Pelé, seen in the film Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos (Miramax Films)
Carolina RailHawks majority owner Selby Wellman expects at least 10 teams to be in the newly named North American Soccer League, though he declined to name the possible additions to the nine confirmed ownership groups.
Wellman and fellow owners announced Monday that they will bring back the NASL name, conjuring up memories of the first American professional soccer league, which included the likes of Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer and Johan Cruyff before it folded in 1984.
“We talked about it a long time. There’s pros and cons because the league didn’t make it, that would be the con. The pro is it really did launch professional soccer in America and had a good brand,” he said. “There’s a lot of us around here with some gray hair that’ll say, ‘I remember that brand.’”
The league now has a name, but the owners have a lot of questions to answer before the first ball is kicked in April. Along with the RailHawks, former USL teams Atlanta Silverbacks, Miami FC, Minnesota Thunder, Montreal Impact and Vancouver Whitecaps FC are part of NASL. St. Louis Soccer United, Tampa Bay Rowdies and Crystal Palace Baltimore also are slated for inclusion in the breakaway league.
Others have speculated that Rochester Rhinos may be included, but Wellman, also the spokesman for the new league, isn’t saying as of yet.
“I can’t name them,” he said. “We already have plans underway, and we’re getting all kinds of requests coming in from different groups.” Continue reading »
Can Gregory Richardson, shown here scooting past USL-1 player of the year Cristian Arrieta of the Puerto Rico Islanders, lead the RailHawks into a successful new league? (Photo by Jeremy M. Lange)
In an interview Thursday afternoon, Carolina RailHawks president Brian Wellman confirmed that the dissident group of USL-1 club owners known as the Team Owners Association (TOA) would be submitting an application to the United States Soccer Federation (USSF) to form a new league.
“We’ll be submitting an application to USSF for a new league as soon as tomorrow,” Wellman said in a phone interview from Charleston, S.C., where he was meeting with Andrew Bell, president of the USL-1 Charleston Battery, to coordinate the scheduling of friendlies next season.
“Nothing’s changed as far as the teams go,” Wellman said of the composition of the proposed new league. The TOA consists of five former USL-1 clubs (Minnesota , Miami FC, Montreal, Vancouver and Carolina) and three ownership groups (in Atlanta, Tampa Bay and St. Louis).
Wellman suggested that the TOA has heard from other member prospects, as well.* “We have at least one conversation a day with people representing new markets. Even without media coverage [of the dispute], there’s a lot of interest in the league.”
Furthermore, Wellman left open the possibility that the new league might follow the FIFA calendar, playing during the winter months.
If the TOA settles on a winter schedule, Wellman said, “It wouldn’t be this winter. It would start sometime in the summer, and prorate as our fiscal year went along.” Continue reading »
Fans from the 204 Depot after the RailHawks' 2-1 victory over Puerto Rico on Sept. 12. (Photo by Jeremy M. Lange)
Last night the Vancouver Whitecaps and the Montreal Impact advanced to the USL-1 finals with victories in the two-leg semifinal round. Not only will there be an all-Canadian final, but this represents the victory of the No. 5 and No. 7 seeds over the league’s “big four” of Portland, Carolina, Puerto Rico and Charleston that had dominated regular season play.
And there’s an irony at work, too, for the two remaining teams are also members of the dissident USL-1 owners’ group known as the Team Owners Association. Last week, the USL took steps to sever ties with Carolina, Miami FC and Minnesota, by sending emails purporting to release those teams’ players from their contracts, and by removing links to those clubs on the USL Web site.
We spoke with RailHawks president Brian Wellman over the weekend and he clarified a number of issues, including the fact that Vancouver and Montreal have not renewed their franchise agreements with the USL, but were not included in the league’s actions last week simply because they are still playing.
“The day [Montreal and Vancouver] stop playing,” Wellman said, “they’re going to receive everything we received because they’ve not renewed.” That day will be Oct. 18, the day after the second leg of the USL finals.
Wellman also said that the Carolina players are under contract to the RailHawks, rejecting the USL’s position that the players are now free agents. He noted that the players have not been released by the United States Soccer Federation, the sanctioning body for American soccer.
We also discussed the options facing the TOA—including possibly partnering with the MLS—along with the status of the RailHawks player contracts and the surprising fact that, despite the decline in reported attendance, the RailHawks actually experienced a rise in paid attendance this year.
