New Amsterdam FC
So tell us who you are and how you came to New Amsterdam FC?
My name is Maximilian Mansfield and I am the sporting director at New Amsterdam. The club's founder, Laurence Girard and I connected a few years back in the local New York soccer scene and stayed in touch ever since. He was working on his latest tech venture and I was in the beginning phases of opening up my sports consulting group, The Fussball Project. We had actually previously played together at Met Oval academy in Brooklyn in our teens but only made that connection recently. My involvement in helping overlooked US players gain opportunities to break into the professional game along with his passion for soccer provided the opportunity to invest resources into a club that we wanted to grow and expand with the emphasis and getting players opportunities. We tried this concept in England through a club that Laurence sponsored but were quickly met with resistance from the clubs infrastructure. I had worked with a player through The Fussball Project who was playing at the LA Force who introduced us to the league. The rest was history.
Why the name?
We are both native New Yorkers and I think we wanted to honor New York's rich history of welcoming people from all backgrounds and walks of life and I think that will really come through in the buildout of our roster and fanbase. In a sense, we were somewhat ostracized from the English game and sought new opportunities when coming to America.
The logo has gotten rave reviews, can you talk about the process of creating it and the designer you worked with?
We were back and forth on ideas for the logos but definitely wanted to keep it classic and touch on the Dutch settlers. We didn't really get beyond that until we reached out to Chris Payne. We had seen some of his prior work and after a series of long conversations we just let him run with it. He absolutely smashed it and we are grateful for his work.
Will there be kit releases anytime soon?
We are actually working on the kit branding right now and are hoping to launch the kit when we do our first big media push to our emerging fan base!
NY is a big place, where is the club planning on playing matches?
We are planning to play at Fordham University. Unfortunately Covid 19 has put our planning on hold a bit but we hope to secure Fordham for a variety of reasons. Being a 20 minute train ride from midtown Manhattan allows for easy commuting and the facilities are first class at Fordham. Carlo Acquista has been absolutely class in helping us progress with this partnership.
On that same note, how does the club plan to connect with a potential massive audience? Anything specific?
We want to make this a peoples club. We want our youth players to help in game day operations. We want the famous Arepa lady in Queens to host a food truck at our games, we want our roster to be heavily reliant on NYC talent! We want to get the people involved in our club.
NYC has been hard hit by the pandemic, is that making preparations for the fall difficult? How are you managing?
Preparations have certainly been difficult but we are making it work. We understand what we can control and what we cannot. We are slowly building out our roster and trying to plan as best we can.
Having two clubs in the NYC area should be fun for NISA fans, do you see a potential rivalry with the Cosmos?
I think there will always be an instant rivalry in New York given the close proximity. With that said we are in very different places in terms of club development but nevertheless, we expect there to be an extra intensity in the air for that game
Any merch yet? (a black tshirt with that logo would be a GREAT idea, hint hint)
Merch will be out in a few weeks.