Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today we’ll find out why a new report says there are “soccer deserts” in parts of the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. We’ll also get details on why the grandson of an infamous New York mob boss is going to federal prison for 15 months.
With tickets to FIFA World Cup matches going for big money — and N.J. Transit planning to charge $150 for a round-trip train ticket to matches at MetLife Stadium — it’s clear that watching soccer is expensive. A new report says that playing soccer is, too. The report, prepared by the Aspen Institute, points to a “fragmented system” in which access to fields of play too often depends on geography and cost. “We know that just as there are food deserts, we know that there are soccer deserts,” said Laurie M. Tisch, the philanthropist whose foundation commissioned the report. It says that “soccer deserts” in parts of the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens — as well as Newark — leave “under-resourced neighborhoods without local places to play.” Compounding existing shortages, the report says, is a huge demand for soccer that has outpaced the supply of playing spaces for children and teenagers who have been inspired by teams like Real Madrid F.C., F.C. Barcelona or New York City F.C., now that their matches are available through streaming. The report says that the scarcity of fields in the city has been made worse by black-market permit scalping, although it says that the Department of Parks and Recreation has revoked permits and changed rules to make it more difficult to sell time slots to teams or groups. The report also found gender disparities: Girls account for only 38 percent of the high school players in New York City and 42 percent in North Jersey. The national average is 45 percent. Tisch, whose family co-owns the New York Giants — “I knew about football,” she told me — said those figures were a concern. She said she started paying attention to soccer after meeting Jessica Berman, the commissioner of the National Women’s Soccer League, and after her daughter Carolyn Tisch Blodgett became the lead owner of Gotham F.C. The team won the league championship in 2023 and again last year. Who playsThe report says that 250,000 children play soccer in the New York City-North Jersey area and another 150,00 children and teenagers are interested in playing. In Brooklyn alone, the report says, 110,000 children and teenagers had played or expressed interest in playing in the past 12 months, the most of any borough, followed by Queens with 85,000 and the Bronx with 63,000. “One of the keys to getting more kids playing sports — playing soccer — is having it directly in their neighborhood,” said Jon Solomon, the research director of the Sports and Society Program at the Aspen Institute. Tisch said that her foundation, working with another nonprofit, Street Soccer USA, was building a soccer park in Queens that will open in a few weeks. The parks department said that in 2024, to address what a spokeswoman called “the improper use of permitting,” it strengthened language in its online application system to “help reduce opportunities for misuse.” Parks enforcement patrol officers and permit coordinators also conduct inspections “to confirm that the group assigned to a permit is the one using the space,” she said. Cost awarenessSolomon said that there was “direct or indirect pressure that children feel” because of costs. He said that families spent 46 percent more on a child’s primary sport in 2024 than in 2019, twice the rate of inflation over that time. “Children aren’t unwise to what’s happening,” he said. A survey for the report found that when young players were asked what they liked least about playing on a soccer team, 32 percent of them said that it was “too expensive.” Concerns about cost were by far the most common response to that question. The report says that access to play is often determined by car ownership, itself an economic threshold: Some 86 percent of high-income players are driven to practice, while only 21 percent of low-income players are. At the same time there has been a decline in matches that do not involve going anywhere — pickup play. “The irony is that soccer is one of the easiest sports to play, right?” Solomon said. “All you really need is a soccer ball and to find a space. It could be short patch of grass or even dirt, and then create some makeshift goals.” But, he added, “we’ve lost the ability to let children, to encourage children, to have spontaneous, unprogrammed soccer on their own.” WEATHER Today will be sunny with a light breeze and a high near 53. Tonight, clouds will move in and wind will pick up as the temperature falls to around 45. There will be a 40 percent chance of rain. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect today. QUOTE OF THE DAY “In New York we all live together. You have much more class overlap than in other places. All of that has come to a crescendo.” — Marissa Thompson, an assistant professor of sociology and a co-director of the Center for the Study of Wealth and Inequality at Columbia, on developments pointing to new resentment of the ultrawealthy, including Gov. Kathy Hochul’s plan to tax multimillion-dollar pieds-à-terre. The latest New York news
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The grandson of an infamous mob boss who captivated New York in the 1980s was sentenced on Monday to 15 months in prison on a fraud charge for collecting more than $1 million in Covid relief money. Carmine Agnello Jr., the grandson of John J. Gotti, the former leader of the Gambino crime family, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in 2024 for applying for pandemic-era loans intended to help small businesses. He invested some of the money in cryptocurrency. Prosecutors accused him of seeking the loans under false pretenses because he said he did not have a criminal record when he actually did have one. Judge Nusrat Choudhury also ordered Agnello to pay $1.3 million in restitution to the Small Business Administration. As a child, Agnello appeared on the reality television show “Growing Up Gotti” on A&E alongside his mother, Victoria Gotti, and two brothers. His parents had divorced, leaving Victoria Gotti to raise the children alone; their father was in prison. His uncle John A. Gotti, the leader of the crime family in the 1990s, said in a letter to the judge that as a result of the media exposure, Agnello had faced pressure “to live up to the Gotti name.” METROPOLITAN DIARY Jammed
Dear Diary: My wife and I were taking the B57 bus from Bushwick to Downtown Brooklyn with a backpack of clothes for our son and his girlfriend to change into after running the New York City Marathon the next day. About halfway there, the driver stopped after swerving around a bus that had broken down. To the left were a pickup truck, a van and a truck towing a trailer. We were blocked in, and so were they. The driver of the pickup got out to survey the situation. Our driver got out and then returned. Car horns were blaring. I decided to take action. I got off and, at the direction of a woman who was passing by, moved two orange construction barrels to create a space for our bus to sneak through. I guided the driver gingerly as he pulled forward until he was in the clear with a green light ahead of him. Before he hit the gas, I asked: “Can you let me back on the bus?” I boarded, and the other passengers clapped. I considered taking a bow, but the driver was ready to go. — David Hoff Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. Makaelah Walters and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Want to see more of our expert reporting in your Google search results?
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