Asante heads group of returning starters
It’s typically hard for Phoenix Rising FC fans to get too attached to the team’s players given the high turnover rate of the roster from one season to the next. But in 2020, things are different.
The club announced Friday that eight starters from this season’s USL Western Conference championship team will return, including back-toback league Most Valuable Player Solomon Asante.
Joining Asante, the first back-toback MVP in league history, in re-signing are forwards Rufat Dadashov and Santi Moar, goalkeeper Zac Lubin, midfielders Kevon Lambert, Jon Bakero and Sam Stanton and defender Darnell King.
“I’m very excited about the guys coming back,” Rising FC head coach Rick Schantz said Friday while on the road for a scouting trip. “It’s been part of the plan all along, was to make sure there was some continuity and make sure we have some leaders. You always want to build your core group and continue with the same core values and the same ideals, and at Phoenix Rising we want to win trophies, and it’s important to bring back guys that have done it.”
The pandemic gave Schantz and general manager Bobby Dulle the opportunity to get to work on re-signing players sooner than in a normal season. Other players from this season’s team could return -- at least one more, Schantz said, but that has yet to be made official.
Junior Flemmings, the league’s Golden Boot winner for most goals this season with 14, is apparently not returning to the club. He’s been linked to at least two Super Lig clubs in Turkey as his next possible destination after sitting out the final month of the Rising FC season -- the team’s entire playoff run -- suspended by the USL for using a homophobic slur in a match on Sept. 30.
“His contract ended. There’s not a whole to be said other than that,” Schantz said of Flemmings. “I think he’s going to be extremely successful wherever he goes. With our team and our club, we have to be intelligent about how we spend money on players.”
The 30-year-old Asante won the Golden Boot in 2019, and led the league in assists this season. He has 44 goals and 35 assists in 87 appearances for Rising FC since joining the club before the 2018 season.
Lubin made 14 saves in the postseason, and his is the lasting image from the conference championship season, as he was in goal for the final missed penalty from El Paso Locomotive that gave Phoenix the victory at Casino Arizona Field on Oct. 24. Lubin registered five clean sheets on 46 saves in the regular season and will be going into his third season with the team.
“It’s crazy how far this league has come when four or five years ago, you maybe had a couple of guys, three, four guys that carried over from the year before and then you just signed a group of players in January and February,” Lubin said. “But with the growth of the league ... they are building teams thinking about the future years ahead and you are retaining a lot more players.”
Dadashov, a newcomer this season, scored 11 goals and added four assists. King has appeared in 231 matches and scored 10 goals in nine USL seasons.
Moar, whose role increased with Flemmings out, was a key player for Rising FC in the postseason. Stanton started all four postseason games, and Bakero has appeared in 37 matches for the club since the start of the 2019 season.
No returning player has been with the Rising FC longer than Lambert, who will be back for a fourth season. The 23year-old defensive midfielder has made nine appearances for Jamaica’s national team.
Schantz said it’s important for the club to have good citizens on the roster. Rising FC fans and players have built strong connections over the club’s brief history.
“It’s not like the Suns or the Diamondbacks where they’re on national TV every week,” Schantz said, adding that fans of those teams already know a lot about incoming players. “In our league, we’re signing a player from Congo or Ivory Coast that our fans don’t know too well, they don’t know their personal life. It’s important to make sure that some of the guys that have a connection to the community, we continue to foster that relationship.”
Schantz said defender Damion Lowe is looking at other opportunities but wants to return to Phoenix if he stays in the U.S. Defender Corey Whelan, from England, is looking to return to Europe to be closer to family, and defender Joe Farrell is currently in talks with the club about a return.