In the moment, the news was a shock Friday afternoon, as Sacramento Republic FC and MLS announced the club would postpone their entry in the top flight by one year, to 2023. After so many years of working towards MLS, putting it off another year sounded like some kind of sick joke.
If the world we are living in was normal, it would be, but this isn’t the normal times. It turns out, the coronavirus pandemic did more than disrupt most aspects of our life in the moment — it has also disrupted the future, too, all the way to 2022 and beyond.
Reading Sacramento Republic’s statement, the big factor in delaying MLS was the timeline for building the new stadium at the Railyards. The club is planning to begin construction in earnest this fall, postponing the previous timeline several months, and in construction, sometimes even when a big project is on track, it can fall behind schedule easily. To take one recent example, a couple days of rain during construction for the new Los Angeles NFL stadium led to a delay of months on the project, incredibly.
Could they have tried to cram construction in for 2022? We’ll never know, it’s not happening. As someone who covered a team delaying their entry to MLS a year in Los Angeles Football Club, I have some insight into how this feels. Let’s go over the pros and cons of the postponement.
Con: We have to wait!
Here’s the emotional part of it all. How do you feel about Sacramento Republic waiting an extra year? It probably feels bad. That’s OK! You’re allowed to feel bad.
I think a lot of members of the club are probably unhappy, too. For players, getting an extended audition with less than two years to go has to provide motivation — pushing the cart out a year cuts some of those players’ hopes of making the MLS roster. It’s arguably the same for the coaching staff, depending on how the organization plans to approach that.
So if you are working through the emotions of this, that’s totally understandable. You’re going to feel a pang when the 2022 MLS season kicks off, and it will last for a little while. But, fingers crossed, if everything works out ok in the meantime, then it can still be so sweet when 2023 rolls around.
Pro: This probably doesn’t disrupt the roster build too much
Aside from the players on the USL roster who are trying to make the MLS roster that I just mentioned, it’s quite likely this does not disrupt GM Todd Dunivant’s roster-building project that much. And that’s because the delay dovetails with the disruption in the transfer market: COVID-19.
The transfer market has by and large frozen in North America since March, and the market will likely remain sluggish until a regular season is back on, which could be next year or not until 2022. Considering Sac Republic probably would be making initial inquiries to potential Designated Players at the end of this year for 2022, they aren’t behind at this point, and more time is not bad in that respect.
There’s another element that could be good for Sac Republic, in that I expect the MLS transfer market will follow most other leagues in the world and likely see valuations and transfer fees go down or at worst stay level for quite some time. In this way, the club may get some more bang for their buck when filling out their first roster with big-ticket players.
Con: What if things keep going wrong?
Let’s not go too far in the despair spiral, but planning for the future is a tricky thing right now. Will the kids go to school in the coming school year? Will coronavirus continue to rage all around us? When will sports get back to actual normal again? Is “normal” just a fiction at this point?
Again, you can really go dark on this, but it is worth underlining we really don’t know what the future holds at this point. If coronavirus isn’t contained into next year, or any number of other unpredictable things happen, perhaps we won’t be on the straight and narrow when we want to. That’s scary!
I would say that for me, I’m not a naturally optimistic person but I’ve spent my time working through the shutdown to date staying positive as much as I can, and then adjusting my expectations when necessary. For now, the plan is 2023. Let’s use that as something to look forward to — if it doesn’t stick, we can adjust when we need to.
Pro: The team will keep playing
Here’s the biggest difference between Sac Republic and the likes of LAFC: They have a team already! While the MLS dream is a good one, the consolation is you can still watch SRFC play soccer games, and listen, they’ve been pretty, pretty good so far in their history in the USL Championship. It may not be the full MLS razzle-dazzle, but for me, the real difference between soccer clubs is whether you have a team playing games or not, and Sacramento definitely have a team right now, and that’s a good thing.
Pro: This doesn’t change the community
Sure, some of the bandwagon folks who will get in when MLS is here will stay away a little bit longer, but so what? Sacramento already has the best fans in the USL. They come out in force every game they can. The culture around the club is thriving. And while it’s frustrating that the dream is deferred another year, don’t forget all the other Republic FC supporters who are going to stick around, and who have built this club into what it is. Don’t lose sight of that community going nowhere. It will help pass the time, I promise.
What do you think? Leave a comment below.