When soccer website “Outside the Touch Lines” ranked FC Tucson No. 1 of all 67 PDL teams last week, the ambitious, get-things-done leadership of Tucson’s soccer organization didn’t go into an “aw shucks” mode.
Their vision of professional soccer in Tucson goes beyond the Premier Development League. It seems inevitable that FC Tucson will soon, perhaps by 2018, advance to the United Soccer League, and become an affiliate of a Major League Soccer team.
It would be the equivalent of a Class AAA Pacific Coast League baseball team in Tucson.
“We’re getting the pick of the litter nationally for our PDL team,” FC Tucson managing partner Greg Foster said last week, citing, among others, Jon Bakero, a former ACC Player of the Week at Wake Forest, and other top college players from Louisville, Creighton, Santa Clara and San Diego State.
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“We believe the time is right for the Tucson market to move up to the USL.”
FC Tucson’s management group, which includes Foster, GM Jon Pearlman and coach Rick Schantz, is in the process of forming a steering committee to identify investors for a move to the USL. That would require more than double their current budget and become something close to a $5 million a year operation.
“We have a huge head start because our venue, Kino Stadium, is already in place,” said Foster. Best case: If FC Tucson joins the 29-team USL and gains a MLS affiliation, the stadium could be expanded to perhaps 4,000 to 6,000 seats.
The difference between the PDL and USL is significant.
PDL teams play seven home games; USL teams play 15.
PDL teams in FC Tucson’s Southwest Division play at high school and junior college facilities. USL teams, such as FC Cincinnati, which plays at Nippert Stadium, has drawn as many as 23,375 fans this season. The USL Western Conference includes such teams as LA Galaxy II, Vancouver Whitecaps FC 2, Saint Louis FC, OKC Energy FC, Real Monarchs of Salt Lake City and San Antonio FC.
It makes sense: Tucson has been a high school soccer powerhouse for 20 years; the youth soccer organizations number more than 10,000 players; the first-class Tucson Soccer Academy is among the best of its kind anywhere; Pima College is a long-time NJCAA contender in men’s and women’s soccer; and the UA’s women’s soccer program has become a Pac-12 contender, reaching the Sweet 16 last season.
Playing in the USL would expand FC Tucson’s regular-season schedule to April through September (the PDL season is May to mid-July).
“We’ve been running our PDL team like a USL team,” said Foster. “We believe we can significantly increase our footprint.”
FC Tucson, for example, leases the former Arizona Diamondbacks training facilities at Kino Stadium. It has a weight room, therapy pools and most of the modern athletic training gear.
The FC Tucson group, which initiated and stages MLS preseason training in Tucson, would then be on stage from January to October each year.
“A USL team often has as many as four or five MLS players at a given time,” said Foster. “If we get a wholly owned affiliation, it would be a merger of our brand with an MLS franchise.”
With the recent addition of the American Hockey League’s Tucson Roadrunners and the implementation of the Nova Home Loans Arizona Bowl to this city’s sports landscape, a move by FC Tucson to the USL would be a trifecta to match any in Tucson sports history.
