Endless Soccer: In Search of the Perfect Pickup Game

It’s just past 7am on a Tuesday and McCarren Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn is already a swirling, sweltering hive of activity. Joggers run circles around the red, rubber track. Personal trainers, versed in everything from crossfit to martial arts, bark inspiration at their huffing clients.

The turf field in the middle of the track sits quiet, for the moment anyway. As the minutes tick past the hour and the temperature nears 90°F, a scrum of soccer players starts to coalesce along one sideline. Most are in their thirties and forties, with a smaller faction of twenty and fifty somethings. They’re lads mainly, though a handful of women might mix in.

The U.S. is the most represented nation, but not by much. A large contingent hail from Columbia and Spain. Several players sport British accents. Australia has a solid quorum. Denmark, Morocco, Portugal, Japan, and Italy all send out a player or two. Altogether, more than twenty nations make up the patchwork of middle-aged, Tiger Balm-smelling ballers.

At 7:25am sharp, the game’s organizer calls everyone in for the count. “Two games of nine,” he shouts. “Ones and twos on the far field. Threes and fours on the near. Evens get the bibs.” Within minutes, the pitch springs to life, a motley mix of fluorescent green and orange jerseys chasing a bouncing leather orb. It will stay busy for the next sixty minutes, until someone shouts, “last play!” signaling the end of soccer for the day.

But only for this game.

First Touch F.C., as this game is called, is one of dozens, if not hundreds of pickup soccer games played every day in New York City. On this very pitch in Brooklyn, another game will break out in a couple hours. Over in Prospect Park, another half dozen games will be played throughout the day, including Sunrise F.C., which has the same 7:30am kickoff as First Touch F.C., every Tuesday and Thursday throughout the year.

Manhattan provides more fertile ground for informal futbol, including Chinatown’s famed Nike Field, where former basketball great Steve Nash (an avid soccer player) holds his annual Showdown NYC soccer tournament. In Queens, Long Island City is one of many pickup meccas. Bronx ballers head to Van Cortlandt Park. And in Staten Island, Silver Lake Park, with its sweeping views of the Verrazano, has some of the busiest pitches in the borough.

It’s hard to know precisely how much pickup soccer is played throughout the city. The New York City Parks Department lists more than 60 official soccer fields on its website, but the actual number is far greater. Tap “pickup soccer” into the Meetup app and you’ll spend hours down the rabbit hole, discovering more games in every borough, many with memberships in the thousands. And that doesn’t count the organized leagues, like NYC Coed, which started in 2004 and now runs dozens of leagues in Chelsea, the Lower East Side, and Williamsburg.

Since moving to New York City in 2000, I’ve maybe played in thirty of these games, both pickup and organized. I’ve seen how each game is unique, in the rules that are followed, the quality of the pitch, and most of all, in the skill and character of the players. At the same time, every game is the same, with two teams figuring out a way to put a round ball into the back of the other team’s net.

My goal with The Second Half is to experience as many games as possible, for as long as I can play the game. Is there a single best pickup game in New York? I reckon there is. But it changes all the time, depending on who shows up, the chemistry on the field, the flow of the game, and a million other factors that make the simple game of soccer so beautifully complex.

With any luck, I'll catch a few of those games along the way.