WHEN asked if he calls it soccer or football, the winner of New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary, Zohran Mamdani, said it’s “football when I’m being honest, soccer when I’m running for re-election.”

Mamdani was responding a few years ago to one of the several lighthearted comments he’s made about association football scattered among his more serious political output on social media.

It raises the prospect that New York City could have a mayor who unabashedly describes himself as a democratic socialist, and an electorate who have voted for him while fully aware of this.

Going back to association football, the terminology used for the sport in New York City will range from soccer to futbol. It’s a global city, more immersed in the global game than many realise, and it makes sense that the various global terms are used by different people.

We’ll stick with soccer for now, not least because “soccer socialism” sounds good, both audibly and in practice and because the heart of New York City soccer lies beneath the capitalist world of Fifa’s World Cups and Major League Soccer marketing, in something more community-oriented.

It is in that area of community and local participation that Mamdani’s involvement in New York City soccer exists.

In December 2023, he was part of the group that organised a soccer fundraiser in Astoria Park called the Keffiyeh Cup. Money raised went towards emergency relief in Palestine and for Palestinian refugees via the UNRWA.

A month later, he attended an event celebrating an American youth soccer academy for Bangladeshis in Forest Hills, Queens.

These are the kinds of places where soccer lives in New York.

It is the area of the sport that deserves some of the focus as the eyes of the soccer world descend on the city and surrounding area in the coming years, as it gets ready to introduce new professional teams, build a new stadium designed especially for soccer, and host the 2026 World Cup final, among other things.

The 2026 World Cup final won’t technically be in New York City or even in New York state, though. It will take place across the Hudson River at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, New Jersey, but the New York/New Jersey sprawl is all part of a historical hotbed of American soccer.

New Jersey played a key part in the early growth of soccer in the US, and the sport was heavily rooted in the New York metropolitan area from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when it consisted of teams mostly formed by immigrants, local communities, or factory workers.

Two teams from Brooklyn contested the first ever final in the country’s national domestic cup competition, the US Open Cup, in 1914, and teams from New York have won the domestic cup more times than any other state, with New York Greek American and New York Pancyprian-Freedoms leading the way for the state with four and three US Open Cup titles respectively.

Those two teams, with their immigrant roots sitting proudly in their names, are still playing to this day in the region’s amateur leagues, alongside old and new teams with values and ways of working that go against the grain of more publicised franchise American sports.

It could be called soccer socialism, but it doesn’t start with a label. It starts with grassroots activities for all, from numerous initiatives such as those Mamdani has been involved with, to routes into the game for talented local amateurs, including immigrants and college players, who have the potential to turn pro.

As well as teams formed over 100 years ago, there are new teams such as Newcomers FC, who were started by asylum-seekers and play in the Autonomous Football League, whose clubs are heavily involved in on-the-ground community work.

Another relatively new team, New York International FC, established in 2019, plays in the much older Cosmopolitan Soccer League (founded in 1923). The team have strong links to a local mutual aid, EV Loves NYC, which cooks and distributes free meals across the city to where they are needed most.

Such New York City soccer teams, linked to alleviating the city’s struggles, are success stories in their own right. Maybe, with the eyes of global soccer on the city and a socialist running for mayor, more of these stories might get to be told.

Mamdani’s understated but genuine interest in the sport globally — as evidenced by his support for Arsenal, time playing as a striker in high school, stories of him putting up pictures of Mohamed Salah in campaign offices, and a New York Magazine article from 2003 in which the young Mamdani states he wants the latest Fifa video game for Christmas — goes against the trend of politicians adopting soccer merely to boost their popularity.

“I came up as a fan in the early 2000s,” Mamdani told New York Magazine’s Vulture section in April. “It was my uncle who introduced me to [Arsenal].

“I was born in Kampala, Uganda, in East Africa, and my dad’s family is from East Africa, and Arsenal was one of the first teams to have a number of African players: Lauren, Kolo Toure, Nwankwo Kanu, Emmanuel Eboue, Alex Song.

“Over the years, Arsene Wenger really transformed what English soccer looked like. As a Ugandan kid looking at this team, I was just so proud.

“I really got in during the good years — the ‘invincible’ years, the years of success. Then I grew up in the years after that, which were years of infinite hope and very few results, and now we’re in a place where we’re actually competing.

“I can’t watch the games, but I’m reduced to watching a minute-by-minute update that I sneak an eye on.”

If elected as NYC’s mayor in November, Mamdani will inevitably cross paths with New York City’s professional soccer teams, even though it’s not an area of the sport he has focused on so far.

Though boasting community-led supporter groups and initiatives, the professional franchises themselves operate in a different sphere from the grassroots clubs.

The UAE-owned New York City FC are behind the building of the new soccer stadium in Queens, while both NYC FC and the other New York MLS team, the Red Bulls, are operated by multi-club ownership groups.

This can naturally lead to some detachment from the City (despite the best efforts of fans and staff for it not to), which can in turn raise non-football issues on the other side of the game’s politics, as will the Fifa events.

USL, the league currently below MLS in a closed pyramid, is set to introduce new men’s teams in historic soccer hotbeds, Brooklyn, New York, and Paterson, New Jersey, in the coming years, while also moving to introduce a top division parallel with MLS and a system of promotion and relegation between USL leagues.

One of the professional women’s teams in the New York area, Gotham FC of the NWSL, recently won their equivalent of the Champions League — the Concacaf Champions Cup, while Brooklyn FC already has a professional women’s team in the USL.

This combination of factors makes for interesting and exciting times in New York City’s soccer scene.

While a World Cup final, the opening of new stadiums, and the introduction of new teams will be the publicised highlights, running continuously below that is the deep-rooted heartbeat of New York City soccer.

With a democratic soccer socialist as mayor, those teams, leagues, and activities that knit the diverse fabric of NYC soccer might become more visible.