VSI Tampa Bay FC and Antigua Barracuda FC are OUT. http://odfcnews.com/2013/11/17/usl-pro-teams-fold-mls-field-squads-team-partnership/
Shocked. Shocked I say. What will a couple dozen people have to do in Plant City next summer on the weekends?
Good riddance to Tampa Bay VSI - Hope D3 USL Pro learns a lesson with this - Tim Holt are you listening? Probably goes in one of his ears and out the other though.
I can't vouch for the accuracy of this writer or publication, but here too they are speaking of VSI's USL Pro demise: http://www.recklesschallenge.net/usl-pro-turning-the-table-in-2014/ "VSI’s departure is somewhat of a shock. Tampa Bay made a strong push to make the playoffs in the club’s first year in USL PRO, but eventually fell short. Yes, the attendance in Plant City was dismal in 2013, but the front office had ample time this off-season to find a new home in Tampa. It looks like the ownership group did not think it was a worthwhile effort. This means that there will be no USL PRO teams in Florida by 2015 unless something else changes." So long VSI Plant City, we hardly knew ye.
VSI Tampa still exists in PDL and W league. They own ALL youth soccer on the Brandon, Riverview and north Pinellas County. As I have posted here the Plant City and Lakeland locals I talked to did not want to support the VSI team in PC because the team owned the youth league that everyone "hated". Something as simple as not having the longest name in pro soccer and going with Tampa FC or Florida Storm or freakin anything other than VisionPro Sports Institute Tampa Bay Football Club. In Polk County we have over 600,000 people over half within 15 miles of PC stadium and within 15 miles of Plant City Stadium (in far east Hillsborough county) we have three large youth leagues (over 850 kids each) in rec and competitive division from U-6 to U-16. You can talk about areas/territories and the proximity to TBFC and OCSC but the VSI guys screwed the pooch in so many ways that NASL vs USL Pro and VSI vs. the other Pro teams with-in 45 miles had little to do with it. I would caution everyone not to read any Macro-NASL V USL P lessons into this case. Oklahoma and other locations may not follow this script. Heck, the Energy are at least updating web pages and F.B. which is more than the unpaid staff and unpaid players of VSI were able to do all year so that "Battle of the Leagues" should be better to watch.
And here in south Pinellas we have a VSI-affiliated youth club as well, but IMO it is "affiliated" in name only. The pro team came over once to train with some of the youth players, and hand out tickets to a game. It was a nice gesture and all, but I cannot name one thing more that has resulted from the "affiliation". Oh wait, the club has a cool crest now on their uniforms. I guess that is one more thing linking us to the "mother" club. Nearly all the parents I talked with had no inkling of a USL Pro team in the Tampa Bay region that was linked to our club. Whatever marketing they did do surely did not reach to this side of the Bay. Despite having a player on their roster that has played and still coaches youth teams here in St. Pete. It follows that there is zero interest among anyone I know to drive out to Brandon to watch a PDL or W League game. Why do that when we can go to Rowdies games right down the street?
After last year's inept management it is not surprising. That said, IMO it has less to do with the Tampa NASL/USL rivalry and mostly with inept management. We will see how it plays out in other markets (maybe), but in Tampa the failure of VSI-PRO is really a failure of management rather than the NASL "winning" anything in Tampa.
Well, that's pathetic. One year and throw in the towel? They have no one to blame but themselves. Their initial boasting and planning sounded good, so I think they knew what they ought to do, but their follow through was just total crap. OK, so that's the last of VSI, and no doubt a good thing. In the future, I will look on new teams with a much more jaundiced eye. I really thought (this time last year) that VSI and Phoenix FC would create decent, lasting teams. I figured that the necessary ingredients were well known (stadium plan, marketing, please your core fans) and that anyone joining the party this late should have a clue (and a plan!). Well, it seems that I was wrong, wrong, wrong. So a nod to @kenntomasch and the other nay sayers, and a heeping plate of humble pie for me. I still want to see USLPro (and NASL) be successful enough to provide a stable lower division or two. But I'll be sure to check my optimism at the door from here out.
A few things to remember: This is not easy to do. People who act as if it's easy to do are probably not well-equipped to do so. Time to ramp up is important - when you see things rushed and coming together at the last minute, it's usually a bad sign. It takes money. If people don't have money, they're destined to fail. The vast majority of people who have attempted to do this have failed, historically. It's rarely a bad bet to take the under.
I can tell you that the 'foot soldiers' at VSI did everything they could to make it work. I cannot comment on ownership, the relationship with the city/county etc... but I know that everyone on the day to day / gameday staff did everything they could to make it work. And they had a really talented team on the field as well. Its unfortunate that ownership couldn't get a realistic feel for the proper marketing, energies, and allotments to give the stateside folks the ability to see it thru.
The people who get hired by these teams to actually do the day-to-day heavy lifting almost always, just by virtue of the position and the demands and realities of it, bust their asses merely to get as much done as they can to pull off a game. They don't make policy, they are the instruments of those policies. If the people in charge are clueless or underfunded (or both), you can still have games (with lines on the field and uniforms and water jugs and officials and towels and all the hundreds of details that not everybody who hasn't done game ops always grasps that it takes), but the organization itself isn't going to thrive. And it's no reflection on the "foot soldiers" who - for the most part - either just want to work in sports or have a passion for soccer and want to help the club succeed. (Sometimes the foot soldiers are clueless, too, but often that's because of inexperience. And you can't afford to go out and hire a bunch of experienced people. If they're not volunteers, they're interns or they're young or both or they're underpaid or all three. It's just the nature of the beast.)
I place all the blame on the ownership of VSI for this debacle. I'm glad that the Rowdies end up being the "winners" here by becoming the sole pro soccer club in Tampa Bay, but a part of me wanted VSI to deliver on that plan to build a Soccer-Specific Stadium in or near downtown Tampa. I almost convinced myself that they could have merged with the Rowdies and make a serious push for bringing MLS back here. Oh, why can't we ever have nice things?