Tombstone
Born: 1995 – A-League expansion franchise
Died: 1996 – Merged with New York Fever
First Game: May 7, 1995 (L 1-0 vs. Montreal Impact)
Last Game: September 12, 1995 (L 1-0 vs. Olimpia of Honduras)
A-League Championships: None
Stadium
Downing Stadium
Opened: 1936
Demolished: 2002
Branding
Team Colors:
Ownership
Owner: Roger Gorevic
Background
Grimy Downing Stadium on Randall’s Island was the CBGB’s of New York City sporting venues. In 1975 – the same year that the Ramones, the Heartbreakers, Blondie and the Talking Heads were igniting the punk scene at Hilly Kristal’s dank nightclub in the Bowery – Downing Stadium was the home to the New York Cosmos at the seismic moment that Pele arrived in American to play for that iconic club. For American soccer junkies of a certain age, proclaiming “…and I was there” at Randall’s Island remains a form of cultural cred that belies the now-demolished oval’s brief and inadequate life as a pro soccer ground.
The Cosmos moved to Yankee Stadium in 1976 and by the end of 1977 they were packing 70,000+ into the newly opened Giants Stadium. But in the early 1980s it all came apart and the team was out of business by 1985. For more than a decade, New York City didn’t have an outdoor pro soccer club to call its own.
1995 Season
That changed in 1995 when a jeweler named Roger Gorevic purchased an expansion club in the A-League. The A-League was America’s top pro league for the moment, but it barely managed to scrape together six clubs to stage a 1995 season. And the future wasn’t any brighter. Major League Soccer was scheduled to launch the following year as America’s sanctioned 1st Division league which would consign the A-League to even deeper irrelevance.
Gorevic named his club the New York Centaurs and placed the team at Downing Stadium, with its crummy lighting, shoddy pitch and ancient rows of bleachers. Maybe it was a fit of nostalgia for the Cosmos. (Midway through the season, Gorevic would replace original Centaurs head coach Len Roitman with former Cosmos star Vladislav Bogicevic). Or maybe it was just the only field available within the city limits. Either way, nobody wanted to go. Most Centaurs matches in 1995 drew fewer than 1,000 fans.
Gorevic and Roitman’s polyglot club included Africans, Eastern Europeans, Middle Easterners, South Americans alongside homegrown players. The club finished in last place in the six-team A-League with a 6-18 record in 1995.
Merger with New York Fever
At the end of the year, Gorevic merged the New York Centaurs with a lower-level side named the New York Fever. They dropped the Centaurs name in favor of the New York Fever and returned to the A-League in 1996. After sitting out 1997, remnants of the club re-emerged as the Staten Island Vipers under Gorevic’s partial ownership in 1998 and 1999 before folding for good.
Downloads
1995 New York Centaurs Ticket Brochure
1995 New York Centaurs Ticket Brochure
Links
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