Where Next for MLS? 3. New York City
They could have sold-out the 25,000 soccer-specific-stadium ten times over tonight. We’re in the borough of Queens, New York City; it’s April 2012, and soccer is big news in the Big Apple once again. New York City FC are about to play their inaugural match.
David Beckham walks out on to the field. The crowd cheers. He’s wearing a suit — he retired at the end of last season — and he’s flanked by Posh and four other important men who along with Beckham have brought soccer to Queens. Next to him is his close associate pop impresario Simon Fuller, one of the most influential people in the world according to Time magazine, and on the other side is Fred Wilpon, an owner of baseball’s New York Mets and who has finally realised his dream of making soccer part of the redevelopment on the site of the now demolished Shea Stadium.
There’s a third Englishman there, too: David Dein, a former owner of Arsenal, is part of the investment group. And he’s helped bring over another former Arsenal man to kick things off: Thierry Henry is New York’s flagship star and captain, signed to MLS’ second largest ever contract, behind only Beckham’s own monstrous deal that finally expired the season before.
And in the background stands MLS Commissioner Don Garber, looking pleased as punch. In recent days we’ve looked at two of the candidates MLS is considering for the next expansion franchise, Miami and St Louis. New York City is one that seems to have been overlooked in the discussion, but it’s not because MLS doesn’t want it to happen, as we’ll explore.
Background
Is that scenario wild fantasy? Perhaps. But New York City expansion is a puzzle MLS is desperate to put together, as these words from Don Garber in the New York Times last year make clear: “The league’s original plan always was to have two teams in New York”.
We all know about the history of the Cosmos, of Pele, of the size of the New York market and the importance to the sport here of having a team in its most globally visible city. The question isn’t whether there’ll be a new New York team, but when it’ll arrive, where they’ll play, and who’ll be behind it. Let’s look at the most realistic scenario, close to that outlined above.
Stadium
Though Manhattan would be more glamorous and Brooklyn would have a strong appeal, it’s as part of the ongoing redevelopment of the site around Shea Stadium that MLS is most closely exploring.
SoccerTimes received some confirmation of this a few months ago:
SoccerTimes was told off-the-record by an MLS official that the top candidate would be New York City with a soccer-specific stadium built adjacent to Citi Field, the Mets’ new stadium, set to open next to Shea Stadium in Flushing, Queens, in 2009. The league envisions a bitter rivalry between this club and the New York Red Bulls, who are based in New Jersey. League sources admitted, however, getting this done would be hugely complicated and largely dependent on the development of Citi Field.
The mention of the Mets and their owner, Fred Wilpon, in that article is significant as he is known to be interested in MLS, and should have the means and the sway to get a soccer-specific-stadium built as part of the redevelopment underway. The details, as the article suggests, are where the devil lies though. We simply don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes.
But as we can see in the image below, Citi Field has been developed immediately behind Shea Stadium, which could be demolished and replaced by a soccer stadium.
Supporters
There seem to be plenty of people jonesing for a team inside the boroughs, with many expressing an antipathy to the New York Red Bull franchise located over in New Jersey. Several hundred people have signed a petition calling for MLS to expand to the boroughs, with the New York City FC blog a comprehensive advocate of the idea. The Borough Boys Supporters Club announces themselves as “the official supporters group of a second Major League Soccer team in the New York City Area.”
They even have scarves planned.
There’s an interesting interview with the Borough Boys on Soccer Source, in which they further emphasise their alienation from the Red Bulls:
Most supporters feel that the Red Bulls are not their team. This is probably based on the fact that they have always played in New Jersey. While the Jets and Giants both play in Jersey as well, they also once played games in New York. A lot of New Yorkers have a sense of pride when it comes to the New York, New Jersey dispute.
Also, I feel a large part of the soccer community in this area lives in the Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island area and it would be easier for them to access games on a weekend. While the Meadowlands might only be about 15 miles away, getting there on your average summer weekend for a 4PM or 7PM match can take about 2 hours - even longer if you are from Long Island.
Access and attention on the Red Bulls ought to improve when Red Bull park finally opens in Harrison, New Jersey in 2009, but the feeling is they still won’t become New York City’s team.
