Offseason Notebook: “true fandom” and early roster moves
We’re one week out from Phoenix’s win over Charleston in the USL Championship final, and the offseason is underway. As I did last year, I’ll be commenting on the moves that catch my eye throughout the next few months. Want more thoughtfulness and less spit-takes? I’ll be going deep on Backheeled all winter long.
To start off the 2023-2024 cycle, I want to hit on El Paso’s re-tool and a few other early moves. First, though, let’s talk support.
This week, Chattanooga FC announced that they’d be joining MLS NEXT Pro for the 2024 season. The Jacksonville Armada did much the same barely 10 days prior, announcing a stadium project for the year ahead and entrance into the reserve-heavy league for 2025. NEXT Pro has 27 clubs as it stands, 26 of which are developmental affiliates. The recent additions means that four independent teams are set to join the league.
On the other side of the country from those two, the Locals - the main supporters’ group for the San Diego Loyal - announced their intention to follow the future MLS team in that city. The group had surveyed their membership in coming to such a determination, recognizing “that MLS franchise rights being thrust upon San Diego was the death blow to San Diego Loyal” while still making a tough call. At the end of the day, community trumped doctrinaire posturing.
Certain corners of the soccer internet reacted as you might expect to all the news above: with pure venom. To the critics, Chattanooga and Jacksonville were selling out on their ability to stay “independent.” The Locals were abandoning their identity by moving on and accepting the presence of big, bad MLS, and they were supposed to be dedicated to the Loyal, anyway - not the Wave, not Albion, not 1904, and certainly not a Garber franchise.
In some sense, I get it. I’ve written about the threat of MLS NEXT Pro in regard to the USL, and I’ve mourned the fact that MLS can enter a market and invalidate years of hard work and community involvement.
Still, for the soccer communities in these cities, grand philosophies and moralizing screeds against the alleged MLS-SUM-USSF conspiracy simply don’t matter. Supporting a team is about relationships, about hanging with your friends and screaming your head off for 90 minutes every Saturday night. Can you fault the management at Chattanooga FC for abandoning NISA, which is a Titanic sinking in slow motion? Their fans deserve the surety that NEXT Pro can provide.
Jacksonville is thornier given the impending USL expansion team set to start in that market, but the Armada once drew 16,000 fans to a match; why deprive those folks of professional soccer in the name of arbitrary politicking?
A few weeks back on The USL Show, our San Diego-based cohost - the great Alan Underwood - compared the Loyal’s first-round loss and cessation of existence to a college graduation. You’re seeing friends and people you care about for the very last time. The connections you’ve made and cherished are naturally going to fade without a centralized, week-to-week anchor. It’s cold and cruel and inveitable.
By choosing to exist, the Locals are keeping those connections alive, and they’re establishing themselves as a voice for good in what could be a void, corporate environment otherwise at the future MLS venue. You want to fight the good fight? Follow their example and make a difference in the real world. Log off of pro-rel forums.
Fighting for something you care about is well and good, but #SoccerWarz is silly in opposition to honest-to-God community. I’m never going to be an MLS NEXT Pro devotee, but I’m also never going to fault a team or a supporter for going that route in the name of something tangible and meaningful.
About half of the USL has announced their first-wave roster moves in the last two weeks, and El Paso has been as active as any club out there. Star players from 2023 like Denys Kostyshyn and Marc Navarro are on the way out; three new signings have already been announced.
Brian Clarhaut and the Locomotive still intend to use a back three, but they’ve freshened up their look across the front and back lines already. Eric Calvillo and Liam Rose are back to assure central consistency, and Petar Petrovic will partner with Miles Lyons at the wing back spots, but change has come swiftly at Southwest University Park.
Akinyode is one of the headline additions. One of the premier No. 6s in the USL, Akinyode gives his team a keen sense for intervention as well as cautious but intentional passing at the base of the midfield or at the center of a back line. As a pure defensive midfielder in 2023, he won 200 duels and completed 86% of his passes.
You see a simple example of the former Miami and Birmingham man’s game above. Akinyode wins the challenge to stifle an opposing break, then sits in to dictate possession and fend off the counterpress. He never feels rushed and always makes the right read.
It’s likely that the new face in the Locomotive spine will start as the centermost member of the back three, but Clarhaut would be wise to let Akinyode step higher in possession. That fluidity isn’t without precedent at this level, after all. Ultimately, this is a player with excellent instincts in the heart of the pitch, and limiting those contributions seems counter-intuitive.
Still, keeping Akinyode deep could activate Elijah Martin at a wider defensive spot. Martin was the hinge in a fluid back three-back four in San Diego, where his athleticism and technical skills underlied the Loyal’s entire shape. He finished in the 95th percentile for pass completions, the 82nd for defensive actions, and the 75th for forward pass rate in 2022; you could see Martin do on the left what Navarro did on the right in 2023.
Still, Amando Moreno could be the biggest addition of the whole bunch. Stolen off of Derby Del Camino Real rivals New Mexico United, Moreno is a right-footed forward and Salvadoran international who rung up 24 goals over four years in Albuquerque. He gives El Paso a unique spark in the front line.
Moreno beat defenders on the dribble just under twice per game last year, almost double the rate of Aaron Gomez and Ricardo Zacarias up top for the Locomotive. In the clip, you see how that ball-dominant style drives Moreno’s game. His gravity draws defenders up, either freeing runs in behind from the central midfield (see clip #1) or opening space for a give-and-go where he gets past the defense (clip #2). Imagine that in tandem with a Calvillo or a Petrovic!
The early returns for El Paso are promising, and they make sense within the Clarhaut framework seen at end of 2023. Still, more additions are needed. This is a club that unceremoniously iced key players as last season progressed, and they’ve got gaping holes at the No. 9, No. 6, and center back spots. I like what I’ve seen, but more is needed in the gauntlet of an improving USL.
Want more context? Phil Baki of The USL Show and Seriously Loco has a deep-dive into El Paso’s 2023.
Other things that caught my eye this week:
Loudoun re-signed top scorer and talismanic No.9/No. 10 hybrid Zach Ryan on a two-year deal. They also brought versatile midfielder and full back Drew Skundrich in on the same term. You wouldn’t have seen that during the DC United era.
Jonathan Comeaux stole my thunder and put together a wonderful video breakdown of Miche-Naider Chery, the Oakland Roots’ new signing at striker. Chery has been a CONCACAF star, and the piece shows how he might continue that in the USL.