked middle of the pack in the NWSL.A Gotham FC executive told ESPN that about 80% of fans with tickets for Wednesday's match were attending their first Gotham FC game. Citi Field was filled with prompts to convert those first-timers into 2028 season-ticket holders. There were stationary booths on the concourses, large footpath stickers with QR codes as people walked, and workers in the stands with boxes strapped over their shoulders as if they were selling popcorn at the ballpark. Instead, they were hawking a much more expensive and important item.Gotham believes that by the time they move into Etihad Park in 2028, they could secure around 8,000 season-ticket deposits. That's roughly their average total attendance now in Harrison.There was pomp and circumstance on Wednesday to make sure those new fans had a good time: a World Cup semifinal watch party, a chance for fans to put themselves on a trading card (through a partner activation, of course), even a gate giveaway of a bobblehead featuring Lavelle and her famous bulldog, Wilma Jean Wrinkles.Wednesday's event at Citi Field was surreal for a team, formerly known as Sky Blue, that was once the laughingstock of the NWSL on and off the field. Players lacked running water or locker rooms and took ice baths in trash cans at their training facility. They played at a suburban college stadium with metal bleachers in front of crowds that, plenty of times, numbered in the hundreds.For all the talk about obscure broken records, this is the most important and jarring perspective of Gotham's progress: Wednesday's announced crowd at Citi Field brought in more fans than the team's total attendance in all 12 home games for the 2019 NWSL season, and that included two matches in Harrison."I'm struggling to encapsulate the feeling into words," Gotham defender Mandy Freeman said, later correcting herself that this was not a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, because they would be back. Freeman is Gotham's longest tenured player, having joined the team in 2017 and lived through those dark years.Success in New York is never simple, of course. Yes, this is a city that wants to see stars -- but it fans want to see winners, a lesson that Angel City has learned at the gates in Los Angeles. Gotham won two of the past three championships, as well as the Concacaf continental title last year.Gotham keeps adding stars, much to the dismay and suspicion of rival executives around the NWSL. Australian forward Sam Kerr made her return to the team off the bench on Wednesday and drew the loudest cheer from the crowd. Kerr left Sky Blue FC nearly a decade ago after winning NWSL MVP and Golden Boot awards. She continued to dominate the NWSL and then England's Women's Super League before returning to Gotham this summer. She is signed through 2030, well into the forthcoming Queens era.Lavelle scored the game's only goal on Wednesday, just as she did in last year's NWSL Championship victory over the Spirit. Lavelle nutmegged a defender before hitting a sublime chip at an acute angle. She joked that she is lucky it went in after opting not to pass, but Gotham head coach Juan Carlos Amors praised the United States international's skills as "magic." Lavelle remains an all-world talent and an impending free agent whom Gotham hopes to retain for the future, including the move to Queens.It also helped Wednesday's crowd that the opponent was the Spirit, a rival within driving distance and last year's finalist. Washington has become the NWSL's traveling circus as the road team for these big occasions, thanks in large part to the popularity of forward Trinity Rodman. The Spirit have been the road team in four of the league's five most attended games -- all in the past three years."I think it's amazing; I think it's going to be a great location, great stadium, so I'm really excited for the league," Rodman said. "I didn't like New York tonight. Air quality was rough. There was a lot of things tonight, but I do love coming here to play the majority of the time, and I am excited to see what the stadium looks like and how that feels moving forward."Not everyone in Gotham's fan base is happy about the move. The team has long been New Jersey through and through, embracing the state that usually gets left behind by teams that want "New York" in their name even when they don't play there. For most of its history and up until recently, Gotham FC's primary owners were former New Jersey governor Phil Murphy and his wife, Tammy.It is completely valid for those fans to feel aggrieved by the team's impending move to Queens, even if the club and Berman said they can still easily access Etihad Park in the future. Gotham has the data to say that the move to Queens will bring their business forward, though, and that is good news for both the team and the NWSL.No, there won't be 40,000 fans at every Gotham match in the future. It is realistic to think that, with the right marketing and continued on-field success, Gotham could regularly make the 25,000-seat Etihad Park look full. The Spirit have traveled a similar path to success from the suburbs to sellouts at Audi Field in Washington, D.C.Gotham will also be treated as a primary tenant in Queens, something they never were in Harrison at a stadium built for MLS' New York Red Bulls. Gotham will have its own locker room in the stadium. It will convert the mostly electronic signage from NYCFC to Gotham on NWSL matchdays to make it feel like a bespoke stadium.That is an experience that is still too rare not just for Gotham, but all NWSL teams. What could more games in Queens lead to?"More games like this," Gotham midfielder Jaedyn Shaw said with a big smile. "New York showing out for us. I think it was really special just to see how many people that were there, that was their first Gotham game."That dream is also real and within reach now for the NWSL club, and it is a future nobody could have imagined a decade ago. Across the street from Citi Field, Etihad Park is fully vertical in its construction, with steel beams secured, concrete poured, a roof. It looks much closer to a complete stadium than a pile of dirt in the ground.Soon, that will be Gotham's new home. On Wednesday, the energy for that future was palpable even through the smoke.
