We’re in a bar on the Upper East Side — not too upper, not too east — discussing the new dawn that is about to break over New York City. Zohran Mamdani, the Trump-charming socialist, is about to be sworn in as mayor. Will he give us free buses, free childcare, cheap groceries? Will he flame out, spectacularly? And most of all, will he join our football team?
Our football team is called the Flamingos.
Tom is our striker and he is quite well connected. He could pass on the message: Mr Mayor, we understand you are looking for a team?
The mayor-elect loves football. He plays it casually, he follows it fanatically, and by it, I mean Arsenal. Arsenal fans have existed for some time among the New York intelligentsia. It was like reading a Sally Rooney novel on the subway. It signalled that you were a thinking man.
But they have never attempted to seize power. Mamdani was on a podcast last month when he received a video message from Ian Wright. He all but dissolved into tears.
“Every day I wake up, I think about Sébastian Squillaci,” he told the podcast host Adam Friedland. “Pascal Cygan!”
Now everyone in City Hall will have to pretend they know what he is talking about. And just as the president of Finland is tight with President Trump thanks to his golf swing, those who want to get close to the mayor will wonder about buying turf boots and saying they are quite useful in midfield.
When I got to New York 15 years ago, young New Yorkers talked about football as if it were an exotic new pastime. “I really want to get into soccer,” they would say, at casual games. Afterwards we all went for brunch.
One of the brunchers ended up founding a league; several more sprouted across the city. Meanwhile ESPN started broadcasting Premier League matches on Saturday morning. Young, hungover millennials and older ones with a baby on their lap were indoctrinated.
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There were still voices in the US political establishment warning that soccer was un-American, that its rise signalled the kind of spiritual decay that gripped the Roman empire, around the time that emperors started marrying horses.
Mamdani, during this period, was playing for a Brooklyn team called the Talking Headers. There he was reportedly prone to making unlikely runs from the back. He stopped playing to make an unlikely run for mayor. But he told a reporter recently that he hopes to play while in office. And he will be living in the Gracie Mansion, close to where we, the Flamingos, play on a Sunday night. This is why we think he could become a Flamingo. If he is good enough.
Why should Zohran Mamdani want to become a Flamingo? When you are part of a team, you do sometimes develop an inflated sense of its importance. You might, for instance, write an entire column about it.
But I don’t think it has happened to us. People want to join the Flamingos. There is a waiting list of several dads. It could be controversial to let the mayor jump the queue, but clearly we have a civic duty to let him try out for us.
Discussing this extremely magnanimous offer in the bar, I did wonder if we hoped to benefit somehow, but I don’t think we would. Once I played for a team of UN diplomats who worked in disaster relief. I thought I would get all kinds of scoops, but they spent the whole time screaming at each other: “Play it simple! I was in acres!” etc. I learnt almost nothing about international development.
No, the bigger question is: what can Mamdani do for us? People worry that he is untested, that he is all mouth and no shin pads, that he is not ready for the big leagues, by which I mean the Volo Upper East Side Sunday Night League. It used to be run by a company called Zog, but Zog got taken over. We had to reregister via a system that made us list our hobbies and whether we were looking for friendship or romance.
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The current champions are Manchesthair United. They have 15 players and a guy in a big coat who gives them a pep talk at half-time. During the play-offs they had a videographer, recording their warm up routines, their half-time huddle, their goal celebrations.
The Flamingos play in pink. Recently, after a disappointing season, our captain, who I will call Bruce, felt that we needed a new strip that was slightly pinker. He spent a while designing the logo. Lots of people on other teams were very complimentary. Manchesthair wear a knock-off Man U strip.
The appeal of the Flamingos may be obvious but Mamdani will face hurdles, of course. Bruce says if Mamdani plays for us, Bruce will play for the other team that night. You could say Bruce represents the business and finance community. He is also a Manchester United fan. Mamdani just needs to do a little outreach to Wall Street, specifically to Bruce, and then who knows?
He is still an object of wonder, Mamdani. The last two mayors inspired so little confidence. Now half of us are like a teenager with a crush, thinking: what if we meet in the street? What if he joins our football team? What if we can afford to stay in New York? What if Santa Claus is real? While the other half wonder exactly how he will disappoint us.
By us, here, I mean the Flamingos. But all of us, with the possible exception of Bruce, are ready to give him a chance.