SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums College, Pro & International Soccer Battery travels to Charlotte

Saturday April 17th, the Battery will take on the USL 2 Charlotte eagles squad where former Ben Lippen Standout Brady Bryant currently starts at center back and in 2008 led the team in minutes played and was a finalist for the USL 2 defender of the year award. If your in the charlotte area you should check out the match. I'm dissapointed to see that the battery will not be making a trip to Austin to face the Aztex this year... strange to me with so few teams in the league why they wouldn't play everyone atleast once.

ah, what is the new league's website? From what I could dig up it looked like Charlotte is still in usl 2 and the battery and aztex are in usl 1. But I did hear that the names of the league had changed again, just don't remember to what...

USLFans.com

United Soccer Leagues

Yes, it is a mess, I'll try to whittle it down to a few thousand words.

Last season the Battery was in USL1 and Austin was also one of the teams. During the offseason, a group of owners/investors (some from USL1 and some that didn't even have a current team) wanted to break away and form a new league which they called NASL. The new league and USL talked forever and both sumitted applications to US Soccer for sanctioning. US Soccer basically said "I'm not sanctioning either one of you....you both still have work to do to prop up your league. So, for this year only, US Soccer will run a league with teams from both NASL and the remains of the old USL1 league." This temporary hodgepodge league is called "US Soccer Division 2" and it has 2 conferences, one called "NASL" and the other called "USL". Here is another link off of Talon's link above that shows that setup: http://ussf.demosphere.com/Schedules/2010/20952154.html

Now, while all this was going on during the offseason, the future of USL1 was unknown, there was a chance there would be no league. So, for that and also for cost concerns, the Battery dropped to USL2. If all this wasn't muddy enough, the naming convention adds confusion because the US Soccer league has a "2" in the title as does the Battery's league (USL2). The US Soccer league is the 2nd division (for now) and USL2 is actually the 3rd division. But hey...this is how they do it in England (League 1 = 3rd division, etc.) and they invented the game!!

Charlotte Eagles 2:3 Charleston Battery

Battery Win Opener at Charlotte

Disappointing that only 1100 showed up for the match.

Pretty good crowd if you ask me. MLS is brutal to watch and this is two divisions below. Take the 1K plus and walk.

Yeah, in Charlotte, that's about average. They play in different venues over the years, that doesn't help the fans. I've been to 2 away matches, in different years, and they were in 2 different high schools. They've also played at UNCC which I hear is sweet. And fan fav Swinehart finally retired & fan fav #2 Coggins also, that doesn't help. Say what you will about their mission, etc. but while they're small, they're also one of the more stable soccer clubs in the US. And their coach (can't think of his name) has been there forever.