My sense is that Austin Bold FC is not long for the world, unless things take a pretty sharp turn for the better soon. They apparently constructed their "stadium" at Circuit of the Americas without bothering with, you know, permits and such, and only got a certificate of occupancy for the home opener that covered the pitch and grandstand. Then they only got a temporary COA for the second game on the afternoon of that game, one which was apparently free to attend if you bought actual livestock to the game. (Which caused a bit of consternation, as you might imagine. And we have no attendance figure for the game, but the local paper described it as "sparse.") One of their marquee signings, Dario Conca, who was just their captain, left the team this week "by mutual agreement" (which is rarely mutual). Sooooooo, yeah. It's hard to draw big conclusions early, but sometimes the signs manifest early. And the Bold's owner (and his fight against Austin FC) has not exactly inspired confidence.
Well I guess you can build a stadium pretty fast if you don't have to worry about those pesky city, county, state permits.......
----- Yeh, I messed that one up pretty good. You always hear about Texas being business friendly, less regulations etc. (We hear that a lot in California ) This is just a USL team on some big commercial piece of property, so hopefully MLS does have too many issues over on that city owned piece of property..
Tulsa has cut Fabian Bastides In last night's Black Gold Derby match, he directed foul language at an OKC player. Apparently this happened after he had been substituted off. If that is the case, then chances are pretty good the discipline committee will levy a punishment against him. If he ever plays in USL again, he will probably have to serve a three-game suspension first. We'll find out for sure on Wednesday.
FYP. Let’s call it like is. No need to sugar coat it. Foul and absusive language form the Tulsa president sounds vague. However, he absolutely did the right thing by terminating the player’s contract. Kudos to the Roughnecks from taking immediate action. Sad in this day and age we have this kind of behavior. Like you are alluded to, the USL will take action. They have tended to be very proactive in on-the-field incidents.
Stopping you right here. None of the reports I had in my hands described the incident very well. The USL statements gave no details, and while the Roughnecks statement included an apology to Atiba Harris, they only described the incident as "foul and abusive language".
Agreed. None of the reports described the incident well. I just assumed you, like myself and many, read the Atiba's recount (and a teammate, whose name is escaping me) on Twitter. The reports sugar coated it with "foul and abusive language". For some reason, I don't like that. Reports needed to call it like it was racial abuse. But that's just my opinion.
FWIW, Bastidas doesn’t appear to be too remorseful. He’s using the "soft R" excuse. I don’t see him playing soccer in this country anytime soon. Whatever punishment USL levies is going to be immaterial.
Rather than repeat myself, I'll just copy this from the USL D3/League One thread. It's a glorified pissing contest. Doesn't help that the Bold are crap on the pitch, which also keeps fans away, and with the fact a MLS team is due in less than two years, fans will probably rather just wait on the MLS product than deal with this sideshow. So, for the Bold... it's the Austin Aztex all over again.
Okay, who knew Dominic Oduro was playing in USL-C? Who knew there were two different soccer players in USL-C named Dominic Oduro?
I knew there were two Dominic Oduro's - saw one of them playing for Tampa a couple of weeks back, then noticed the name in another match report from the same weekend. No idea whether either of them are THE Dominc Oduro though. The Tampa one played in midfield, in the game I saw.
The Dominic Oduro, 33 years old, who played for 8 different MLS teams is now with the Charlotte Independence. The other Dominic Oduro, 24, has been with Tampa Bay since last year. He started off in the Manchester City youth academy and then played for various clubs in northern Europe. He was drafted by Seattle Sounders in 2017 but they cut him. He played for a PDL team before signing with Tampa Bay. Both of them were born in Ghana.
Same town in Ghana even. I knew just because it came up a few times the week we played Charlotte. Grind. Together with my brother last night after the game. #Oduroreigns https://t.co/hAdDB2hIgA— King Oduro (@DominicOduro) April 28, 2019
Thats an insult to the Aztex really, which was at one time a very exciting sports franchise in Austin Epstein bought the rights to Aztex USL, and all their IP back in 2015 (twitter, instagram, facebook) then went dark for three years until outside pressure forced him to "use it or lose it". They literally started w/ 6k 'fans' on twitter. just by holding onto that franchise for 3 years could have doubled, or tripled a USL teams perceived value. I've heard rumors he was trying to get Austin to pay for a stadium in 'actual' city limits, which I don't believe one bit, primarily because Austin has never subsidized sports stadiums in the city and everyone knew that. Thats the reason Phil Rawlins packed up Aztex 1.0 for Orlando. Regardless, I do see Bold surviving (possibly in USL League 1 or League 2) because COTA already has a great marketing team. I don't see the introduction of Austin FC being a big issue for them either because they don't really cater to all of Austin, mostly Del Valle area. I see them consistently bringing in 1500-3000k seats a game. Now is that enough to be sustainable? Maybe with the right management.
That's a really big variance. I think you could support an L1 team on 2-3k/game (only because Epstein owns every facet of game day revenue), but there is no way they can sustain a Championship team on those numbers.
Yeah my confidence level in Bold requires a higher variance.... but its somewhere between those numbers.
I did. But then I'm MLS's Combine photographer, so I did my "His name is Dominic Oduro?!?" bit a while back.