Chattanooga FC Offers A Template For Connecting Soccer & Community In The USA

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http://midfieldpress.com/2016/10/13/chattanooga-fc-offers-a-template-for-connecting-soccer-community-in-the-usa/

Chattanooga FC Offers A Template For Connecting Soccer & Community In The USA

by Chris Kivlehan - October 13, 2016

On August 8, 2015, 18,227 people filled Chattanooga’s Finley Stadium to watch their local amateur club, Chattanooga FC of the National Premier Soccer League, face off against New York Cosmos B for the fourth division NPSL national championship.  The Cosmos reserves won on the field, but Chattanooga won the day by showing the world that something very special is happening in the southeastern Tennessee city.

Chattanooga would make soccer headlines again in November of that year, when at BlazerCon Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber famously referenced the town in a poor example to explain why he thinks promotion and relegation can’t work in the USA.  “If you’re investing billions and billions of dollars, which we are now at about $3.5 billion invested in 20 years, to build something in Kansas City and they have a (bad) season, to think they might be playing in Chattanooga in a stadium of 4,000 people on a crappy field with no fans, makes no sense,” Garber said.

To Garber’s credit, he later apologized to Chattanooga FC. However, the incident served as a stark contrast between what Chattanooga FC is accomplishing in a bottoms-up, grassroots community movement versus the top-down investor-driven approach of MLS.

Chattanooga FC first got its start in 2009, when a group of friends including Sean McDaniel, Marshall Brock and others wanted to marry their love of soccer with their love of Chattanooga to create something special the city could rally around.  Like many places in the Southeastern US, Chattanooga is college football country.  It turned out that the National Premier Soccer League’s season ran from May to August, a lull in the town’s sporting calendar.