Adam Spangler of This Is American Soccer told Pitch Invasion that “Red Bull and the Metrostars before them have always felt distant from the city, both physically and figuratively. Maybe that will change. when Red Bull park opens, but it’s no secret that over the last decade there has been little to no connection with the NYC community, so that market is still largely untapped.”
Backing
Fred Wilpon is the person most associated with a potential NYC team, and Pitch Invasion has also heard that former Arsenal part-owner David Dein is interested in becoming an investor in it, a move that would make perfect sense given his global ambitions (he was once the head of the G-14) and connections to MLS already via Stan Kroenke, owner of the Colorado Rapids and an investor in Arsenal.
The news that David Beckham has an option to purchase the right to operate an MLS franchise is also of considerable interest. We know Beckham and his associates have a long-term vision of being at the heart of growing soccer in this country, and he certainly has the financial resources to be involved and the passion to do it. From MLS’ perspective, putting Beckham’s name all over the NYC expansion project (even if his actual involvement was minimal) would be a dream come true. Brand it like Beckham.
Overall
Let’s strip away the hyperbole with which the article began. Let’s forget Beckham’s involvement, perhaps the most tenuous connection made here. There is still an awful lot to do to get a stadium in place — I don’t think it would be hard to find the investors to back a team in New York City — which is why MLS has awarded two franchises elsewhere in the months since Garber confirmed to the NYT that he wanted a second NYC franchise ahead of other cities. It could still be a while before we see the likes of Thierry Henry in New York City FC colours.
In the coming weeks, Pitch Invasion plans to look more closely at the details of this possible expansion, so stay tuned. But in principle, would you welcome a new, New York team as the next addition to MLS?
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Oh, dont count on your second nyc franchise, why would they place a team in an area when the current team is failing? Answer me that. If you want a second team, come to red bulls games and show the league that new york can support 2 teams.
According to sources close to the deal, I would say you are completely wrong.
With regarding to the failing team in NY. I completely disagree with you in that RB is not in the NYC market. NO TEAM IS.
And as far as this goes, that by supporting RB, you show the league that a 2nd franchise is viable. Who brainwashed that idea into your head? lol That’s either someone in RB/AEG or someone from another part of the country, with less people in their city than NYC, that wants a team.
Boro boys, New Jersey is in the NYC area. I live on the northern most part of the metro area. My father is from long island, New jersey is easier to get to for most of the metro population.It is simply economist. If one team attendance average is one the lowest in the league, why the hell put another in the same area? I say lets wait it out and see what happens when the stadium opens and dont get me wrong i would love another team but i think other areas deserve it more than we do. I say ask more, i love discussions like this.
@ Patrick
Being that your dad is originally from Long Island, then you should know what the trip from Long Island to NJ is like? I would say about, what, 3 or 4 hours? Now do you understand why the MetroBulls were a NJ team. Even Upstate NY team, where you are from is easier than coming from Long Island or points east.
I’m not going to go into the marketing disaster that the MetroBulls have been but suffice it to say that the results show in the seats.
I’m also an original Metrostars fan, and my move to another city was coincidentally the same week as the “re-branding.”
Not that he needs it, but I’ll vouch for the Metrologist’s dedication and passion for the Metros. I also wholeheartedly second the description of the mismanagement of the team: I cannot conceive of a single sports marketing cliche that was not employed to attract an elusive– or non-existent– family fan base at the expense of the supporters groups’ attempts to create atmosphere and excitement in the tomb that is Giants Stadium.
The number of soccer fans who have sampled and then spit out whole Metrostars/RBNY experience, swearing never to return, is frankly mind-boggling. There are a lot of reasons why people don’t return: the putrid play; the unendurable trip from the door of the Port Authority, onto a bus in the exhaust fume-choked “Area X” followind by 90 minutes of stop-and-start Lincoln Tunnel traffic, THEN the return trip; the sorry sight and empty sound of even an average-sized MLS crowd of 20k filling only a quarter of Giants Stadium; ridiculous marketing gimmicks that wouldn’t even fly in the New York-Penn League of minor league baseball; the lack of any coherent effort to build value in the side because every GM is so desperate to meet New York-sized expectations, they trade off the best players for a promise of a very faded star; and then the Red Bull takeover.
