Soccer team Detroit City F.C. will kick off its season on May 10 against the Cincinnati Saints, according to the just-released schedule.
May 16 sees a local derby with the Michigan Stars, and Lansing United comes to town on May 23. For the full schedule, visit detcityfc.com.
You can buy season tickets for $40 here.
As we wrote in the column Grabbed by the Balls, “Detroit City played its first ever season in 2012 in the National Premier Soccer League’s Midwest Division, hosting matches at Cass Tech. Nicknamed “Le Rouge,” and with a crest featuring the Spirit of Detroit, the team ended with a respectable 5-2-5 record. At the end of the season, Canadian Kofi Opare left City to sign a professional contract with the L.A. Galaxy. That’s great, but isn’t the aim of Detroit City’s handlers to make the club one that players want to stay at? Fuck L.A.!”
“The co-owners of Le Rouge are Alex Wright and Sean Mann, local businessmen looking to give something back to their community. Well aware that Detroit City isn’t about to compete with the Tigers, et al., Wright says the whole thing is easier if your ambitions are modest.”
“Sean and I didn’t look at it from that business macro point of view,” Wright says. “We are both local Detroiters and our work is in the city. We came together through a rec league Sean had founded, discovered the interest and tapped into that. We decided to start small and smart. When you do that, you don’t have the worries that the pro teams have.”
