The Aztexan

Austin Aztex — Austin Aztex Confirm Relocation of Franchise

10/25/2010 12:00 PM -

AUSTIN, Texas (www.austinaztex.com) — It was confirmed today that the Austin Aztex have accepted an offer from a UK led consortium to acquire the Aztex USL franchise, which involves the relocation of the team to the City of Orlando, Fla.

“We have been actively seeking to broaden the investment base for the Aztex for the past 12 months. It has proven extremely difficult given the economic climate,” Aztex President Phil Rawlins said. “Our first and overriding preference was always to keep the Aztex in Austin. But after we exhausted all our options this has not proven possible.”

“I know the new investors very well — they are football people and have been interested in working with us for some time. They like what we have achieved on the field and in the community,” he continued. “However, they made it very clear that their investment was contingent upon the team relocating, citing Austin’s lack of a soccer specific stadium with any corporate facilities, the inability to sell alcohol at games and the geographical isolation of the team within the new USL-Pro League. In short, they didn’t see Central Texas as the right market for the team and their future plans.”

And into the picture walked the Orlando.

“Together with the City of Orlando, the new owners approached us about relocating the franchise to Central Florida. As much as we would have loved to keep the Aztex here, it’s proven impossible to find local business leaders who are willing to invest alongside us and who believed in this market.”

The team will relocate in time for the beginning of the 2011 season and will play in the new USL-Pro League. Head Coach Adrian Heath and all the retained players will be making the move with the team.

“This is a very, very bittersweet decision for us. The fans in Austin have given us fantastic backing and fully deserve pro soccer. I know many of our fans and their families personally and they will know that our decision to relocate has been taken with a very heavy heart. I know many people will be bitterly disappointed but we have been left with no local options of backing.”

“I would like to thank all the loyal Aztex fans for their support over the past three years. However, the new investors made it very difficult for us to turn down their offer. They bring much needed additional capital, expertise and connections. They have plans to add another professional sports team to the franchise which will give us year round revenue potential. Their goal is to build up the soccer operations so that we can pursue an MLS franchise in the next few years.”

No need for a “read it all” link, that’s the whole thing. I’m crushed, but after a weekend waiting to be crushed, honestly a little relieved, too.

I’ll have another post or two of my own here to wrap things up in the coming days, as I process what’s happened and work the bile out.

U.S. Soccer — Portland Timbers Ryan Pore Voted Most USSF D2 Pro League Most Valuable Player

Both Pore and Nolly appear on the Best XI, as does Defensive Player of the Year Greg Janicki. Joining the Vancouver defender on the back line is a pair of Rochester Rhinos in Aaron Pitchkolin [sic] and Troy Roberts. Alongside Pore in midfield are Martin Nash of Vancouver, Jamie Watson from the Austin Aztex, Paulo Araujo, Jr. of Miami FC [and now Real Salt Lake] and the Carolina RailHawks’ Daniel Paladini. Montreal Impact forward Ali Gerba and Austin’s Eddie Johnson make up the front line of league’s all-star lineup.

Read it all.

U.S. Soccer — Portland Timbers’ Ryan Pore Named USSF D-2 Pro League Goal Scoring Champion

Rookie of the Year Griffin was an integral part of an Aztex team that scored a league best 53 goals. The midfielder contributed 10 of those goals and set up five in his 29 appearances on the season.

That’s all it says about Max, but read it all to see Goal Scoring Champion, Defensive Player and Coach of the Year.

kenn.com blog — Taking Attendance 10/5/2010: D2 Down 5.5%

Nice work by Austin, up almost 26% thanks (in part, I would guess, ERic could set me straight) to the move from a high school football stadium to a better high school football stadium. Now the NASL (tee hee) says they’ll have a team in San Antonio in 2012, which would be a great carrot to try to get Austin to align with them if only (a) it was 2011 and not 2012, (b) we had a reasonable expectation that there’d actually be a team in San Antonio in 2012 and (c) we had a reasonable expectation there will be an NASL in 2012. Or 2011, for that matter.

