Orlando City Soccer Club have made a mighty start to life. Founded in 2010, Orlando were guided to the USL Pro (equivalent of the third tier of football in the United States of America) title by experienced coach and former Burnley and Everton player Adrian Heath. After topping the American Division by six points over Wilmington Hammerheads, the Lions went on to beat Harrisburg City Islanders on penalties after a 2-2 draw in the championship game on 3rd September. Perhaps more notably the club has gained a reputation for being well-supported, a notion backed up by the numbers and that has been mentioned by various media titles around the world - albeit those that already discuss American soccer.
It’s also helped force Florida, and Orlando in particular, into the picture as MLS decides on the home for its 20th club, likely to land in 2013. But even with strong established support, Orlando will face competition from the likes of New York, Minnesota, Las Vegas and more, and must also stare down the spectral presences of Tampa Bay and Miami, Major League Soccer’s long since abandoned Florida clubs. New York now seems to be the almost inevitable victor, with the Cosmos likely to be the club.
For fans of one club, Orlando City SC itself is the ghost. The second tier outfit Austin Aztex were owned by Stoke City director Phil Rawlins and were uprooted to form the Orlando club. Rawlins purchased the rights to USL’s Orlando franchise and moved the Aztex to Florida to fulfil the deal after another possibility reportedly fell away. The soccer community in Austin lost its flagship club, the residual support left unrequited in the cruellest way. The movement of clubs isn’t something fans around the world are very familiar with, but even compared to running out of money and going out of business, having your club moved and simply planted elsewhere must be difficult to swallow.
Unlike other soccer markets in the US - in particular the powerhouses of the east - Austin doesn’t have behemoth clubs in its football history. It doesn’t have a New York Cosmos or a Bethlehem Steel; football in Austin has not reached the admittedly sporadic heights achieved in other cities.
Austin Thunder played in the regional Lone Star Soccer Alliance (which also feature clubs named FC Dallas and Houston Dynamos) in the late 1980s and early 1990s, winning the playoffs to become the LSSA champions in 1989. The Sockadillos started playing indoor soccer, became the Lone Stars and emerged as a professional USL D3 Pro League team in the lower reaches of the national league set-up before folding in 2000. The Lightning played USL PDL football between 2002 and 2007. The less said about Austin Posse the better.
Of course, Texas is no football wasteland. Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth in particular have rich soccer histories that continue to this day, with Houston Dynamo topping Major League Soccer’s Eastern conference at the time of writing (in the first season since moving from the West) and FC Dallas competing near the top of a very strong Western Conference a season after losing out on MLS Cup at the final hurdle. While they don’t exactly attract large crowds for every home game, each is a club with a distinguishable character and both add something valuable to the quality, variety and culture of Major League Soccer.
In Austin, the Aztex played just two seasons after Rawlins had purchased the city’s USL franchise rights and kickstarted operations in time for the 2009 campaign. They played in USL Division 1 (nominal second division) in 2009 and in the makeshift USSF D-2 Pro League - which came into being as the USSF deferred a resolution to the battle between the new NASL and the USL for national D2 sanctioning - in 2010.
When Rawlins moved the Aztex it was a young club, even by US football standards, but had grown up at a time in which the soccer community was developing online and offline into a more mature, united and powerful support base for the sport in the States. Division two football, previously difficult to watch from overseas, is more readily available now and the tie-in with Stoke City theoretically gave the Aztex a worthwhile level of potential “support” abroad.
The reaction of hardcore Aztex supporters was understandably angry. The arbitrary (at least in a sporting sense) movement of sports clubs is a phenomenon far more familiar to American fans than it is here in the UK, but that doesn’t make it any easier when a club into which one has poured his heart and soul simply pulls in the anchor and heads for the coast. It’s an experience I hope I never have and that I could never truly accept, regardless of my own decisions about the methods and commitment of my support.
Little surprise, then, that the Aztex are on the road back to Austin soccer. Just like Major League Soccer’s San Jose Earthquakes, the club has disappeared and now restarted. An announcement was made on 26th September that Austin Aztex will return to USL action in 2012. They will begin not in the third division USL Pro but in the Premier Development League, echoing the path taken by the original franchise. The PDL is an under-23 league and the Aztex are expected to compete in the Mid-South Division. David Markley, a minority owner of the Aztex MkI, is the head of ATX Soccer LLC, the new owners of the city’s USL franchise.
A triumphant return? There will be no blaze of glory, no hundreds of millions of dollars, and no mainstream media coverage. But while the return of the Aztex is unlikely to reach the average overseas fan outside of Staffordshire, it is a small victory for soccer in central Texas - and that’s great news.
(Crest via Austin Aztex)
Tags: Austin Aztex, Orlando City, USL