Nashville is Going to be a Disaster
Nashville is Going to be a Disaster
Kevin Wallace
Are we allowed to talk about how terrible Nashville's MLS team is setting up to be? Top to bottom, this entire organization is well on track to being a huge failure. I'm a Cincinnati soccer fan, trust me on this one.
From their front office, to fans in the stands, to the stadium, to the team they're putting together, I'm just not seeing where a success is going to come from. And you know what, if I'm wrong, great. At worst we get a well run successful MLS franchise near Cincinnati to play games against for years to come. But I don't think we're going to get that.
MLS hasn't had an expansion team fail out of the gate yet. LAFC and Atlanta are the new standard for success in the league. Minnesota has incredible fan support, a beautiful brand new stadium, and a team on the upswing. Even FC Cincinnati's terrible first season on the field was supported by some of the best fan support in the league. Yes my arm is tired from patting myself on the back. Going back a little further we have NYCFC and Orlando. NYCFC plays on a baseball field and doesn't have nearly the fanbase the league probably expected them to have, but they play in the largest media market in the country and have been one of the most successful teams on the field since entering the league. Orlando, the original USL darling turned MLS franchise (also involved in relocating a Austin franchise before it was cool) hit the ground running with a huge star signing in Kaka, crazy fan support, and a beautiful stadium all their own.
My point is, new teams in MLS tend to get off to a great start with rabid fan support, good on field performances, beautiful stadiums, star players, or some combination of those.
Nashville will be lucky to have one of those. Let's break it down.
Fan Support
They don't have much of a fan base to speak of. Nashville finished 6th in USL average attendance with less than 7,000 people per game coming out to games. Not quite the passionate fanbase we're used to hearing about for expansion sides. Throw in the fact that as of writing, Nashville has yet to announce numbers for season tickets next year lead me to believe they’re not smashing sales records. Even Austin FC played a little fast and loose with their ticket accounting to make themselves look more popular than they are. Instead Nashville is going to have tiny crowds play in a massive NFL stadium. You need only watch an old Wizards match in Arrowhead stadium, or an Indy XI match, to see how bad that's going to look.
Now, I'll come out and say I thought Atlanta was going to struggle because of their lack of proven success in courting fans in lower divisions. I'll own up to bad take. One thing that Atlanta has that Nashville doesn't have? People. Nashville has a city population of 650,000 and a metro population of 2 million. However, the metro population is like 14 counties and what feels like 1/4 of the state of Tennessee and that seems super generous. In terms of TV markets, they're 27th in the country, Cincinnati is 34th. Cincinnati is also not a big city, but the team and organization proved it could find tens of thousands of people to pay to watch soccer. Nashville hasn't quite found that yet.
And since this is a supporter's group blog and not a legitimate journalistic exercise, let me just say their supporters are a sad bunch. Lame printed tifos (plural), unoriginal jokes, asking with the club if it's ok to "throw shade" at another team, calling yourself the "Roadies" while not traveling, and generally being miserable online makes them terrible additions to the league. When 75% of your home opener is Atlanta fans, which it will be, you will have proven to the world that you never deserved to have an MLS franchise. Nashville will be the best friend to the ProRelers online who, rightly, point out how arbitrarily awarding franchises is a bad way to run a soccer league. And anyone who gives those people more ammunition for their twitter crusades is worse than them.
Stadium
Seriously, look at how boring this stadium is.
It's a plain box. Neat. And where are they building it? Probably downtown right? Next to all those bars that every, single, one of my friends's bachelorette parties went to over the years? It has to be right? That's the new rule for MLS teams.
Oh.
Oh no.
They're building it in the middle of a fairground.
The exact same thing that Columbus fans blame on their franchise’s business failures, a stadium located on a fairground and away from downtown, is the exact same mistake Nashville is about to make. Well eventually they’ll make it, they actually haven’t started construction yet.
A big boring box stadium in a fairground in a small city that has yet to pass any smell test for having fan support. Dope. At least they'll be good on the field, right?
On The Field
Remember when FC Cincinnati was criticized for bringing in USL players to MLS? Spending willy-nilly on bad quasi-starters on existing MLS teams? Tossing out TAM and GAM like they're Miss Teen Tennessee at the Gatlinburg 4th of July parade? Nashville is doing that too.
Overspending on a Galaxy defender, after they just put up one of the worst defenses in MLS, is pretty impressive. Giving up two international spots this early in the roster build seems foolish as well. Miami obviously had the better expansion draft. They even made the classic FCC mistake of putting a lot of eggs in an aging African striker shaped basket. I’m sure Cameron Lancaster will save them though.
Sup?
Gary Smith, their manager, is a relic of an old era of MLS. Yes, he lead Colorado to an MLS Cup victory, in 2010, when almost every team went to the playoffs and Colorado were, very MLS-ly, seeded in the Eastern Conference bracket despite being a western conference team. They were an unconvincing 12-8-10 in the regular season. Smith would go on to get fired from an English League One side before having a brief stint in the defunct NASL reboot. I have to hand to to Nashville, taking out the guess work and finding a manager that they know will be in over his head in a 2020 version of MLS is certainly skipping a step Cincinnati took with Koch.
The logo
I gotta rag on this stupid logo. Do you get it? Their city is known for music. DO YOU GET IT? MUSIC. IT'S A MUSIC TOWN. THIS TOWN HAS FAMOUS MUSIC AND SO NOW THE SOCCER TEAM HAS MUSIC THINGS ON ITS LOGO.
Conclusion
Prove me wrong Nashville. But everything I've seen so far leads me to believe this franchise is going to fall flat on its face. And apparently I'm not the only one.