It sounds like shifting excuses, but they’re not shifting when EVERY SINGLE REASON IS PERFECTLY CORRECT, just weighted differently by different people, depending on the depth of their experience. Tolerating the miserable game day experience merely gives you enough points on a timeline to realize that practically everything has been done as badly as possible. The team has simply been the most mismanaged ongoing sports operation I have ever come across in the US.
I am still a Metro supporter. I am an ESC member, even if I’m not in NY anymore. For me, right now, that means I never, ever refer to the team by “Red Bull,” and that I hope that the money that Red Bull decides to sell the team, the stadium, and the practice facility to someone more committed to building something that does not taint nearly every bit of the supporter experience.
But I will continue cheering for the Metro– and here’s where I differ from Metrologist– because my belief in the ESC and in the idea of the team transcends the reality of the name, the shirt, the cans of Red Bull at every press conference. I can’t fault anyone who can’t or won’t agree with me, but neither are the ESC who support “Metro for life” dupes or gullible or sell-outs, which is how some (not Metrologist) feel, or pretend to feel.
The fact of New York City MLS is that, if the profit motive is there, the stadium will happen, no matter how many times opportunists who want to gloat about the Metros’ failure want to attack the idea. I have absolutely no idea where “Papa Bear” went in New York, but his description of meatheads disparaging the sport on every street sounds like total fiction to me, and I lived in the city for 14 years, playing in leagues, in parks and on the street, going to games, watching matches in bars and New Yorkers’ apartments. The audience is there in huge numbers, and whether you or I like it, someone will eventually exploit it and put a team in NYC, no matter what puristic standards people in other cities advocate.
As for the Toronto guy, again with the self-mythologizing. The description of neighborhoods shut down with celebrations of the world cup could be applied with no changes to East Williamsburgh, Roosevelt Avenue, Crown Heights, and many other parts of town, when Italy or Argentina or Jamaica play. Special details of hundreds of cops are assigned to parts of Queens during the Copa America, for christsake. I don’t know how you can feel so comfortable making assumptions that so nakedly expose your ignorance, but it’s that sort of misplaced high-handedness that gives Toronto supporters their arrogant reputation.
I didn’t imply that New York doesn’t shut down during major cup competitions. My point was that football is closer mainstream sports culture here than in the United States. As for your charges of arrogance: I’m happy to be called arrogant, but Toronto FC supporters as whole? Arrogant for what? Not paying respects to the small but vocal group of diehard MLS supporters in other cities envious of a new club’s unsuspected success?
Have fun with your second club NY. Be sure to catch all those tumbleweeds; they can be a nuisance during corner kicks…
“My point was that football is closer mainstream sports culture here than in the United States. ”
Foolish generalization.
In some cities, and New York is one, soccer is part of the mainstream sports culture.
In others, it is not.
Should Toronto be responsible for the fact that I couldn’t find a place to watch a Champions League game when I was on vacation in Charlottetown?
Maybe I should hold NY accountable for the fact I couldn’t watch the CL FINAL on basic cable when I was an hour outside of New York City. I’m done. “Foolish Generalisation” indeed. What are, my grade school teacher?
Do tell us when and where this was, Richard - Ulster County,1983? Because I’m from an hour outside NYC, and we’ve had the Deuce for ages.
Petty tit for tat.
Your ego seems very much tied into how you believe that Toronto FC demonstrates cosmopolitan Toronto’s passion for soccer is, and how unique that is in North America. Which makes me think you’re a rube.
Everyone — and I’m not assigning any blame — can we stop the name-calling and sniping? If you have substantial matters related to NYC expansion to discuss, go ahead. There’s been some good stuff in many comments by numerous people. But let’s keep it civil.
A lot of the case against a NYC team does seem to come from somebody wanting a cookie for some other city, whether that be Toronto, Miami, Montreal, or wherever. It would be nice to have this conversation without that kind of canard.
“There’s more to it than marketing alone. The MLSE basically left TFC to simmer with a barely visible poster campaign before the start of the season, and the web culture took care of the rest. The rest of the momentum was grassroots. Football culture requires more than a front office pushing product, it requires an open-minded population with a working knowledge of football…don’t see that yet in NYC.”
This was my own innocent remark, I’ll admit supplemented by some sniping provoked by the accusation that all Toronto FC supporters are arrogant, that seems to have caused the furor. But I think it’s by and large supported by the facts.
Two things. This is a great site Tom, but it’s a bit nanny-statish to referee comments on your blog. I don’t think anything here, outside of some friendly ribbing, has come close to crossing the line. This is one of the side effects of democracy right? Isn’t that we progressives are all about?
I think my comments ARE relevant to the conversation, because let’s face it, you can’t stretch the league forever, and determining which urban area is worthy of expansion means another area won’t get a club, unless we all want a repeat of the end of the NASL. I just think it would be a grave mistake to expand NY to two MLS clubs when there is a large, indigineous football culture in Quebec, which is why I made my little case for Canadian soccer culture. If that’s not relevant I don’t know what is. But, this is your blog, whatever you want is fine with me. Sorry anyone if I offended.
Honest, non-snarky question here, Richard: if there’s SUCH a fantastic indigenous football culture in Toronto AND Quebec (beyond Montreal? the whole province, you’re saying?) AND Vancouver and god knows where else, hows about getting your own league?
@BOROBOYZ: @papa bear
Come take a ride with me in Queens and I’ll show you soccer like you have NEVER seen in your life. FMF? lol lol Come with me to Hell and Ill show you all you want to see and more. I can take you to several places to eat where, if you overhead the conversation between the staff and patrons you would swear it was Estudio Futbol.
Better yet, stay in LA, Live in the FMF world. We are happier here with ‘real soccer’
I’ve been to Queens, chief. It’s not even in the same universe as LA. It’s not ALL FMF in LA. La Liga is a regular topic of discussion as well. You’ve obviously never spent more than a cup of tea in LA or else you’d know this.
Look at our national team. 80% of them are from the LA area. Its not a coincidence I promise you. Many people grow up living and breathing football in LA. There is no other place like it in the US. SD and NorCal are more football savy and fanatical than anywhere in NY would ever imagine being.
So you remain in NY and keep believing the hype. NY deserves no second team until the one on the doorstep actually draws anything that resembles a fanbase.
@Metrologist “Anyway, three teams in the NYC area would make sense before one in dusty outposts like St. Louis.”
you really need to step away from the crack pipe. A St. Louis team would outdraw RBNY immediately and any other team tossed into NY.
Typical New Yorker blind (utterly unjustified) arrogance.
It was hyperbole, papa bear - I actually have heard that St. Louis has paved roads and indoor plumbing. Of course a new team in a place like St. Louis would be odds-on to outdraw RBNY - I’ve already said multiple times that RB is a failure in my book, and that I don’t think they’re coming back anytime soon. (outside of the unpredictable magic world of Beckham and Barcelona games, and creative season-ticket-equivalent accounting). I’ve scratched the surface of why that is, historically, having been there for a good chunk of it, and it’s certainly not “NY fans suck”. Others have done the same. You can get the deeper version when someone writes a book about it someday - it will be one of the funniest, saddest, most infuriating stories about American soccer yet.
What you’re offering is not even remotely close to the correct comparison, though, and Tom already explained why, against the example of TFC. So let’s try and be a little fairer - would a new St. Louis team beat the 17k+ average that the Metros have had over their entire existence? Possible, but I wouldn’t bet the stimulus rebate on it. Would a St. Louis team in its first year beat the 23k the Metros drew in their first? Not a prayer.
And for the record, I’m from Connecticut - my arrogance is innate and justified.
Papa Bear, do you expect assertions like “80% of [the US national team] are from the LA area” to go unchallenged? The percentage of national team players in a given squad from the LA area varies, depending on the game, from 10% to 25%. And that counts localities that are very distant from LA itself, like Redlands, as “LA area”– I don’t have a problem with that, but by the same token, is sixty-five miles a reasonable distance for every city’s catchment area? Certainly it’s disproportionate, but notice that the USMNT players from the LA area are from more spacious, better-off suburbs, and NOT the inner city. And accordingly, NY area national team players have tended to be from Long Island, northern suburban counties in NYS, and north Jersey. There’s nothing in what you wrote that implies you were talking about Irvine and Alto Loma, instead of East LA, and that urban vs suburban distinction is not something to be smudged in this context– after all, we’re talking about NYC vs NJ.
