New York Red Bulls' "Town Hall" Meeting Went Just as Badly as You'd Expect

Red Bulls' management got barked on during an attempt to reconclie with fans.

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Complex Original

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To protect their brand, professional sports players and executives have to demonstrate tact or give the good ole vague runaround when responding to outside questions. Sports fans don't have that sort of responsibility, so the pros are naturally in a losing situation when hosting open Q&A sessions like the New York Red Bulls did on Friday.

The "Town Hall" meeting was open to season ticket holders. Unfortunately for the Red Bulls representatives in attendance, these were very angry ticket holders. They were pissed off about the firing of head coach Mike Petke, who led the Red Bulls to their first Supporters' Shield (given to the team with the best regular season record) and a fourth place Eastern Conference finish last year.

The firing led to the fan-made #redbullout campaign, which demanded the Red Bulls sell the team and called for the ousting of sporting director Ali Curtis. So the Red Bulls decided to hold the Town Hall meeting to address the anger. The result: verbal mayhem, pettiness...and possible nudity? Curtis, general manager Marc de Grandpre, goalkeeper Luis Robles and head coach Jesse Marsch were present to take the vitriol.

So did the talk alleviate tensions between the fanbase and management? Nah:

As for the nudity, there was one tweet about someone streaking across the stage. However, only one guy tweeted about it; you'd think there would be a flood of tweets when a naked man interrupts a public forum.

Anyway, the moral here is that fans are still irate. It beats being a Knicks fan this year though, right?

[via Mark Fishkin]

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