USL adds Tampa Bay Rowdies and Ottawa Fury to league for 2017

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http://www.insideworldfootball.com/2016/10/28/usl-adds-tampa-bay-rowdies-ottawa-fury-league-2017/

28 October 2016 GMT: 16:12

USL adds Tampa Bay Rowdies and Ottawa Fury to league for 2017

28th October 2016

USL and Tampa

By Paul Nicholson

August 28 – The United Soccer League (USL) the third tier of the US professional game has won over two teams from the second tier of US soccer, the NASL, for the 2017 season. Tampa Bay Rowdies and the Ottawa Fury will join Reno 1868 as expansion sides.

The three new teams will push the USL to 32 teams, six teams were added for the 2016 season. Tampa Bay and Ottawa will join the Eastern Conference with the number of regular season games for the league increasing from 30 to 32.

With the NASL also losing Minnesota United – they are moving to becoming an MLS franchise – the future for the US’s oldest professional soccer league (at least in name) which still houses the New York Cosmos, arguably the most famous club brand in US football, looks under threat, though the league says it is in conversation with potentially six new franchises.

The Tampa Bay Rowdies is a name associated with US soccer since the 1970s when it boasted names like England’s mercurial forward Rodney Marsh, Oscar Fabbiani (Chile), Steve Wegerle (South Africa) and Clyde Best (Bermuda), the first black player to play in the English First Division (look at for his autobiography to be published this Christmas and ghost written by Insideworldfootball chief correspondent Andrew Warshaw).

The team won the US Soccer Bowl in its inaugural season in 1975, and again in 2012, though it had been through a few iterations and different leagues in between times. They competed in the old NASL until it folded in 1984 when they continued to play in other leagues until 1993 before being revived in 2008 as FC Tampa Bay. Rowdies Chairman and CEO Bill Edwards renamed them the Rowdies in 2011.