Will the southeast ever see professional soccer?

Tuesday morning, Manchester City and the New York Yankees announced the two sports properties will have an ownership stake in the newest Major League Soccer franchise, New York City Football Club.

NYC FC will kick off in 2015 at a site to be determined. Tuesday’s announcement also means the southeast continues to not be represented by a MLS franchise.

NEWS: #MLS announces New York expansion team: New York City FC (@nycfc) --> soc.cr/lfiAY#NYCFC
— Major League Soccer (@MLS) May 21, 2013

Since the Tampa Bay Mutiny and Miami Fusion folded in 2001 the league has not ventured southward for expansion. Leaving a gap in the soccer landscape in America, as MLS has done in the southeast, is not the best way to grow the game.

If an Atlanta resident wanted to see a MLS match they could drive nearly 9 hours to watch the Columbus Crew. Perhaps, the same Atlanta resident could catch a non-stop flight to either Houston or Washington D.C, if they were that dedicated.

Orlando City hoped to be the 20th franchise. Ownership was dealt a blow when the Florida Legislature didn’t bother to hear a bill that would all sports entities to compete for public financing dollars that could be used to fund a soccer-specific stadium in Central Florida, as well as other venues in the state, this spring.

Nevertheless, Orlando City ownership is optimistic about being in MLS by 2015.

@greener105th @thesoccerdon keep #believing! We are independent of NY and continue to more forward with @mls here in orlando by 2015
— Orlando City SC (@OrlandoCitySC) May 21, 2013

The Lions, who currently play in the third-tier of American soccer, average nearly 8,000 people for each home contest in the dilapidated Citrus Bowl. For comparison MLS’ Chivas USA averaged 8,045 per home contest, according to mlsattendance.blogspot.com.

The Northeast, California, Texas, Canada and Cascadia all have multiple MLS teams. The Midwest region has a pair of league stalwarts in Chicago and Columbus. As Chivas proves, not every one of the 18 cities with a MLS club is drawing like Portland, Seattle and Philadelphia are.

“New York is a legendary sports town, as well as a thriving global city with a rapidly expanding soccer fan-base,” Ferran Soriano, CEO of Manchester City told mlssoccer.com. “We are thrilled to contribute to the energy and growth of New York City Soccer.”

That’s well and good, but, in 2012, the New York Red Bulls averaged 18,281 fans, which was 7 percent less than what the team drew in 2011.

TRENDING: Great to see New York City FC trending worldwide on the first day! #nycfc twitter.com/nycfc/status/3…
— New York City FC (@nycfc) May 21, 2013

Adding a second team in that market may help the league’s exposure. It may also expose the league to questions about why a metropolitan area with 19 million people cannot fill a stadium. Then again, the announcement received more than 500 comments on the league’s website, a lead headline on ESPN.com and discussion outside of the typical soccer circles.

We’ll find out in 2015 whether the hype and money invested in NYC FC was worth shutting out the southeast once again.

How does one find a team to call their own?

I have no shame. For years, my football fanaticism was open and available to any team with stylish play. A team I loathed in the past could just as easily recapture a different place in my heart.

In middle school I had a crush on a girl named Maggie. She was Polish and the biggest Real Madrid fan one will meet on this side of the Atlantic. She liked European soccer, which meant I liked European soccer.

Eventually, I became a Borussia Dortmund fan because they played exciting soccer and had these garishly bright jerseys. This devotion lasted long enough to con my mother to spend more than $100 on a jersey for my 14^th birthday. (To this day, the jersey hangs in my closet next to apparel from future sporting crushes.)

Once Dortmund stopped making routine trips to the latter stages of the Champions League my ability to follow them waned. The German club found financial troubles, then nearly folded, before morphing into every football hipster’s favorite club the last two years.

While Dortmund was in the wilderness, so was my soccer support. Major League Soccer was in its infancy. Though the Tampa Bay Mutiny played right up the road, I only went to one game. Apparently a Who’s Who of American soccer was not enough to encourage me to care.

High school came and went. There were things to occupy my time other than the nearby professional soccer club and what was going on in Europe.

The obsession was rekindled in 2002 when I heard Maggie’s Real Madrid conquered Europe for the third time in five years courtesy of one of the best goals of all time. (I was so oblivious I didn’t know Dortmund won the German championship that year until a Wikipedia search more than a decade after the fact.)

Two weeks later another World Cup kicked off, and I picked up where I once left off. Of course, had I been a true fan I would not have worked bagging groceries the day Brazil won the tournament.

Growing up, I didn’t know too much about the technical side of the game, or tactics. Looking back at my attempt to play varsity soccer I ran around like a capon with his head cut off.

It was around that time, that I realized it was easier for me to stop goals from being scored rather than create them. Though I dabbled at goalkeeper for years, I didn’t really give up playing in the outfield until college, when it was apparent my touch was far behind the others on our club team. In goal I was able to read the game, diagnose what teams were going to do and occasionally stop them from scoring. I hated playing from the back for two reasons: I was always taught to launch the ball to safety and I rarely had faith in the touch of my defenders.

In the college years I lost touch with Maggie, but found my touch on the pitch. Things I was unable to do in high school I could do when playing with my friends. Eventually, I become good enough to play in goal because I wanted to, not because there was nowhere else on the field. During that evolution, I became attracted to teams that added substance with their score lines.

First it was the Galactico Era at Real Madrid, then the thrill of Liverpool’s refusal to quit in cup competitions. There was a brief love affair with Arsenal, but that one-sided relationship was washed away in disappointment when they lost the 2006 Champions League Final.

Though I thought Juliano Belletti’s goal to vanquish Arsenal in ’06 was lucky, I became a reluctant Barcelona fan. Barcelona had so many great players, who moved the ball in a way I couldn’t even imagine. It was a relationship that lost its luster after the constant diving and theatrics in 2010 when teams had the gall to dispossess, let alone, defeat them.

This was the time I realized I was a soccer vagabond, doomed to wonder from team to team in the hope some player, or some team would encourage me to reconsider.

It was only confirmed when I saw Cristiano Ronaldo, who Maggie later told me is her favorite active player, inexplicably escape three Ivorians in the 2010 World Cup and unleash a 35-yard shot. The goalkeeper was beat. The goalpost was another story. It was such an incredible moment of skill — from a player I thought was a closeted thespian — it still plays in my mind like a personal Youtube clip.

Ronaldo’s near miss only reaffirmed my preference to commit to football causes, not football clubs. By then it had been nearly a decade since the two MLS franchises in Florida folded. Geographically, my choices were either D.C. United or the Houston Dynamo. But, I hated Marco Etcheverry when I was younger—maybe, it was the mullet—so the Dynamo became the team I would support with lukewarm enthusiasm.

An eventual move to Texas, just two hours away from the Dynamo’s sparking new stadium, deepened my roots. Covering, then attending, a game in that cauldron of orange opened up the possibility that my odyssey was nearing an end.

Maybe it was a sign of maturity, as all boys eventually discover. Maybe it was the enthusiasm for the franchise that a friend and former colleague imbibed into me. Maybe it was an appreciation for the gritty, scrappy and winning formula this club has cultivated. Whatever it was, I realized Texas may not be home, but I am Forever Orange.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb