24-Season Run Of Soccer In Nashville Is Over
Although seldom a team that earned postseason play, the Nashville Metros were there every spring, ready to begin a new USL season.
After 24 seasons, that is no longer the case.
Long known as “North America’s oldest continuously owned and operated soccer franchise”, the Metros are not part of the league this season.
When the USL Premier Development League schedule was announced last month, the Metros were not included. The club’s website has not been updated since early in the 2012 season.
“The Nashville Metros were unable/unwilling to continue to comply with certain league standards/deadlines in order to participate in the 2013 season and as a result are no longer members of the USL,” the league said in a statement posted by Nashville Post.com.
According to former Metros general manager Desmond Armstrong, the team’s majority owner Martin Maciel “decided he did not want to participate in the league.”
Additionally, Armstrong said of Maciel in the NashvillePost.com article, “he was going to take a year break and then come back.” Maciel also owns the Mexican second division club Calor de San Pedro.
Armstrong, along with head coach Brent Goulet, both former members of the U.S. Men’s National Team, had come to the Metros with big plans to rejuvenate the club and make it the center piece of a new youth soccer academy.
Armstrong is still involved in that project, and said, ‘it’s separate from the Metros. My piece will be known as FC Nashville.”
Two years ago, the franchise attracted a three-year sponsorship with Fifth Third Bank worth a reported $20,000 a year. There was talk of the team moving up a division to the USL PRO, and even some hints of Major League Soccer.
But last year finished much like the previous 21 seasons. The Metros went 7-6-3 and failed to make the playoffs. They did finish third in their division.
The Metros were formed in 1989 by Lynn Agee and Devinder Sandhu as an indoor team. Agee, an attorney, and Sandhu, a civil and environmental engineer who played collegiate soccer at Vanderbilt, kept the club on the field through bad times, and also through some good years.
Maciel became involved in the Nashville ownership group in 2008 and took over the club as majority owner last year, Armstrong and Goulet were brought in and the team got a new logo, but on the field not much changed for the USL’s oldest franchise.
Sadly, for the past eight seasons the Metros did not play past the final game of regular season play.
For many years the Metros played at Ezell Park. In 2012 they moved to E.S. Rose Park, a multi-sport facility where average home attendance was only 131 by an unofficial report. Total home attendance for eight gams was 1,051 with the Metros #56 on a list of 73 PDL franchises.
The smallest crowd was reported to have been just 83.
The door was left open for a return of the Metros to Nashville in the future, but it is an uncertain future at best.
Those fans who care don’t know, and those who know aren’t caring to talk about it.