While a rainy Saturday night might have caused some to stay in, dozens of thundering superfans chose to pack Bryant University’s Beirne Stadium in support of Rhode Island’s first professional soccer team. Waving yellow and blue flags and banging on oversized drums, locals far and wide screamed “ole” for two hours without pause.
While Smithfield, R.I. has hosted the Rhode Island Football Club’s home-game spectacles since March, the team will soon find a new home. In just over six months, RIFC’s 10,500-seat state-of-the-art stadium is set to open at Tidewater Landing in Pawtucket. The project aims to create new job opportunities, boost local businesses and serve as a hub for community events.
RIFC began its inaugural season in the United Soccer League earlier this year, making it one of two professional sports teams in the entire state. It joins the Providence Bruins, a hockey team based in the state’s capital.
But unlike the PBruins, RIFC is not “a Minor League affiliate of a Boston team,” Brett Johnson ’92, chairman and co-founder of RIFC, said. “This is Rhode Island’s team.”
Fans think so too. “This is Rhode Island FC so it’s our club, our supportive group, our fans, our true passion,” said Ervin Vargas, president of RIFC’s dedicated super fanclub Rhode Island Defiance 1636, or “La Barra Bahia.”
Johnson first fell in love with “the ‘other’ football” — soccer — while working internationally after graduating from Brown. He was so “hooked” to the sport, he began thinking about running a professional team. In 2016 he bought Phoenix Rising FC, a Major League Soccer franchise in Arizona. Following that team’s success, Johnson looked to expand.
His sights landed back on Rhode Island just as the state was set to lose its professional baseball team. The Pawtucket Red Sox had served as a hub among local community members and businesses for years before moving to Worcester, M.A. and becoming the WooSox in 2021.
“We saw a community that was really starving for a heartbeat again,” said Daniel Kroeber, co-founder of RIFC. “At the very core, we want to bring the heartbeat back to Pawtucket.”
Rhode Island is “a melting pot of people from some of the most soccer passionate countries that you're going to find,” Johnson said. La Barra Bahia, for example, was founded “by a couple fútbol-loco latinos” in 2022, according to the website. Now, their members attend every RIFC home game.
We “are going to be here every single game rain or shine. We love soccer, we love the team, we love everything that they’ve done so far,” Vargas said.
“It sometimes catches me a little off guard that we’re only a few months old and people are already painting team colors on themselves before games,” RIFC President David Peart said.
Coupled with Johnson and Kroeber’s dreams to bring a professional soccer team to the Ocean State was their vision for a trail blazing stadium for RIFC. After raising private capital and public support in Pawtucket and the greater Rhode Island area, Johnson and Kroeber officially announced plans for the stadium in 2019. The project is set to open next April.
The stadium will also accommodate other sports, concerts and other non-sporting events, according to the project’s application to Rhode Island Commerce. The project’s application also included plans for a facility with multi-family residential units, restaurants, retail spaces and a parking garage north of the stadium.
The construction plan currently outlines over 400 multifamily apartments at a variety of rental rates, according to Thomas Caughlin, director of communications for RIFC. The facility also plans to serve as a venue for community events like farmers markets and festivals.
According to Kroeber, they expect the benefits of the state to go beyond a new community space — he wants the stadium to benefit “the whole ecosystem.” Aside from direct job and housing creation, Kroeber also anticipates more indirect employment opportunities and customer boosts for local businesses.
“I'm very proud of what we're doing in Rhode Island, the jobs we're creating, the transformation we’re making in Pawtucket and beyond,” Johnson said. “Rhode Island deserves a facility like this,” he added.
With the new stadium in sight, Vargas hopes that the “RIFC becomes as big as the major clubs (fans) grew up watching,” he said. “The nonsense, the hooliganism, the craziness, the love and the passion that comes with it. I want us to be full force all the time and have the community be a part of it as well.”
Maya Kelly is a Metro senior staff writer who covers health and environment. When she's not at The Herald, you can find her hanging from an aerial silk, bullet journaling, or stress-baking.
