Breakfast pints for Villa in New York

Buried in the central business district, a bar bursting with football lore accommodates early morning Premier League fixtures.

Before the World Cup (and before the 2-1 loss to Stevenage…) I was in New York back in November for Aston Villa’s final league game against Brighton ahead of the six-week international break. Here is that tale from two months ago and what it’s like watching a football soccer World Cup from the land of the free.

If you’ve never had the pleasure, Midtown Manhattan on a Sunday morning is not where the residents of New York City choose to spend their day of rest. The American equivalent of Canary Wharf, it’s a place where dreams go to die, especially at the weekend.

Nevertheless, huddled below the Empire State Building, buried amongst the swathes of paved concrete monoliths erected in homage to finance, is a venue that has three different names on the door. ‘Legends NYC Bar & Grill’ is both engraved on the stone above the threshold and blared out through the neon lights in the window, while ‘The Katie Taylor Arms’ is the name that sits over the doorway set back from the street. Last but not least, ‘The Football Factory’ is printed on the window.

Whether this is one bar or three, none of them looks open. It is 8.30am on a Sunday, after all. But a few Google searches insisted this was the place to go in order to watch the Premier League in America’s biggest city.

The day before, while walking through the Chelsea neighbo(u)rhood (and in terms of inhabitants and accompanying accoutrements, it’s not a million miles away from London’s Chelsea), I heard cheers go up from an Irish pub called Flannery’s just after Tottenham’s winning goal against Leeds went in. A few minutes later a man in his twenties overtook me in the street, walking with purpose, Airpods in, Spurs shirt proudly on display underneath his coat. As he passed me by, a large man with dreadlocks stopped in front of him: ‘Hey, great win man!’ he said, offering a fist-bump that was accepted. The young man, surely one of only a few Tottenham fans in this city, walked away wearing a hidden smile.

From many corners of New York, football, proper football, is seeping out. In Brooklyn, a football memorabilia shop interrupts the lines of vintage shops in Bushwick. People walk around sporting Chelsea training tops, the fashion choice for the probably-secretly-monied urbanite youth who find themselves cosplaying as football hooligans. On advertising boards across Manhattan, a TV advert declares it “‘tis the season for the World Cup”, accompanied by photos of home treasure Christian Pulisic.

But at the Legends NYC Bar & Grill? At first glance, it appears that despite promises to the contrary the spirit of football is lying dormant. Not wanting to give up on an early wake-up, I tentatively test the glass doors, and they open. Inside, an empty bar and empty tables with all of the lights turned off. To my left, there is a wooden staircase, spiralling its way below, the hint of an amber glow suggesting signs of life. As I make my way down the unmistakable sound of football pundits and matchday atmosphere rises out of speakers. Soon, there are football shirts and scarfs hugging the walls.

As the stairs end and the bar floor begins, all of the lights are out. The televisions break the silence of the six people already present as the 9am kickoff nears. On the left-hand side, two Villa fans. To the right, two for Brighton. A small woman stands behind the bar pouring the last of four beers for those gathered. In the back corner, a man who is clearly the manager of the bar is huddled over a laptop before turning his attention to a clump of sauce bottles that need re-filling, preparing his business for the day ahead, when soccer will bleed into college football and then late-night basketball, before the process is repeated again, only interrupted by the small hours of the night when there isn’t any professional sport taking place in the western world.

Covering the walls and ceilings are scarves and flags of every team you can think of. The New York Blues (the Chelsea supporters club) have a particularly strong presence, including a scarf above the bar that states ‘New York Blues, we know what we are’. A confusing answer to a question no-one had asked.

A third Villa fan slides in at the bar, while the original two sound like they at one point may have lived in the vicinity of a B6 postcode, there is no mistaking this new entrant. In full 2019/20 season Villa Kappa tracksuit, an actual American Villa fan skips in, his Adidas Superstars a pristine white. He squeezes himself in between the pair and orders a Guinness.

Bleary-eyed, I decide it is too early for a pint, especially at $10. A coffee for $5 will have to suffice and it hasn’t had the chance to cool down before the first goal goes in, Alex MacAllister nipping in to steal the ball from the half-asleep Villa defence, who seem to also be on east coast time.

Reflexively, I question what I’m doing here. 9am in one of the most exciting cities on Earth and I’m sat in a dark underground bar watching the Villa suffer the first blows of what looks to be another pasting. The breakfast of the younger of the two original Villa fans, a $19 Irish breakfast, a gargantuan plate of food that he hurriedly wolfs down, a distraction from what was unfolding 3,300 miles away.

The game hummed along, reactions from those around me dulled by the time difference, but when John McGinn went down in the box and the ref pointed to the spot, cheers went up. The American in the tracksuit erupted into a solo rendition of ‘we’ve got McGinn, super John McGinn, I just don’t think you understand’, which was politely absorbed by the rest of the congregation. For him, this was the closest he could get to a taste of Villa Park. The AVFC NYC flag draped by the entrance providing a stateside artificial flavo(u)ring of the real thing.

More people soon began to filter in, nestling themselves onto barstools in cubbies hidden out of view of the main bar, beers and pancakes ordered and served as the two sides tussled on screens covering much of the vertical real estate.

Amongst the later arrivals were Irish football fans, who were given one screen tucked around a pillar, right in the corner. Pints and full Irish’s balancing precariously on a small circular table. Whichever game they were watching, the goals soon started piling in, and before long the Villa followed too, Ings carefully guiding the ball around a splayed defender before delivering a slower ball that outfoxed the goalkeeper to wrestle the fixture back in favo(u)r of the claret and blue.

Beer glasses re-filled, the Brighton fans now having their turn to question their Sunday morning plans, Villa managed their way through the remaining fixtures. Soon, an AC Milan flag was hung up by the bar manager and soon enough fans in red and black shirts arrived, ready for their match with Fiorentina. As the final whistle blew, they took the seats vacated by the Villa and Brighton fans. The Football Factory was indeed a revolving production line of both the displaced football diaspora as well as natives who were looking for a sport without acronyms or draft systems.

Surfacing above ground, the upstairs bar now had signs of life, people sidling into booths, these TV screens now turned on and set to emanate sports until the end of the day. Walking onto the street, the city had now woken up too, yet only a handful of its inhabitants were wandering its streets happy in the knowledge that a football team from Birmingham had secured all three points before the World Cup break.

This Saturday morning sleeper didn’t hint at what was to come as American soccer fandom awoke as the USMNT touched down in Qatar. As I travelled across the USA as the tournament unfolded, a man with a mullet tried to high-five me at a bar in Phildaelphia when Timothy Weah scored against Wales, the barman then handing out souvenir spongey football keyrings sponsored by Modelo lager. In Chicago, people were queueing to get into bars throughout the city for the lunchtime kick-off against ‘Harry Kane’s (friend of Tom Brady’s) Engerland’. I listened through gritted teeth at an Amtrak station bar as one teenager explained to the other that he didn’t understand why defenders booted the ball up the pitch and that he would know, as he’d played soccer throughout high school and at college. In San Francisco, Japanese fans cheered as Germans groaned mere metres away as World Cup fortune favo(u)red the former’s bravery and mourned the latter’s failure.

A welcome release from the travails of being a Villa fan, a world away from the false dawns of 2-0 victories over Spurs and frustrating 1-1 draws with Wolves. But whether this temporary sweet relief is worth calling the whole thing ‘soccer’? I’m not so sure.