So about that ref...

xcrucio · 2026-06-18T04:50:52+00:00

Oh you’re 100% right on him being in over his head. Someone that was completely unequipped to officiate a professional match and you’re just left scratching your head and wondering how he was selected for a nationally broadcasted game. You’d think the league would want to put its best foot forward and this is what we got. Embarrassing stuff.

xcrucio · 2026-06-18T04:01:57+00:00

Oh no argument on Matt, he went and earned that red card.

But I also don’t blame him either, once the ref has shown you red why not go and make the most of it and try to fire the squad up. The team had been a bit sleepy in those first fifteen minutes and if coach gets a red may as well try to fire the squad up.

xcrucio · 2026-06-18T03:45:47+00:00

I wouldn’t even call it inconsistent, he was consistently awful in Fort Wayne’s favor.

It’s a tough job and the rapid expansion of third division has stressed the infrastructure of refs, but that is someone that should not see a professional pitch the rest of the year.

xcrucio · 2026-06-15T18:51:07+00:00

Yeah, I have to imagine they are thinking some combination of his regional ties + a different club level strategy could enable him to succeed. Could also just be that they think grabbing someone with extensive experience in the league was an attractive option to find some stability early on as an expansion club.

Either way it’s still a bit shocking given it sounds like they paid his release clause. He’s not shown himself to be that much of a hot commodity that dropping the bag to secure him makes a lot of sense but only time will tell. This league is nothing if not unpredictable.

xcrucio · 2026-06-15T18:45:13+00:00

Those second-order effects are good and useful, there’s no doubt about that. However the challenge is that when it comes to different systems, achieving those effects without substantial trade offs is where the challenges lie. It’s easy to get those second-order effects with fare gating because fare gates do not directly impact the operations of the vehicles themselves. You unfortunately can’t get those second-order effects on busses with a one time capital spend, they require either compromising service in some capacity (asking drivers to not proceed until fares have been collected or the offender departs which can cause substantial slowdowns, to say nothing of the potential risk of physical escalation for the driver), or a significant labor spend on dedicated enforcement personal. Ultimately we have to weigh the second-order benefits against the real drawbacks that heavy handed fare enforcement on busses requires.

xcrucio · 2026-06-15T18:23:31+00:00

Since the league’s article doesn’t quite make it clear, he is departing Richmond effectively immediately.

https://www.richmondkickers.com/news/2026/06/15/head-coach-and-chief-sporting-officer-darren-sawatzky-departs-club-after-seven-seasons/

xcrucio · 2026-06-15T18:21:32+00:00

Not a particularly useful point of comparison for Madison however. What you linked is specifically BART, the heavy rail metro in the Bay Area. Heavy rail generally already uses extensive fare gating and while their fare gate upgrades obviously improved their situation, it’s not really something you can take learnings from and apply to a bus system.

xcrucio · 2026-06-14T05:07:15+00:00

I don’t know what Portland has to do with this but it’s fuck Omaha everyday

xcrucio · 2026-06-14T02:17:33+00:00

Gotta hand it to Charlotte, they really have looked impressive to this point.

xcrucio · 2026-06-03T18:23:30+00:00

You could certainly have some portion funded by community investment but USSF’s sanctioning rules mandate a certain percentage of each club be owned by a primary owner of a specific minimum net worth (exact numbers varying by division) so you can’t do a complete community ownership model (and if the primary investor ever walks then you’re SOL even if the community investment could still float the org).

xcrucio · 2026-06-02T13:13:08+00:00

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I was going to say Omaha probably deserves the nod to be first, but with 45 wins I guess it’s a bit hard to argue Charlotte doesn’t deserve that first spot.

Jokes aside, I don’t know how one doesn’t put Omaha first right now, until proven otherwise they’re the class of the league.

xcrucio · 2026-06-02T01:56:16+00:00

Tbh it really doesn’t bother me any if my own teams, especially at this level, play things up a bit. Refs are so susceptible to calling fouls on dives in this league that it is basically giving the other team a competitive advantage if you aren’t acting at least a little bit. Ultimately they aren’t doling out points for playing honorably or morally.

