Grading a Ghost

When the system requires invisibility, David Lee was the valedictorian.

After 12 years of service to New York City Football Club, Sporting Director David Lee has left the team, remaining as unfamiliar to the common fan as the day he arrived. He is unknowable. This isn’t due to some inherent mystical quality or personal aversion, but rather a system reinforced by the club. Knowing things is simply not part of the equation.

Evaluating David Lee’s body of work is like trying to assess the soundproofing of a submarine by yelling at the ocean. You may scream until you lose your voice, but you will never hear anything in return. Eventually, the lack of oxygen will convince you that the silence is proof of concept.

The truth is, we don’t know what David Lee’s responsibilities were, and we weren’t meant to. Lee definitely existed within the City Football Group (CFG) corporate structure. He signed players, presumably, or perhaps merely signed forms confirming that players had been signed elsewhere.

Questions directed at CFG don’t just go unanswered; they are denied entry at the door for failing to comply with the corporate opacity dress code. The less you know, the less you can blame. This is the illusion, notwithstanding the veneer of transparency: a prerecorded Q&A here, a button-upped headshot for the directory there, barely enough to suggest any genuine human involvement. It’s akin to a Chipotle ad campaign touting “real flavors and real ingredients.” You see sizzling steak and mushed-up avocados on TV, but the menus are identical, the stores look alike, and we all know that big trucks move meat hunks from Sysco distributors in the dead of night. David Lee was not the burrito artist.

When you peek behind the curtain, you find another curtain. Bureaucracies excel at this, dispersing responsibility until it dissolves. Everyone is accountable in theory, so no one is accountable in practice. Every player transfer becomes both his and not his, both brilliant and inevitable, until the very concept of accountability loses its significance. If a signing succeeds, it can be attributed to the brilliance of the CFG scouting network. If it fails, well, that’s just localized variance. Lee is wholly divorced from the assessment of every signing, credited or blamed in absentia, regardless of his actual responsibility. We learn nothing because nothing is the standard of modern football now.

So what grade can you, an outside observer, give David Lee?

You don’t.

You grade the absence of David Lee, and in that sense, he gets an A+. Measuring his perceived value equates to measuring nothing, given the silence surrounding him. So, from the perspective of corporate bureaucracy, he’s perfect. He has blended seamlessly into the machine—both totally in control and completely out of sight, whether by choice or circumstance.

New York City FC exists as an entity within an entity—characterized by broad personalities, rebranding campaigns, jerseys sold, and sponsored social media clips. Still, they also operate within a framework that dictates how authentic they are allowed to feel.

In theory, having individuals who take responsibility for your team’s success or failure should be essential to a genuine identity. But David Lee was never allowed to be that individual. That film was never punctured.

The most frustrating aspect is that his departure changes nothing, because this ethos will persist. Whoever takes over will have some big swings and some big misses, yet we’ll remain unaware of what they are actually responsible for.

Where is the shortfall? A major frustration is that NYCFC lacks any significant, professionalized, or national media outlets that regularly cover this team. There is insufficient structure, time, or resources to untangle the organizational chart and humanize its contents. By reserving substance for a non-existent national media and a professional media class that overlooks MLS—let alone NYCFC—CFG contributes to the current deteriorating environment in which truthful, expository sports coverage is generally crumbling.

They’re mistaking the cart for the horse.

To establish a clear identity, the club can no longer sterilize the air and treat its operations as a closely guarded secret; they must increase transparency. Fans need to see inside: the people, the processes, and the decisions behind the team. That’s what builds interest, identity, and loyalty, while maintaining accountability—a continuous story, not just a phone notification that quickly gets supplanted by the next one.

The local press has been shut out of the NYCFC locker room after games without advance notice since the start of last season, contrary to MLS media policy. Journalists have had their questions criticized by team staff in front of players, undermining their direct legitimacy. Larger media personalities have noted that the team’s players are the hardest of any to schedule for appearances.

While these issues may not be central points of incitement (and, even generously, are just accessibility nuisances), they reflect a trend in which anything beyond press release talking points is deemed ‘outsider’ and therefore unwelcome. This philosophy has also spread among other MLS clubs, with independent team publications expressing their exasperation.

This team, and the league, believe their product is worthy of observation through a lofted glass case, forgetting that the most memorable attraction at the aquarium is when you get to pet the stingrays.

You cannot cultivate a culture of personality and humanity within the confines of white lines between whistles. People need something to care about, and right now, this team only lets you care for 90 minutes a week.

These issues are all outward symptoms of a larger squeeze, for which David Lee (certainly) and NYCFC (probably) are not even the central progenitors. Global football’s ballooning corporate structures are sanding off the grippable edges, the straphangs and crimps that allow the common fan to hang on. Until the team embraces the visibility of something real, someone real, they will remain something you can cheer for until your dying breath, without truly knowing them at all. ❧

Image: Odilon Redon, Haunting