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Jake Gutíerrez's avatar

Great piece and a lot to think about. One factor towards apathetic (or perceived apathetic) league-wide fandom could just be the newness of both the USL and many of the teams. With a dozen teams kicking a ball for the first time in the USLC in the last 5 years, as a "new" fan, there's a lot to catch up on and the casual fan probably won't go further than learning some names of players on the team they follow. At least at the beginning. For a more hardcore fan, you still have an entire league to learn, even if you already know your own squad really well. That requires a lot of bandwidth.

That was my own experience as a fan of an expansion team. It took most of the first season to become really well versed with our own guys. The 4-team groups and repeated matches against the same teams in 2020 really helped me to be familiar with some of the guys on a few other squads. And when players from the team I followed transferred elsewhere, I started to pay more attention elsewhere. It just took time.

And then I guess I wonder if this is a USL problem? Do fans of Real Salt Lake watch a Montreal/NYRB match? Do Wolverhampton fans know many players on Crystal Palace? Beats me.

Anyway, keep up the great work. The stuff you and Nicholas and others put out really provides the access to information that fans need to grow their interest and knowledge beyond their local ponds. It's much appreciated.

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Christopher Moulton's avatar

I could not agree more wholeheartedly! I have considered becoming a de facto reporter for my team Monterey Bay, simple to grow the team in my local area. But to read this article it seems we would need this a national, every single team, scale. USL Championship is such a high quality product and it still blows my mind that ESPN, aside from coverage on ESPN+ covers nothing. How can I help bring about this change? That’s for writing and I am so glad I found your blog!

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