NYC Footy

A couple of friends and myself signed up as free agents for a Summer coed league at Brooklyn Bridge park with NYC Footy. We figured that it would be a nice way to get a fun kickabout on a Sunday. Well, the season recently ended and here are the main takeaways:
— Absolutely never sign up as a free agent in this league. It was a relatively awful experience (for reasons below). Despite us joining the ‘advanced’ skill league, some of the other people/​free agents we played with had evidently never touched a soccer ball.
— Along those lines, the league organizers will see fit to create a huge roster for the Free Agents team. They obviously get more money doing this, so it makes sense on their end. For the players though, it’s kind of shitty when you’re basically doing hockey-​style line shifts for substitutions. Not to mention, there was somewhat of an imbalance with us having only three female players on the team (and them, as mentioned above, definitely being on the more beginner level of the footy spectrum).
— The league organization in general was kind of a mess. Games were always scheduled to start at noon, yet kickoff was generally always delayed to 12:30ish. That was consistent all season, until inexplicably the second-​to-​last game of the season where our ref made us start (with not enough players yet) at 12 on the dot. His explanation was that the league wanted the refs to start games on time, yet that didn’t explain why the other games started late as per usual. If you’re going to set a precedent and then change it at the end of the season though, it might be a good idea to inform the players.
— The league also apparently enforces roster checks. I’ve played on practically every adult soccer league in the city at some point, and this is unheard of (and immensely stupid). It’s also mandatory to wear shinguards, which is just annoying.
— It’s expensive. $ 180 for a player and $ 1800 for a team. That price doesn’t even guarantee playoffs for everybody (only the top four). The cool jerseys that you get aren’t worth that premium in price.
It’s difficult to write a review for an adult recreational soccer league, but I kind of felt compelled to after our painfully mediocre experience with NYC Footy. We had even reached out to one of the league runners at the beginning of the season with some of these complaints — and he seemed pretty understanding initially — but then he just stopped replying to us. That was cool.
Bottom line is, there are much better coed leagues out there in NYC, and they’re also significantly cheaper. Okay, you won’t get as nice a jersey, but then again, you won’t be forced to take an extremely cheesy team picture after a game for marketing purposes.