BY JASON CORLISS

It’s been an interesting week in RBNYland.  And, the more I think about the comings, goings, and the state of the team (and the season), a pattern emerges; a curious, though familiar case of this thing is like that other thing.  But, of course it is.  As Dan Brown will tell you, life is full of patterns and hidden symmetries.  This week has left me with a creeping sense of déjà vu, perhaps a metaphysical cousin of these motifs.  One could argue that some of the patterns we see in life are our own figments, overlaid on seemingly random events in order to make sense of unconnected happenstance, but I tend to disagree.

Sure, we see what we want to see, but if the endpoints exist, then it’s just a matter of making the connections.  First, the “Cosmos” news, and then Sebastian LeToux (are you DeRo in disguise?).  Now, the matter of finding a 3^rd DP worthy of the tag?  Hmmm.  The symmetry is not lost on me, or on Conor Oberst for that matter.

And so I raise my glass to symmetry
To the second hand and its accuracy
To the actual size of everything
The desert is the sand
You can’t hold it in your hand
It won’t bow to your demands
There’s no difference you can make
There’s no difference you can make
And if it seems like an accident
A collage of senselessness
You weren’t looking hard enough

Piggybacking on my last column, in terms of RBNY’s play, we’ve certainly been here before.  Prior to last week’s dismal defeat in Foxboro, RBNY were primed to take the second half of the season head on and finally make good on the promise of promise.  However, much like the first two games of the season, the boys fired blanks coming out of the gate, and trudged back to RBA with few excuses and zero points.  If we’re going to look a bit more deeply into the recent past, we can note that the team rebounded from the first two losses of the year by coming home and winning the next three games by a combined score of 13-4 (one of those at Columbus).  The current circumstances may be a bit different, but the pattern has set itself – or, at least this segment of it has.  Hopefully, RBNY will prove the rule and find its form over the next three matches back at home, where they’ve not lost all year.

While, clearly, I’d love for this to occur, the real takeaway here isn’t that our awareness of the existence of patterns should enable us to predict that things will happen in a certain way, but that it can provide us with a framework to understand the nature of expectation itself.  Of course, we are so emotionally attached to outcomes that each individual RBNY-related circumstance is consumed, interpreted and expressed at a level so manic that it’s often impossible for many of us to see the forest for the trees.  Stepping back, and realizing that each instance may be part of a larger puzzle is not only a helpful tool for keeping one (somewhat) sane, but also to prevent one from sounding like a complete idiot calling for Backe’s/Soler’s/insert name here’s head each time the team makes a reasonable, logical move, because one remembers that time “Player X” did that thing against that other team on that day with the somewhat extreme (or not) weather.

I’ve got this feelin’ that I’ve been here before
Nobody can bend the up and down
As long as you understand
The long undertow
The others can hold their breath so long
So long as they understand
The long undertow
I’ve got this feelin’ that I’ve been here before

Speaking of stepping back, everyone’s favorite Saudi-owned nostalgia apparel brand has returned (again) to the national soccer dialogue.  And, the national coverage is particularly apropos.  The re-emergence of the “Cosmos” is just NOT the local story (yet) that many want it to be.  The supposed purists among us who point to the halcyon days of the late 70s-early 80s, when the Cosmos were the ultimate, quintessential superfantastical embodiment of NEW YORK (F*CKIN) CITY, conveniently neglect to remember that there wasn’t much particularly “New York” about them — other than the fact that they played their football at Giants Stadium and that they were a bunch of international millionaires doing copious amounts of blow at exclusive nightclubs while spending a giant media conglomerate’s money.  Our local team, full of football purity and integrity! (Full disclosure: I grew up on Miami Beach and was a HUGE Ft. Lauderdale Strikers fan as a little kid.  So there).

My favorite Strikers shirt (c. 1981) with RBNY kit behind it for perspective.

This new Cosmos iteration will be playing its games at Hofstra, one of the original Cosmos’ ancestral homes (where they played two of their first three seasons) in Long Island, New York City’s sixth (seventh? eighth?) borough.  To be fair, they seem to be doing things the right way this time around, forming a proper team and playing in the NASL before ascending to the top flight of US soccer once again.

I, for one, a seer of patterns and understander of symmetry, don’t see this as the end of RBNY’s support or whatever cataclysmic scenario the doomsayers continue to conjure up.  The novelty of a new team, one rife with mythical nostalgia, sprung fully formed from the forehead of the mighty Pele himself, is a tough prospect to turn down – particularly if you’re too cool to take the PATH to Jerz and see an actual “local” team play in a venue that’s closer than the one that the “Cosmos” will call home.  Fair enough.  I can’t wait for the day that we RBNY supporters march as one into whatever stadium, wherever, that the “Cosmos” play in, for the first quasi-New York derby.

As a supporter of RBNY, it is not my job to market the team, fret about attendance and generally lose my sh*t over things that are clearly not my responsibility.  But, I do care, a lot, about perception, and especially the way that it affects and foments the semi-inferiority complex of RBNY fans that inevitably comes along with the “Cosmos” narrative.  It’ll be what it’ll be.  But, for now, until eleven guys take the field at Hofstra, the “Cosmos” will still be a 20^th century toy looking for 21^st century legitimacy.

Back to the present, and RBNY’s supposed search for a 3^rd DP.  We’ve seen this movie before, and I have a feeling that we know how it’s going to end…with an underwhelming, but reasonably acceptable solution.  Maybe there won’t be a 3^rd DP this year, but RBNY will pick up another Midfielder who can press up into the attack, giving the team more and varied formational options.  And, with or without a 3^rd DP, a healthy RBNY should be tipped to beat any team in the league over two legs in a playoff tie.  Even though our two current DPs are part-timers, on their day, they are still the class of the league.  But, we WANT that name.  We CRAVE that feeling of invincibility that the superstar will provide.  We NEED to have that third DP so we can claim our rightful mantle of a team fit for New York.  To a frighteningly real degree, we’re a bunch of junkies who desperately need our fix, even though, deep down, we know that it probably won’t last, and we (and the team) will repeat the pattern again.

First thing you learn is you always gotta wait
I’m waiting for my man
…
I’m waiting for my man
Baby don’t you holler, darlin’ don’t you bawl and shout
I’m feeling good, you know I’m gonna work it on out
I’m feeling good, I’m feeling oh so fine
Until tomorrow, but that’s just some other time
I’m waiting for my man.

As we come to the end of this rumination on the pathos and geometry of supporting RBNY, I want to be clear about my own equivocations about temperance and perspective.   As much as one can intellectualize the obstacles and enticements that come along with following this team’s day-to-day drama, it is something that must be felt viscerally, in the given moment, and shouted back into the face of the pattern of sixteen years of ups, downs, starts, stops, highs, lows, etc.  This team, this year, is capable of bringing home the Cup, and we should expect nothing less, even if we know better.  The time, as always, is Now.

Now, now, now, now, now, now, now
Now, now, now, now, now, now, now
Now, now, now, now, now, now, now!