The Aztexan

The Cleveland City Stars are no more. I'd heard rumors that they might move back down to USL-2, but for some reason the league decided to pull the plug:

After months of negotiation and meetings, and in the midst of the conclusion of our sale, the USL decided to terminate our franchise just prior to Thanksgiving. This news came as a significant surprise to us given the nature of the process we were involved with up until that point. After much consideration and counsel the leadership of Cleveland City Stars decided to accept the leagues termination of our franchise and all implications thereof.

Well, there's another batch of second division soccer players on the market, including Gordon Kljestan (Sasha's big brother).

When I dug up my City Stars expansion team preview from the beginning of the year, I was struck by the fact that their "promotion" to USL-1 was announced on Dec. 5, 2008. If you take a look at your calendar, you'll see that's almost exactly one year ago.

By all accounts, Cleveland had been building a decent team in USL-2 up to that point. They won that league's title in 2008, in fact. But it was clear that the league rushed Cleveland's move to USL-1, to help make up for the Atlanta Silverbacks' sudden departure last November. Perhaps if head coach Martin Rennie had known they were going to move up, he wouldn't have taken the Carolina Railhawks job.

Whether it was the gap left by Rennie's departure, or just expansion-team growing pains, there's no argument that they struggled this season. As did the other expansion team, our Austin Aztex. 2009 was the first USL-1 season for the Aztex, though with the 2008 PDL season under its belt, the organization wasn't completely new. But even with some experience from their USL-2 and PDL campaigns, the two USL-1 sides wound up slugging it out for last place, as expansion teams are often expected to. Cleveland eventually claimed the bottom spot by just 2 points.

They were our fellow expansion team — our freshman classmates in the class of '09, if you will — so I'm sad to see them go.

Meanwhile, we're watching the USL/TOA/NASL/WTF drama unfold. Who knows what tomorrow, let alone next Spring, will bring. But as of now, here are some of the new teams which may be launched onto the front stage of 2nd-division U.S. soccer next year:

1. Atlanta Silverbacks — yes, there used to be a USL-1 team with that name, but what does their roster look like right now?


2. Crystal Palace Baltimore — moving up from USL-2, like Cleveland did


3. Tampa Bay Rowdies — brand new organization, despite the retro name


4. St. Louis — brand new team, not even a name yet; same owner as WPS's Athletica


5. FC New York — brand new organization (and rumored to already be in trouble)


6. Ottawa Fury — existing PDL team

And not only brand-new teams, but depending on how it all plays out, possibly a brand-new league, too.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking, and nothing is settled. (And you know no work gets done anywhere the last 2 weeks of the year.) My point is that this is all harder to pull off than it looks. Having meetings, making presentations, trademarking names and issuing press releases is the easy part.

Just ask the Cleveland City Stars.

Labels: deep thoughts, The League, USL-1