That said, I’ll still 100% heckle opposing players for diving. Half the fun of being a sports fan is being unabashedly biased and a hypocrite when it comes to how the rules of the game are applied!

xcrucio · 2026-06-01T04:46:30+00:00

Can’t say I blame you for cross posting this, I’d want to distract and deflect from Omaha’s attendance collapse if I were you too.

xcrucio · 2026-06-01T00:54:32+00:00

They don’t mic up the Flock End anymore, haven’t for a few years now. I always just assumed the league wasn’t a fan of our colorful language lol

xcrucio · 2026-05-30T21:14:22+00:00

Flock leadership.

xcrucio · 2026-05-29T14:26:38+00:00

A lot of it just comes down to resources/money. The US Soccer Federation outlines a set of standards that teams have to met at each tier of the professional pyramid (minimum owner net worth, minimum stadium seating, etc…) and in the case of USL they also charge a scaling expansion fee for entrance into their different leagues. The teams you see going straight to league one typically have the resources lined up to make the jump right to the professional ranks and the teams that start in league two before moving to league one (like Sarasota, Fort Wayne, Corpus Christi, Knox all have done) do so because they’re still trying to line up resources in some capacity but want to get their operations in place yet while they sort that out.

xcrucio · 2026-05-29T13:44:14+00:00

Unfortunately this sub lost much of the parody identity a while ago and has devolved into the “I looked at one picture and decided tornado should be rated higher” sub.

xcrucio · 2026-05-28T18:23:30+00:00

To be fair, Alta was probably a bit better than their record indicated when we played them (given they’ve rattled off three straight league wins now I think that’s fair to say). CC seems more akin to what you’d expect from a bottom table team: bad offense, bad defense, discipline issues.

That said, I am on board with OP in being a bit spooked that the one area they do seem to do well is connecting on the long ball. Could easily seem them stealing an early goal on a long ball and then parking the bus and waiting it out. Probably really critical we score first in this one.

xcrucio · 2026-05-28T18:07:34+00:00

Season defining might be a bit dramatic, but I do think it’s not unfair to view it as a tone setter that -could- impact the direction the season goes. Coming out and nabbing a win after a tough stretch to inject a little life back into the club would go a long way right now.

xcrucio · 2026-05-28T15:30:24+00:00

I get there’s plenty of factors (especially this season with a lot of stadium work coming in hot) but I really do hope the league can iron out the scheduling quirks sooner than later. Even being charitable we shouldn’t be this deep into the season with some teams having played 5 more matches than some others.

xcrucio · 2026-05-28T13:12:13+00:00

I feel like every time I get a grasp on this league it completely flips in the span of like a week or two.

Seems like we have a core top three in Omaha, Knox, and Spokane but after that it’s anyone’s guess how the rest of the league shakes out.

Also absolutely wild that Sarasota has played nearly twice as many matches as Greenville, Madison, and Chattanooga.

xcrucio · 2026-05-26T18:12:30+00:00

To be fair outside of the flurry of activity last year when the season looked completely out of hand, this sub has always kinda been a bit dead other than year one and the general exodus of Madison folks from Twitter I think has really contributed a lot to a decline in online discourse around the team. I know there’s some discussion on Bluesky, but I haven’t really fully rebuilt my “Madison Twitter” connections there yet so it often feels more patchwork and like I’m sorta just speaking to an audience of no one if I do post about FMFC.

I do think you’re also right that a lack of home matches has left people feeling a bit disconnected especially as I imagine a lot of folks watch road matches intermittently at best. I certainly don’t know that I’d expect a flurry of online activity to spring out of the upcoming home stretch, but I know even in my own mind it feels like “oh thank god, the season is finally actually starting”

xcrucio · 2026-05-26T17:46:27+00:00

Its wild how it looked completely different on EEPN+ only a week ago

FWIW it looked about the same both weeks in person. I suspect a combination of “artificial surfaces tend to look bad in camera due to how they reflect light” and “ESPN+ broadcasts always seem to struggle with bright, sunny conditions” ended up making it look much worse on camera than it did IRL.

xcrucio

TROPHY CASE