Includes stats and (funny, snarky) commentary for teams across the league. Read it all.

Austin American-Statesman — With future uncertain, Aztex begin playoffs in Montreal

The North American Soccer League announced Monday that a San Antonio-based team will join the league in 2012. The move won’t immediately affect the league’s application to be granted Division 2 status by the United States Soccer Federation, but it raises more questions about the future of the Austin Aztex, the most significant free agent remaining among Division 2 clubs.

… “We are excited to see professional soccer head to San Antonio, however, the announcement will have no bearing on the decision we make to move this club forward,” Aztex CEO Djorn Buchholz said in a statement.

… “We are always open to Phil if (the Aztex) want to join,” said NASL CEO Aaron Davidson, who’s also the team president of Miami FC. “We’ve been open arms.”

Read it all.

Inside Minnesota Soccer — It’s D-Day – Deadline Day for D2 Sanctioning, or is it?

It’s September 15, 2010 and that can only mean one thing for those of you who have been following along at home with the saga of D2 soccer. That’s right, it’s deadline day for submitting bids to the USSF for sanctioning of D2 soccer. However, you may be in for an anticlimactic D-day. And really, like the story that has dragged out for almost two years now, it’s really no surprise to learn the deadline has been pushed back, dragging the whole ordeal out just a tad bit longer.

I gave up trying (or wanting) to cover the soap-operatic ins and outs of who runs second division soccer in the U.S. late last year. However, it will eventually affect the Aztex one way or the other. So, although I’m not going to try to slice and dice, commentate and pontificate, or chew up and spit out the drama du jour here at The Aztexan, I will link to coverage of major developments.

Read the post linked above for a summary of the current situation (and read Inside Minnesota Soccer regularly to keep up on all the developments). The summary of the summary, as far as the Aztex are concerned: we don’t yet know what league Austin will play in next year.

If the NASL bid for Div-II sanctioning is approved, maybe the Aztex will join them and it will be a very similar competitive landscape to this season. The other possibility seems to be a new, more regionalized Div-III league, USL PRO. There aren’t any details out yet about who Austin would play in that league. Please note: this is all speculation. Aside from assurances that they will play (as further supported by the extension of Coach Heath’s contract on Monday), the Aztex front office has been very quiet about all this. Here’s hoping we get answers sooner rather than later.

A blog post on a not-well-respected site called MLSRumors.com today suggested that the Austin Aztex and Rochester Rhinos are considering moving to Division 3 next year, in response to the Division 2 standards recently announced by USSF.

As you might guess from a site with “rumors” in its name, and which deals mostly in headlines with question marks at the end, they should be ignored. They’re trolling for page-views, and I’m not going to contribute by linking to them. (You can Google them easily enough, though I assure you: you’re not missing anything.)

Neither I nor anyone I know has heard the slightest hints of anything like this. Further, a fellow Aztex fan (thanks, Jeff!) sent me this statement, which he received from Aztex CEO Djorn Buchholz:

“I can assure you that the rumors you heard on MLSRumors.com are just that, rumors. This club has no intention of playing D3 soccer. Yes, the new D2 standards are quite strict, but our ownership group has assisted US Soccer in setting those guidelines and we meet them. I do appreciate your email and rest assured, we will play D2 Soccer for years to come.”

Update: Brian Quarstad at Inside Minnesota Soccer has more on this: Quelling Rumors – A USSF D2 Update. He adds a statement from Rochester Rhinos owner Rob Clark, and he has a good summary of what kind of shape all the teams, current as well as possible future, look like.

Inside Minnesota Soccer — USSF D2 Update; New Standards Set for League, Current and Future Owners

IMS has been told the standards that US Soccer presented to the team owners on Monday and that were passed by the Federation board on Tuesday will be released in the next several days. While some of the new standards may be negotiable the financial set of standards will not. Provisions are laid out in the documents that teams could ask for a wavier on certain aspects of the rules, However, US Soccer made it very clear to those in the room that the financial qualifications will be strictly adhered to.