TRIANGLE OFFENSE: It sounds like the USL sent out a note to the three teams (Carolina, Miami, Minnesota) that the players are not under contract anymore. Is that right?
BRIAN WELLMAN: Contractually speaking, while it is true the RailHawks have not renewed their franchise agreement with the USL-1 for the 2010 season, there’s still a chance that could happen-and several other teams haven’t either. There was a specific date when the franchise agreement ran out which meant our contract expired with the USL, but our players are under contract with the RailHawks and they’re still under registration with the federation—the USSF [United States Soccer Federation]. It’s a little misleading because under normal circumstances when you let a player go out of contract he goes onto the list and anyone can talk to him. Under this situation its very unusual that all the TOA teams are getting the same information but at the same time the federation is not releasing any of our players from their registration with our club. It’s a little unfortunate, it may have been a bit of a posturing, scare tactic technique on the part of the league due to the nature of the negotiation. It was unnecessary and unfortunate. We met with our players today [Saturday, Oct. 3] for about an hour and a half to explain the entire situation. Our players are under contract with us, and they’re under registration to the federation whether we play in the USL, in a new league or partnering with the MLS, wherever we play next year, our players are under contract with us. That’s the bottom line. Continue reading »
The confrontation between the new ownership of the United Soccer Leagues and a dissident group of first division owners led by the Carolina RailHawks has escalated a notch.
Three dissident clubs, including the RailHawks, haven’t paid their fees to participate next season. On the USL’s Web site, work has begun to remove links to the RailHawks, as well as to the Miami FC and Minnesota Thunder clubs. On one page, the soccer-ball icons for those three cities has been removed. On others, the clubcrest and mascot names have been removed.
In a just-published post on Inside Minnesota Soccer, blogger Brian Quarstad writes that Minnesota Thunder management confirmed that USL President Tim Holt has sent out an email informing players for Carolina, Miami and MInnesota that they are released from their contracts.
However, it’s not clear that the USL has the authority to do so (unlike the MLS, which owns all player contracts under its single-entity structure). According to Quarstad, Minnesota is taking the position that the league does not have that authority. Quarstad promises to post a copy of Holt’s email later today.
We haven’t been able to get a comment from RailHawks management yet. We’ll keep working on it.
The other bit of news—which Quarstad doesn’t support with a source—is that the other two main dissident owners groups in the Team Owners Association (TOA)—Montreal and Vancouver—have both signed on with the USL-1 for the 2010 season. Vancouver, of course, is headed to the MLS in 2011.
The TOA consists of Carolina, Minnesota, Miami, Vancouver Whitecaps, Montreal Impact, the 2010 expansion club Tampa Bay Rowdies and ownership groups without active teams in Atlanta and St. Louis.
There are now eight current USL-1 clubs that have active links on the USL site. The two expansion clubs, the Tampa Bay Rowdies and FC New York (which is not a TOA member), also have active links.
One club, the Cleveland City Stars, is for sale—sketchy Internet reports of a buyer that will keep them in Cleveland have not been confirmed—but appears to be a USL-1 member in good standing.
The current brinksmanship was not unexpected: After the late August sale of the league to NuRock Soccer Holdings, the TOA, which had seen nearly two years of negotiations to buy the league themselves come to naught, announced a “chill” in relations with the league. In a subsequent interview with Triangle Offense, RailHawks majority owner Selby Wellman laid out the likely scenario in the near future.
But I would expect somewhere in the next 30 days or so they’ll start coming out to us, wanting us to recommit to play in 2010 in USL. If they don’t come to the table with us having the ability to control our league, we won’t play with them.
Finally, Miami-based blogger Kartik Krishnaiyer adds this intriguing tidbit of analysis to the Quarstad post:
The breakaway league that now is likely to be pursued by Minnesota, Miami and Carolina would need to be approved by the USSF and FIFA. These approval processes could take anywhere from a month to several months, leaving the three clubs affected and its potential allies in other markets in the limbo for the start of the 2010 American calender season.
However, if the new league seeks to adhere to the international calender, and begin play after the 2010 World Cup, the three affected clubs, in fact have plenty of time to try and put this new organization together and receive the requisite approvals.