As for assertions about Queens: where were you? Howard Beach in 1985? Queens is more than 2/3 foreign born or children of foreign born. I don’t want to rile the Toronto guy up again, because I know many Torontonians to love to tell people they live in the most diverse place in the world, but in the 2000 census, 54% of Queens residents spoke a language other than English at home, and according to the NYS Comptroller, 138 languages are spoken by the borough’s residents. If foreign birth/recent family immigration is correlated to support for soccer, and I don’t think anyone would disagree with that, Queens has no problem. That’s not to say LA isn’t a great soccer city, but what on earth would lead you to defend your indefensible proposition that soccer is not very popular in NYC or part of the culture? Don’t you realize that there are actually people who live/d in NYC who will call you on it? Do you think a more and more strident set of assertions is going to carry the argument?
Now the idea that ethnic diversity doesn’t necessarily result in MLS support is a different proposition, and I’ve heard Torontonians make a credible case that a significant amount of TFC support (especially from the SGs) is NOT from Toronto’s large immigrant communities, though Richard makes the case very well that diversity contributed to more local knowedge of the sport, and that helps TFC.
But it seems to me that the perception that MLS teams are scarce, and must be competed for by FANS as opposed to bazillionaires, has led people to make absurd generalizations about relative interest in the support in cities they know little to nothing about. The claims made about New York City are completely off-base, and difficult to respond to, because they’re patently untrue. I’ve been to Toronto a few times, and I had no doubt that there was great interest in soccer, even though I didn’t see anyone playing or any on television, PRECISELY BECAUSE it had similar, uh, demographics (shorthand for “kinds of people”) that I saw in NYC. There may be a competition for MLS teams, but let’s not make it a competition in which we deliberately engage in distortion of facts.
As for Papa Bear, obviously he’s trying to get some licks in on NYC. I’ve seen this sort of thing from him elsewhere. Dude, you’re bringing down the tone of the discussion, so step it up or be gone.
Sixty-nine comments and counting…looks like all this sniping has brought about an interesting debate, but one by my own admission that may not be appropriate for the original article.
The crux of the issue seems to me to be deciding what sort of criteria the MLS should be using to determine appropriate markets for expansion. This is a touchy subject in North America because we all know how this ended up the last time around when anyone with a sack of cash could pony up and provide collegiate-level soccer to empty stadia.
The MLS perspective will be whether there’s a financial market for football, and our perspective is what sort of fans should the league be catering to. Soccer moms? Ethnic enclaves? General multi-purpose sports fans? The modern elite urban gentry courted by the likes of economists like Richard Florida?
The case of New York is an interesting one because there’s a little bit of everything. In theory the greater NY market might support two clubs, but it seems to me that it would be prudent to wait and see if new digs might transform the pull of the NYRB, who at least in terms of the squad itself should be pulling in more fans than it is right now (at least I’d shell out to see JPA and Altidore play). I also know that for hardcore football afficianados, it’s a tough sell to watch soccer on the gridiron. North American supporters deserve much, much better (yes art. turf at BMO, I know, I know).
My own belief is that it takes more for a traditional target market like those ‘wacky soccer playing immigrants’ to build a fan base for a club. I understand that talking football culture to the converted is a waste of time, but the game needs a broad appeal to really catch on. I respect, I really do respect, that TFC was not alone with its successful first season. The difference though was the team has garnered regular coverage in every single national newspaper, every television sports cast, radio etc. Canada’s major cities hosted the U19 tournament and drew the second highest turnout in the tournaments history, topping a million spectators, the vast majority Canadian. And even with the bungling of the CSA, we have a disproportionate number of players plying their trade in Europe relative to the size of our population. This is part of why I think TFCs success will continue, although, granted, in two years time I could be eating my words…
For the post above, I meant Montreal but apparently a good number of small towners travel to see the Impact play, some as far as Riviere de Loup.
Richard, I have little doubt that TFC will continue to draw well, and I wouldn’t imply otherwise.
And the single semi-legitimate point I hear is that New York already has an MLS team and it isn’t well supported, so MLS should not place another team in or near the city until local soccer fans demonstrate their willingness to support MLS in some form.
But this point has been, I think, fairly well refuted, here and elsewhere. I’ll go through yet ANOTHER iteration of the argument so if anyone wants to try to pick it apart, they’ll have the opportunity. But I would hope we can discuss this on the merits.
1. The primary (and cynical) case is that the interest on the part of the league and, allegedly, billionaire investor Fred Wilpon demonstrates that from a free-market perspective, Metro/RBNY has failed to attact an existing huge soccer market.
