Austin, Columbus: a Tale of Two Stadiums (and a Plane)
I am proud to declare for the 48th time that soccer has made it in America.
One stadium opened, one closed, thousands of people sang thousands of miles apart, and one plane that made it clear, once again, that these two things were connected, and always will be.
Matthew McConaughey in a bright green suit, leading thousands of Austin FC fans in pre-game chants. Austin and its fans have fielded plenty of shots from around the league about their club and support being plastic, some of the, uh, unique chants they came up with, and that whole “your owner tried to intentionally kill off one of the most storied brands in league history to create this team and didn’t succeed exactly but still managed to get a team through a combination of bad faith ownership and pouting” thing. Credit where it’s due, however: Q2 Stadium looks great. The crowd there to cheer on Austin was nothing short of raucous. And the match against San Jose may have ended in a draw, but it was hard to feel like it wasn’t a victory for almost everyone involved.
Then, of course, there was the plane.
Which transports us almost instantly a little over 1,200 miles North, to a city in the heart of Ohio, to a stadium being retired as opposed to opened, to a team that keeps refusing to die.
The Crew, of course, are that storied brand that Austin FC owner Anthony Precourt tried to kill off, whose fans stymied the attempt to move the franchise to Austin. They have a brand new stadium opening up in Columbus, which means saying goodbye to what amounts to one of the most hallowed institutions in American soccer: Crew stadium, the first stadium built just for soccer in MLS, the site of famous victories and defeats between the USMNT and Mexico, that place where the scoreboard caught on fire the one time.
This wasn’t a funeral for the stadium, which will live on as a place where the Crew’s second team plays its games, but a happy farewell. A celebration of all that has occurred in the last couple of years, with both the club and the club’s name needing to be saved, and an MLS Cup victory thrown in for good measure. The next time the Crew play at home, it will be in brand new digs for the first time in two decades of play in Ohio, and it’s hard to say the team and fans don’t deserve a victory lap.
Two clubs, two celebrations that were vastly different and strangely similar. And, of course, the plane, a symbol of the connection between the two teams that will always exist. The overhead plan baring some sort of disparaging message being a meme we’re so used to associating with the English game, the message felt a little funny in addition to the bitterness it was also conveyed. But it was real bitterness, real invective viscerally felt, too. In some small way, that felt like just another step in the never-ending MLS quest for legitimacy.
Austin will continue to exist as a club that other people like to hate, and with how gleefully their fans have taken that mantle, might be the first MLS club that comes honestly by the Millwall “No One Likes Us” refrain, as opposed to just assuming that was the case until it actually became true. And Columbus will most likely have a particularly nasty rivalry with the club, born out of real circumstance and not just assumed animosity due to proximity, Trillium Cup notwithstanding.
Isn’t that what MLS has always wanted? Fans to hate other teams with such a passion that they buy space on a plane banner to fly over the stadium of their old owner? Isn’t that legitimacy in its own way?
Saturday night was a successful one for MLS. Love the teams that played or hate them, we saw two franchises at opposite ends of MLS history start a new chapter for the league, one MLS didn’t need to manufacture or encourage. Austin’s origins and the Columbus Crew story might have started out a giant mess, but it’s hard not to feel like, on Saturday night, everyone won.
Now we just need someone from Atlanta to fly a “Chris Armas blew it” banner over BMO Field.
Stream Schedule
Plenty more content to be had on stream this week, folks, with watch parties and talk shows for both Europe and the Americas happening this week!
An American Turf Odyssey
If you didn’t catch what went down at the Oakland Roots and Sacramento Republic non-game this weekend, here’s what roughly went down:
Oakland was scheduled to have their home debut as a USL Club against Sacramento Republic
Five minutes before the game kicked off, the referee called it off due to poor field conditions. Looking at it, it was hard to say he was wrong to do so.
Oakland released a statement saying Covid had delayed the installation of their new surface, meaning they had to keep using the palette turf system they had previously used in NISA the past couple seasons.
It ALSO turns out that this was the same turf that belonged to Rayo OKC, which their minority owner repossessed in the middle of the night from their field when that tire fire was melting down to the ground, and that before the turf made its way to Oakland, it was leased to the New York Cosmos for a time.
I don’t have a moral to this story. I just know that it’s bonkers all of these are true statements.
Welcome to the League, Ebony Salmon
Look, if you’re going to make your NWSL debut, there are far worse ways to do it.
The Copa America Continues to Go Very Well
Everything is going very normally! Nothing to see here!
Goal of the Day
Take a bow, Jakob Glesnes.
Listen, if I hit the crossbar three times in one shot, no one can tell me anything in training for the rest of the season. No one can make me run. I will not be carrying any training equipment anywhere. I might make people carry me around, who knows?