Gavin Glinton attacks the goal against the Islanders on June 27. (Photo by Rich Bostwick)
Well, two days ago we were pretty pessimistic about the RailHawks’ chances of regaining second place after losing to Puerto Rico 2-0 on Tuesday. We noted that in order for the RailHawks to grab that spot back from the Islanders, they would have to beat Puerto Rico this Saturday, Sept. 12, AND some help would be required from either of Puerto Rico’s two remaining, nonplayoff-bound opponents.
What’s curious about a closer inspection of Puerto Rico coach Colin Clarke’s lineup is that he chose to rest his key players. Left off the starting lineup were such mainstays as forwards Nicholas Addlery and Kendall Jagdeosingh, midfielder Jonathan Steele, goalkeeper Bill Gaudette and defender Christian Arrieta. The latter two, both frontrunners for All-USL-1 honors, were left off the lineup entirely. (Among the squaddies who got a chance to start last night: ex-RailHawks phenom Martin Nuñez, now seeing limited minutes under his full name of Pablo Martin Nuñez.)
So, call Clarke crazy, but he seems to have calculated that it was best to keep his best players in reserve for Saturday night’s matchup against the RailHawks.
The stakes are very high for this game. If Puerto Rico wins, they clinch second place. If the RailHawks win, they move into second and can secure it with a win next Friday against Montreal.
And why all the fuss over second place, anyway? It means not facing the powerful Portland Timbers until the final round of the playoffs, of course.
Game on at 7 p.m. tomorrow. And no, you can’t go see N.C. State play Murray State instead—unless you’re Triangle Offense’s Joe Schwartz and Rob Rowe. Visit here for RailHawks ticket info. Also, tomorrow’s game is the occasion for a fundraiser to benefit The Magnificent Mile and the Spastic Paraplegia Foundation. The press release contains details after the jump. Continue reading »
Carolina RailHawks majority owner Selby Wellman (Photo courtesy of RailHawks)
On Monday, we spoke with Selby Wellman, majority owner of the Carolina RailHawks. Wellman is also the spokesman for the Team Owners Association, which has announced a “chill” in its relations with the USL and declared that it will pursue aggressively all options—including the formation of a new league—as a solution to establishing the owner-controlled league it says is vital to the success of their clubs.
Wellman gave us more details about the buildup to the sale of the league to NuRock Soccer Holdings (a group unknown to him and his fellow owners), and about why he and his fellow club owners think an owner-controlled league is vital. He suggested that the declining attendance experienced by the RailHawks and other clubs is an issue of poor-to-nonexistent league marketing and reiterated that the owners have decided it’s time to “take control of our own destiny.”
He noted that the USL-1 clubs make single-year commitments to participate in the league, and that in a month or so, the league will approach the owners about committing for next season. But, “If they don’t come to the table with us having the ability to control our league, we won’t play with them,” Wellman says.
For background on the sale, see posts here and here. Also, Kartik Krishnaiyer of majorleaguesoccertalk.com and others are working on a multipart, in-depth series on the USL sale. Here’s today’s Part III.
Triangle Offense: Last Wednesday, after the Miami game, I spoke with Brian [Wellman, the team president] and he said there was nothing but silence coming from the USL about where they were on the sale. Did it all come down Thursday? Did it catch everybody by surprise?
Selby Wellman: Nike called the group in St. Louis that we were teamed up with to buy the league and told them that ‘we had changed our mind and we were selling it to another group’ after a month of negotiations. And the issue is they sold it to a group, basically it’s a non-team, non-USL-1 team entity, it’s a large real estate developer in Atlanta along with his partner who owns a PDL team. So we were upset with that, and we didn’t think it was right, because we’ve been working for almost two years [inaudible] and Nike to restructure this league to where it would have the ownership control like all other sports leagues around the world. The USL did not promote itself, did not do anything at all that a league should do. So we wanted to buy it and take it over. Continue reading »
Just in from the USL home office: Caleb Norkus and Sallieu Bundu have spots on Week 14’s team of the week for their performances in the RailHawks’ 1-0 victory over the Charleston Battery on Saturday.
Among the contributions of Norkus, who started the game at right back: He drew a crucial foul from the Battery’s Randi Patterson, who kicked him in the head. Amazingly, Patterson was sent off, and minutes later, the RailHawks exploited the man-deficit with a goal from Bundu, off an assist from Josh Gardner.
