With USLPro expanding from 14 to, at least, 22 teams and two other franchises relocating and starting new identities, we figured we could kill some of the off-season boredom by letting you get to know the new competition. “Meet the New Teams” will run, roughly, every other week leading up to March 2015.
Name: Louisville City FC
City: Louisville, KY
Home Field: Louisville Slugger Field
Previous Leagues (if any): None (Bought franchise rights off of Orlando City, but is a new team)
Supporters’ Group: Louisville Coopers
Louisville’s foray into USLPro come via Orlando City. With the Mickey Mouse Club moving to MLS, one of the minority investors of Orlando secured the outgoing team’s franchise rights with the hopes of duplicating the success in Kentucky. Hoping in leech off of Orlando City’s success, they’ve taken Orlando’s colors as their own, added the dumb-as-hell ‘city’ tag to their name, and will be affiliated with the new MLS side in 2015.
The formation of Louisville has not had the professional polish that Orlando routinely displayed. When the team unveiled their logo, it wasn’t the design you see above. It was this…
It took all about five minutes before everyone took a dump on it and said they could do better. The next day, the team scrapped the look and opened it up to the masses. Even Deadspin picked up on the story. Eventually the design at the top of this page is what stuck.
More recently, they’ve had a change in team president. Basically, the guy they had, by way of Sporting Kansas City, wasn’t getting the job done. So, he got sacked and they promoted from within.
For those of you keeping score at home:
Team Logos: 2
Team Presidents: 2
Games Played: 0
Yeah, not quite Orlando City-esque in their execution.
Also, apparently no one from the USLPro office told Louisville they haven’t announced that whole divisional format that will be used this season. The team’s website proudly displays the “Easter Conference Standings” on the bottom of every page. We couldn’t get anyone to tip the schedule before it was officially announced last year. But, major changes in the league format; someone will confirm that without even having to ask.
On a positive note, the team’s supporters’ group, the Coopers, seem to have some semblance of order. They’ve got a working website and are active on the Twitters. If they ever want to get back in touch with us about that thing we discussed earlier, that would be cool too. However, they may be ignoring us.
Louisville City; not Orlando City no matter how hard they wish to be.