I encourage you, as always, to read it all, but here are the highlights, in my opinion:

• St. Louis‘ Jeff Cooper didn’t attend. That guy is just determined to make his mark on American soccer. Too bad it’s a skid mark.
• None of the 165 people involved in ownership of Puerto Rico Islanders attended. Way to fight for your team, folks.
• No representative from prospective teams in Atlanta, Orlando or New York City attended. Thumbs up to those movers & shakers. (But don’t worry about Atlanta, they’re just sitting out the season. Oh wait, that was 2009.)
• USSF will require lots more dough of franchise holders starting next year: a $750K season bond (up from $350K this year and $100K last year), plus owners’ proof that they’re worth at least $20MM.
• USSF has no intention of directly running second division soccer themselves next year.
• There’s no mention here of rumored soccer-specific stadium requirements.
• Brian lists the Aztex as one of the 5 U.S. “teams that should be able to pass the financial standards”.

I’ll see what the official statements say before I get too worked up or too relieved about anything. In honesty, I’ll probably be nervous until I’m sitting in the stands at the 2011 season opener. I applaud the USSF for finally bringing some adult supervision to this level of soccer. I just hope that enough of the teams’ ownership, present as well as future, is strong enough to rise to the occasion.

It’s just a few hours after the final whistle of the final game of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Spain’s players are still getting used to being Champions of the World. After a month full of soccer day and night, I’m not going through full withdrawal quite yet. Just a little bit of the shakes so far.

Inevitably, this feeling reminds me of the end of the 2006 World Cup, when I really fell in love with soccer. I’d gotten hooked on the daily dosage in the group stages, they were a gateway drug to the bigger and bigger games, and then: the end. It’s over, cold turkey. What now? Where’s my fix?!

I still remember heading to The Google with a question that seems absurd now, and will strike regular readers of this blog as silly, as well: “Do they play soccer in the U.S., too?”

If you wondered the same thing, and your search brought you here, I have good news: Indeed they do play soccer in the U.S. They play it at all levels, and in lots of cities across the country. They even play soccer right here in Austin!

Here’s a quick overview of what’s on offer here in Austin, elsewhere in Texas and elsewhere in America.

Major League Soccer (MLS) — This is the top level of U.S. soccer, the best of the best. Like any pro league, it features players from all over the world, not just Americans. David Beckham (LA Galaxy), for example; you might have heard of him. He’s on the injury list at the moment, but there are other relatively famous players plying their trade in MLS: Mexico’s Cuauhtémoc Blanco (Chicago Fire) and Sweden’s Freddie Ljungberg (Seattle Sounders) to name a couple. They’ll be joined later this month by France’s Thierry Henry (Red Bull New York).

Some of the guys you saw play for the U.S. men’s national team also play in MLS: Jonathan Bornstein (Chivas USA), Robbie Findley (Real Salt Lake), Edson Buddle (LA Galaxy) and — last but certainly not least — Landon Donovan (LA Galaxy).

There are 16 teams in MLS this year, with 2 more (Portland and Vancouver) next season. That includes 2 Texas teams: FC Dallas and the Houston Dynamo. Dallas is “my” MLS team, the one I landed on after my search four years ago. To this day that’s who I follow, including a trip or two per season to Dallas to see them in person.

Division 2 (USSF-D2) — As is pretty obvious from the name, this is the second level of soccer in the U.S. It was formerly called “USL-1″, but due to some ownership and league drama that I won’t go into here, it’s being run this year directly by the U.S. Soccer Federation (USSF). Like MLS, it’s a league of paid professional athletes. The 12 teams are in smaller cities, and the players aren’t as famous (yet), but the play can still be very good.

This is where Austin comes in: the Austin Aztex are a USSF-D2 team. (In fact, so far this season, they’re the best USSF-D2 team.) The Aztex franchise launched here in 2008, and now I can go to a lot more games, and without road-tripping four hours up I-35 first.

Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS) — This is a new league, in just its second season. Despite some growing pains (two teams have been added, but two others have folded since last year), the quality of play from these 7 teams is also excellent. Some of the very best women players in the world play in WPS. These include U.S. national team stars like Hope Solo (Atlanta Beat), Abby Wambach (D.C.’s Washington Freedom) and Natasha Kai (New Jersey’s Sky Blue FC), as well as foreign stars like England’s Eniola Aluko (Atlanta), France’s Sonia Bompastor (Washington) and Brazil’s 4-time FIFA Women’s Player of the Year, Marta (San Jose’s FC Gold Pride).

Premier Development League (PDL) — Broadly speaking, most of the more than 70 teams that make up the PDL are college players getting game time on their summer break. So, their season is short (May to July), and many of the teams are amateur. The Aztex fielded a team at this level in 2008 and 2009 (the Aztex U-23s), but not this season.

There are other leagues, USL-2, PASL, MISL and W-League, not to mention college teams, but these are the ones I’m most familiar with. Hopefully this overview will get you started in your search for soccer closer to home than Johannesburg.

In addition to the jumping-off point that I hope this list of leagues, teams and players will give you, I’ll add this editorial, free of charge.

You may have heard, or will hear, that soccer in the U.S. isn’t as good as soccer in England. Or Mexico, or Italy, or Spain, or the 63rd moon of Jupiter, or wherever. In some cases that’s obviously true. The West Texas United Sockers are a decent PDL team, but they’ll never hold a candle to FC Barcelona. In other cases it’s less clear-cut: the LA Galaxy on a good day would give most Premier League teams a run for their money, at least.

But even supposing for a minute that it’s a fact that U.S. soccer is somehow inherently inferior than Fox Soccer Channel’s marquee match of the week, I still urge you to find a local team and go to a few games. (One game isn’t really enough. If you watched enough World Cup you already know that sometimes, matches between even the best teams can be less than thrilling.)

But if you can watch the top teams from across the world play all weekend long on ESPN, why bother? For one thing, for the sport to evolve here to the level of those other countries (and moons), there needs to be fan support, butts in seats, tickets sold, nachos bought, salaries paid, etc. It’s a whole supply-and-demand kind of thing. Or demand-and-supply, or something. Look, this isn’t an economics blog.

But completely aside from any “for the good of the sport” sermon, live soccer is different than — better than — soccer on TV. It’s a hi-def, surround-sound, panoramic view and you don’t need special glasses to see it in 3D. Get to know your team, your players, at your home ground. Feel the glory of the wins, the crush of the losses and the everything-in-between of the draws, right there in the stands with your fellow fans.

Also, you may not realize what you’re missing watching on TV, where the camera naturally follows the ball most of the time. There’s more going on than where the ball happens to be at any given moment. There’s the flow, the formation, the positioning of the players. Not to mention the tension and excitement of the crowd around you. When you’re sitting in the stands, you can take it all in.

It’s a beautiful game. See you there.

[This post is not really related to the original Hi, America. Welcome to Soccer post in anything but title. In fact, it's aimed at a completely opposite audience. Oh, well. I started with wanting to tell the legions of new soccer fans that I'm sure now exist in Austin about the Aztex, but it kind of spiraled out of control. I also wanted to make sure search sites know I'm in Austin, writing about pro soccer, specifically the Aztex soccer team. Soccer. Austin. Catch that, Google?]

Update, 7/12/10: This post by photographer AustinPixels gets to the point I was originally after. It manages to do it with far fewer words, and without straying to Jupiter or WPS. In defense of my wordiness, he used pictures, and those are worth a thousand words each.

USSF: Austin Aztex Forward Eddie Johnson Named USSF D-2 Pro League Player of the Month for May

Away from House Park, Johnson’s three goals and an assist earned Austin 10 points from four games on the road in May. On May 1, the Chester, England, native scored the equalizer against the NSC Minnesota Stars in the 75th minute, helping his team fight back from an early deficit. In two games against the Tampa Bay Rowdies, the forward netted two goals and, on May 26, capped off a 3-1 win against rival Miami FC. Johnson closed the month with an assist on his side’s first goal in a 2-0 victory against Crystal Palace Baltimore.