The league’s player of the week was Ricardo Sanchez of the cellar-dwelling Minnesota Thunder, who annihilated the Montreal Impact 3-0. That game also produced the weekend’s most notorious low-light.
This continues an unfortunate trend for Canadian football teams (maybe it’s the universal health care!). Last month, the Vancouver Whitecaps’ Wesley Charles and Charles Gbeke also got into an on-field fracas, this time after the two of them muffed a scoring opportunity. Here’s the video (scroll ahead to 7:35).
Guess who the RailHawks play this Friday night, at home and on national television (Fox Soccer Channel, that is)? The boys from Vancouver. Kickoff is 8 p.m.
USLLIVE.com—The RailHawks burned a lot of carbon on a flight to Minnesota on Sunday afternoon that yielded very little in the way of ecologically correct, status-boosting offsets.
The ’Hawks came into the game in second place with 23 points. Eighteen of those points had come from six victories over the bottom four teams in the league: Austin, Miami, Minnesota and Cleveland. A victory over the Minnesota Thunder Sunday would have taken their record over Rust Belt/ Iron Range opponents to 6-0. Instead, a ghastly first half (in which they were outshot 8-2) gave the Thunder all the openings they would need for their first victory, 2-0.
To complete the waste of the afternoon (not to mention the jet fuel), Kupono Low received a garbage-time red card and will be unavailable for this Friday’s trip to Austin. Continue reading »
In an unexpected development, the team announced this afternoon that Greg Dalby, a member of the U.S. junior national team and a reserve on the Colorado Rapids, will don the RailHawks kit this Sunday in Minnesota.
The reason given is to ease the pressure on the RailHawks midfielders in the midst of a five-game flurry on the schedule. One wonders, too, if coach Martin Rennie is confident enough in getting three points from the last-place Thunder that he thinks the downside of a new face in the mix is minimal.
Dalby had a stellar career at Notre Dame, but spun his wheels for a season in Belgium (among other things, he had work permit issues) before returning stateside to play for Colorado last season. Playing time has been scarce for him everywhere, though.
Although the midfield wasn’t especially effective last night against Portland, two strong mids were on the sidelines: Matt Watson took the night off, while Paladini came on as a second-half sub. They were resting, according to Rennie, who made a point of expressing his confidence in Brian Plotkin and Kupono Low, who started in the front of the midfield, and who both made strong efforts at the elusive goal. Given that it’s Minnesota, and with the addition of Dalby, one wonders if Watson—and perhaps Paladini—will take another game off.
I’d love to know more about the mechanics and rationale of weekend loans. From the text of Tim Candon’s post, it looks like Rennie has agreed to play Dalby 90 minutes. I’m traveling now, but hope to find out more. In the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
Brian Plotkin poached a goal in the 58th minute. (photo courtesy of Carolina RailHawks)
WAKEMED SOCCER PARK/ CARY—On a Sunday afternoon best made for poolside lounging, the Minnesota Thunder and Carolina RailHawks shuttled the ball back and forth for 90 minutes. The majority of the RailHawks faithful took their cues from the weather report and stayed away in droves. Had they been at the stadium, the 90-degree temperature combined with the somnambulant pace of the game could have produced the world’s largest collective nap.
For the 3,500 regular fans who missed the game, there were 22 players running about, clattering into each other, trying to accomplish the seemingly impossible task of scoring a goal. It finally happened in the 58th minute, following some haphazard, lackluster, heavy-legged, bamboozling, half-baked shenanigans from Minnesota.
caniacgirl on "Peters and pipes pickpocket a peck of prickly Penguins": I absolutely love the headline! Games like this one definitely reignite the little bit of playoff hope I have left in me. It should be an interesting few weeks that's for sure.
Greg Nccu Student on "Miller leads NCCU to 11th victory": There are a lot of Rumors on Campus about Joanna Miller leaving NCCU next year. Please Coach Robinson, We need to keep this player from gong to another College.
Mike Potter on "Women’s roundup: NCCU wins on Senior Night, Tar Heels fall": She's certainly a solid talent and has a chance to be among the top few players in the history of the program. Next season's team will be even more talented. I'm thinking her scoring might be down a bit, but I'll be surprised if they don't approach 20 wins.
