What happened to the Fort Lauderdale Strikers? I went to a few matches last year and last I knew, they were moving to a different venue.
Eight clubs will be playing in the NASL after provisional sanctioning by the United States Soccer Federation. Expansion side, San Francisco Deltas will be joining the league for their first season. After the 2016 season, Minnesota United left the league to join Major League Soccer, and the Tampa Bay Rowdies and Ottawa Fury left the league to join the United Soccer League. The Carolina RailHawks FC rebranded as North Carolina FC. The Fort Lauderdale Strikers and Rayo OKC are not returning to NASL for the 2017 season.
Seems like USL took a stronghold in becoming the clear 2nd tier. Also helps them to have some clubs with ties to MLS.
USL is much more interesting with the MLS affiliates and partnerships. Hard to get that excited about a bunch of journeymen pros playing, but watching younger players who could eventually become MLS/US players is much more intriguing. Not sure how USL survives with teams like San Fran and Edmonton flying to the East Coast for basically every way game.
It will be interesting to see how this transpires. Seem like it is setting up a NASL to roll into USL in some shape or form and then split the league. USL Pro/Rel would be pretty cool though...although I bet it is smaller markets that compete on a smaller budget level. Heard talk about teams like Boise and that seems sort of a D3 market. Not sure the type of player that would play D3. Lots of 16-18 year old are playing USL and doing fine and then going off to college. So a D# USL would be pretty low. More teams with local markets the more local kids that could get a chance to play on a higher level.
Hello new Phoenix Rising FC supporter here. Really want to get behind the club as we push for an MLS expansion bid but I'm a bit excited to hopefully get into something to tie me here. Clearly a transient community and this is something I can get behind.
We're all super stoked about the USL move and equally miserable we're switching to Lucas Oil Stadium It has been a roller coaster of emotion
That’s some fuzzy accounting. Can’t play at the baseball stadium? I can’t imagine having to play out games at the stadium in Glendale. Should do what we did for Rising and just set up an erector set build. Not much to look at but the atmosphere is good.
It's not fuzzy accounting, it's real as far as I know. We don't have any kitchens and the college we played at has a contract with a provider. So we need to pay to break that contract, then rent a kitchen. Then pay to transport it to the stadium. And people don't buy much. We tailgate
With 33 teams and a 16/17 conference split, what does the schedule look like? Play each team in your conference twice and then a couple of cross over games? Curious to see how they do this with the MLS eventually getting up to 28 teams.
USL teams who play their games at baseball stadiums is just embarrassing. Find a high school or something to play at.
Debating. The Lucas Oil thing is a major bummer. Eight Wednesdays. Two Saturday noon starts. Dome closed the whole time. No smoke. 50,000 empty seats. They're making it hard
Word is the Canadian Pro League will start up in a couple years and TFC2, Ottawa Fury and Edmonton ( who have been put on hold ) will be forced to play in it and give up playing in the USL.