FURY ON LAST LEGS?
Soccer team to suspend operations
Professional soccer in Ottawa is dead.
It will be for the foreseeable future. And maybe longer. A lot longer.
The Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group (OSEG) will announce Friday morning that it has pulled the plug on its Ottawa Fury franchise in the United Soccer League, according to a well-placed source.
The franchise was part for OSEG’s initial major sports plan and first started with an expansion franchise in North American Soccer League way back in 2011. The team began play in 2014 after TD Place renovations were completed and joined fellow tenants the Ottawa Redblacks and Ottawa 67’s. The franchise then joined an even higher-level league in the USL in 2017.
Hopes were high to sell the sport and make TD Place a year-round venue for the three sports teams. OSEG even tried a women’s Fury team to little financial success.
Instead, the Fury will join the old Ottawa Pioneers/Intrepid, a pro team that played in the Canadian Soccer League from 1987 through 1989, on the sidelines. And the prospects of another ownership group talking a chance on pro soccer in Ottawa are slim to none.
The Fury were a financial drain on OSEG, for whom the Ottawa 67’s might be the only profitable entity among its stable of teams, with the net loss maybe as high as $2 million per season.
OSEG was also facing a second straight fight with CONCACAF, the governing body for soccer in North and Central America and the Caribbean, over whether they could even be allowed to continue in the USL or be forced to play in the lower-tiered Canadian Professional League.
OSEG was done with the politics and wasn’t about to pay big bucks to challenge CONCACAF and the appellate body in Lausaune, Switzerland, in a fight they might win but might prove expensive. That cost might have been $200,000 or more. And why?
CONCACAF wants to make a legacy of a true Canadian league. They are oblivious to all the past failures.
Announced crowds at Fury games at TD Place were often of 5,000 or more. In reality, no more than 1,500 were in stands on many given nights and afternoons.
Ottawa may be a hot minor soccer community. It just appears parents don’t want to take their kids to professional games even if the tickets are free.
Only the Canadian women’s team on a special visit can draw fans in big numbers.
OSEG will not be back in the pro soccer game. Not ever.
Maybe Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk wants a team in Kanata as he did years ago, when the Senators bid for a Major League Soccer expansion franchise. Unlikely.
Last off-season was a disaster when CONCACAF tried to pressure the Fury to play in the upstart Canadian
League that is completing its inaugural season.
Free agents the Fury were eyeing for their roster were lost due to the uncertainty and while the Fury squeezed into the USL playoffs, they lost out in the play-in round on penalty kicks to Charleston on Oct. 23 in what was the beginning of the end.
Within days, head coach Nikola Popovic was let go and that was the first sign the franchise was dead. Popovic came over from former USL championship contender Swope Park (Kansas City) at great expense.
He thought he had a mandate to win. He never had a chance.
Things a never worked out to match the plan the Fury had.
Sadly, the two most emotional people at Friday’s news conference will be Fury president John Pugh and GM Julian de Guzman, both great people.
Pugh is the heart and soul of Ottawa soccer, never mind all the politics. He’d lived for pro soccer to succeed in Ottawa.
The accomplished de Guzman only wants to win and promote Canadians, the way he never experienced as a youth.
The pair poured so much into it. They deserved so much better.
And now they are done, though de Guzman will be a force in Canadian soccer for years to come.