Jokes about #PepOut aside, the one real criticism I would levy at last night has nothing to do with the team performance (it was as expected in my mind, and I thought the young lads did fairly well, given the circumstances) and everything to do with the amateurishness of the overall production of the match.
From the prematch coverage (including truly uncomfortable to watch interviews with local fans) to the half-empty stadium (partly due to it being too big for the nature of the match, partly due to the less-than-ideal location for putting on a football match, and partly due to the overpriced tickets) to the sod turf over tarp over Astro turf pitch laid a week ago to pitch mics picking up constant booing of our players (particularly Grealish) on the match broadcast to the truly awful commentators on ESPN that couldn’t even get our players’ names right (and the co-commentator using words like “helper” to describe an assist) to the very difficult to watch post-match interviews, I do hope the club take stock of how badly it was produced. I said in the match thread it reminded of some of the friendlies we had in the late 90s where everything looked to have been arranged the day before.
Most of it was no doubt out of City’s hands and down to the “FC Series” organisers but I don’t think it was a worthy showcase of the club, which is the main point of this sort of friendly, so hopefully Soriano et al take note and avoid this in the future. Or at least give a kick up the arse of the organisers to do better in the future.
Hopefully the next match in NYC will be put on with substantially more polish and professionalism.
