NY Soccer Club Adds Big Law Duo as It Builds a Home of Its Own

When New York City’s hometown soccer team needed to build a permanent home, its owners looked to Big Law to build out a legal group and steer the club through a multiyear construction process.

New York City Football Club, a Major League Soccer franchise, has been playing its home games at Yankee Stadium and Citi Field, two Major League Baseball venues, the former serving as World Series host this week. With both the New York Yankees and Mets contending deep into baseball’s postseason, NYCFC scrambled for a home field for its Nov. 2 first round playoff with FC Cincinnati, settling on Citi Field after a Mets loss created an opening. NYCFC hopes a $780 million deal earlier this year to build a new stadium that will be ready for the team’s 2027 season means it will never again have to seek a pitch on the fly.

With the club planning to soon break ground on its new home, it recruited Foley & Lardner special counsel Gregory Marino as an assistant general counsel and BakerHostetler associate Sydney Park as legal counsel, said William Jones, an NYCFC spokesman. Both lawyers joined NYCFC within the last month and will assist its front office on the stadium project and other legal matters, Jones said.

Marino spent eight years at Foley & Lardner and ALL Counsel, the latter a New York-based sports law boutique that Foley absorbed in 2020. Andrew Lee, a founder of ALL Counsel who was of counsel at Foley & Lardner, left the firm this month to return to the National Football League’s New York Jets.

Park was Miss New York in 2021 and remains involved with the Miss America beauty pageant competition. She spent two years at BakerHostetler, mostly doing litigation work, a specialty that Marino also brings with him to NYCFC. Marino’s expertise includes four years in the sports and entertainment industry.

Prior to becoming a lawyer, Marino worked for the Yankees as a program director, a role in which he helped to develop the team’s live events business to include college football games, international soccer matches, and boxing bouts. Yankee Global Enterprises LLC, owner of the Yankees, also controls 10% of NYCFC, which sold another 10% stake last month to billionaire Marcelo Claure.

Big Money Backers

The legal recruits bolster a unit that needed reinforcements after former senior legal counsel Patrick Murphy left in June for a similar role with the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning. Murphy worked closely with Jennifer O’Sullivan, a former partner at ArentFox Schiff who was once commissioner of Women’s Professional Soccer, a defunct US league. O’Sullivan, now NYCFC’s chief operating officer, was first hired as chief legal and administrative officer in 2020.

NYCFC’s majority stakeholder is City Football Group Ltd., an entity controlled by Emirati royal Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan that owns the English Premier League’s Manchester City FC. City Football’s vice chairman is prominent New York lawyer Martin Edelman, a senior of counsel at Paul Hastings. Edelman and DLA Piper worked on the deal that brought NYCFC into MLS a decade ago.

Paul Hastings and Edelman have continued to advise the club, incurring almost $500,000 in New York lobbying fees on behalf of NYCFC since 2019, per public filings. The documents show Paul Hastings handles real estate and property matters for the team, whose proposed 25,000-seat, soccer-specific stadium is part of a mixed-use development that includes housing, hotel, and retail space.

Across the Pitch

NYCFC isn’t the only MLS club adding legal talent.

• Nashville SC confirmed to Bloomberg Law it hired LaTonnsya Burney, most recently an associate general counsel at Vanderbilt University, this month as general counsel. She succeeds Joseph Kennedy, who left the club in July to become general counsel for QuintEvents LLC, a Charlotte-based ticket package and hospitality services provider.
• The Seattle Sounders this month hired Miller Nash partner Christine Masse as legal chief for the team and the Seattle Reign, a sister franchise in the National Women’s Soccer League that’s now owned by investment giant Carlyle Group. Masse succeeded Felipe Mendez, who left the Sounders to be chief legal and administrative officer for Seattle FWC26, an organizing committee for 2026 World Cup soccer games hosted by the city. Masse, a leader of Miller Nash’s tribal law team, joins an organization that over the summer named Maya Mendoza-Exstrom, a former lawyer and executive for the Sounders, to be the Reign’s chief business officer.
• Inter Miami CF, home of global soccer star Lionel Messi, named recent law school graduate and former intern Alanna Sadler an associate counsel in September. She also interned for the Miami Dolphins and Miami Grand Prix.
• The New York Red Bulls, a New Jersey-based rival to NYCFC, also hired a former intern and ex-college soccer player, Nyrik Antoine, as a contract manager this year as he awaits bar admission.
• The Philadelphia Union, a team considering potential acquisitions abroad, added veteran sports lawyer and legal recruiter Jaimie Wolf as general counsel in March. Wolf replaced Carlos Montoya, now chief operating officer for the Onrise Player Network LLC, a telehealth services provider for athletes.