So the free-market take is that the league is in the business of making money, and if NYC is prioritized over other markets it’s because there is an investor who believes he will make money and the league believes overall that it will succeed more with NYC than with any other market. I know this blog leans way left, and I don’t think free markets rationalize economic decision making as much as the right thinks, but this is a pretty simple case. I haven’t heard a single OTHER positive reason why NYC is under consideration, only negative reasons why it shouldn’t be… but that ignores the harsh fact that MLS is a business, and a pretty cruel one (witness the shit deal that many players get).
2. “Untapped soccer market”: You can quibble with the existing huge soccer market point, but the ONLY case I’ve heard is either anecdotal, like Richard’s “I couldn’t get the CL final on basic cable an hour north of the city, ergo NYC doesn’t care about soccer” or Papa Bear’s claim that he was in Queens and 8 out of 10 people surveyed said that soccer is for “faggots,” or actually circular and outright fallacious begging of the question: “New York isn’t a good soccer market because it doesn’t support the remote MLS team that exists at the periphery of the area, and supporting the remote MLS team that exists at the periphery of the area is the only way to define a good soccer market.”
Anyone who has spent any time away from the most tourist-oriented, bland parts of NYC or the parts that are culturally indisposed to support soccer (Puerto Rican, Dominican, African American, and a few old and very conservative white working-class enclaves which care for nothing but the Yankees) will find the idea that soccer is culturally a part of NYC to be self-evident. It’s the linchpin for the idea that there is money to be made off MLS in NYC. Without this fact, MLS wouldn’t care and no one would be interested.
What sort of evidence, short of going there, do people need? TV ratings: http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article.main&articleId=51236 (2006 ABC World Cup final, not including Univision)? Setanta’s venue finder, where you can type various zip codes to demonstrate that there is a very large number of NYC area bars and restaurants who see a business opportunity in paying for soccer content, comparing very favorably with other localities(http://www.setantanorthamerica.com/venue_finder.aspx)? There are ways to get real metrics around this, you realize. As for me, I lived there and know how high the demand for soccer is in NYC.
3. Why don’t all these soccer fans then go to MLS games? Well, as the Metrologist has pointed out, they DID go to MLS games, despite the holy nightmare that is Giants Stadium (see my post above– the only reasonable counterargument I’ve heard is that the Giants and Jets draw well, but as it has been said, they play relatively few games a year, on fall and winter Sundays, have a long history including many years in NYC itself, and have the TFC advantage of sold-out games feeding more demand– you have to buy tickets for ALL games to go to one– AND they play in the NFL, which is so huge and makes so much money that it bends light and other comparisons do not apply).
Moreover, the team drew best when the league was at its worst, with horrible glitz and shootouts that were a deterrent to attracting the core soccer audience, and with 90% of the players being worse than the worst current MLS players. It was a stomach-churning fraud, and most people saw right through it and didn’t return– I was a rare case of a Brooklynite who found perverse pleasure in the Metros, but I could fault none of my friends for giving up. And then Red Bull took over and gutted the little tradition that had evolved.
The team’s history is a litany of failures, missed opportunities, cynicism, and total shit. MLS cannot “fire” Red Bull as investor/operators and give the team, stadium, practice facility, etc., to someone who would do a better job. Instead, the league seems to have the approach that RBNY will be consigned to the role of New Jersey teams in other established professional sports leagues, the Nets (who may yet move to Brooklyn and destroy my old neighborhood) and the Devils (who are moderately successful and have their own new arena a mile from Harrison’s stadium: teams who are on the other side of a geographic and maybe cultural divide, but still exist in a quasi-independent “market” of almost five million people and as such can succeed and maybe even thrive.
Fire away.
What’s wrong with Atlanta! The people from the lower South don’t have any soccer teams, SC, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana. We’d all like a chance to have a team way down here. Put one kinda central maybe in Atlanta and we could all go since it is not to far from either place.
A soccer stadium in NYC would be great.
YOU ALL ARE GAY, NYC IS GAY FUCK NYC FUCKING JEWISH MONEY WHORES, TAKE YOUR NY/NJ REDBULLS OR WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT TO CALL IT AND SHOVE IT UP YOUR DEAD GRANDMOTHER’S ARSE