The Triangle's Pro Soccer Teams End Up on Opposite Ends of their Tables as a Soccer Scuffle in Indianapolis Makes National News
The Triangle's Pro Soccer Teams End Up on Opposite Ends of their Tables as a Soccer Scuffle in Indianapolis Makes National News
Early struggles have sent North Carolina FC to the bottom of the USL Championship's Eastern Conference, as the North Carolina Courage have an opportunity to secure their second-place status tonight.
As of the end of April, only one of North Carolina’s six pro soccer teams is near the top of their league: the North Carolina Courage.
Today, Soccer Sheet takes a look at the National Women’s Soccer League club’s performance this year, as well as the fortunes of the team they share a stadium with in Cary: North Carolina FC.
Additionally, in the wake of NCFC’s match with the Indy Eleven, we share a statement from the Indianapolis club after it was announced publicly that the Indiana capital was pursuing an MLS team, putting the future of big plans for their USL Championship team in doubt.
The NC Courage fight to stay in second in the NWSL
The North Carolina Courage (4-2-0, 12 points) play tonight, May 1, at 7:00 PM ET against the Orlando Pride (3-0-3, 12 points) in the first of three straight road fixtures for the second-place squad. The match is streaming for free on NWSL+.
While a win tonight would still leave the Courage one point out of first place, the club is coming off an impressive 1-0 win at home in Cary against the Seattle Reign (formerly OL Reign). 8,135 fans attended the April 27 match at WakeMed Soccer Park, a top-five all-time regular season crowd for the NWSL side.
Tyler Lussi had the winner for the Courage in the 37th minute, volleying an Ashley Sanchez cross into a fireball which landed in the back of the net.
If that sounds familiar, it may be because Lussi scored in the 34th minute at home last year against the Reign, when the Courage won 1-0 in the spring of 2023.
In this year’s match, the Courage were able to hold on to the lead thanks to goalkeeper Casey Murphy’s seven saves, earning a clean sheet in the process.
Though Seattle continued the assault in the second half, notching 17 shots to the Courage’s 10, a heroic save by Murphy two thirds of the way into the match kept Seattle scoreless. Welsh international Jess Fishlock found South Korea’s all-time top scorer, Ji So-yun, in the middle of the Courage’s box, and Ji’s left foot sent a strong strike towards the bottom right corner of the goal in the 57th minute, requiring a stretch save from Murphy.
In addition to the win, the team reached a new milestone when Courage captain Denise O’Sullivan became the first player to log 10,000 regular season minutes for the club.
Lussi netted her third goal of the year for the Courage, making her the team’s top scorer so far this year, and putting her only two goals behind the Portland Thorns’ Sophia Smith in the race for the golden boot. Lussi now has a total of nine goals in 26 appearances for the Courage.
For tonight’s match, the Courage have returned veteran midfielder Meredith Speck to the active roster after a season-ending injury last year. Speck tore her ACL during a match against Racing Louisville FC on June 24. Speck has five goals and three assists with the club since the COVID-19 pandemic canceled the 2020 NWSL season; this is her seventh year with the club.
The undefeated Orlando Pride are currently fourth in the NWSL due to goal differential (+3 to the Courage’s +6), but face a Courage side that is yet to win on the road. With the NWSL’s second, third, fourth, and fifth teams all playing tonight, the Courage need a win to guarantee their foothold on second place.
An Indy Eleven side with something to prove sends NCFC to the bottom of the table
On Thursday, April 25, the Indy Eleven (2-4-2, 8 points) learned Indianapolis mayor Joe Hogsett and city officials had met with Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber in an effort to bring an MLS club to Indiana. The announcement came as a shock to the Indy Eleven’s fans, who thought their club had a deal with the city for a $1 billion arena project that is already under construction.
A war of words commenced as Indy Eleven supporters accused MLS of destroying existing USL clubs, the Eleven’s ownership group accused Hogsett and the city of underhanded conduct, and Hogsett saying there never was a deal to build the stadium.
A spokesperson for the Indy Eleven told Soccer Sheet, “These actions by Mayor Hogsett's administration are a concerning departure from what the Indianapolis business community stands for: integrity, trust, and the expectation that one is true to their word. A dangerous precedent is being set for how city negotiators conduct themselves.”
Indy would face North Carolina FC (1-4-3, 6 points) for their first match after the announcement. North Carolina looked like the better team in Indianapolis on Saturday night, but they were up against a team fighting not only to win, but also for their very existence. An unfortunate own goal stymied North Carolina’s effort in the 2-1 loss.
With their future in doubt, Indy made a statement on the pitch in front of over 10,000 fans, securing the win in the second half after a lackluster 0-0 first half that left Indy Eleven coach Sean McAuley frustrated.
“The quality on the ball has been really poor,” said McAuley in a halftime broadcast interview. His side had only one shot and no shots on goal in the first half, while NCFC led on offense with four shots and two on target after 45 minutes.
However, North Carolina FC had a lot to be frustrated about in the first half as well. None of their 5 first half corner kicks amounted to much, and in the 22nd minute, NCFC forward Louis Pérez made a masterful cross off of a free kick only for the set piece opportunity to be wasted when no NCFC players rose to the occasion to attempt a header.
The free kick was the result of a foul on NC’s Julian Placias, who suffered a considerable amount of abuse throughout the match. He went down in the 31st minute with an injury after being called for a foul on Indy’s Aedan Stanley, and would eventually come off in the 89th minute.
Pérez, along with North Carolina’s Rafa Mentzingen and Ezra Armstrong, put Indy goalkeeper Hunter Sulte to work, but the Portland Timbers homegrown keeper was able to stop all but one shot from North Carolina.
Early in the second half, Indy’s Jack Blake won a free kick off of a foul by Armstrong, and as members of both teams charged towards the goal, Blake’s cross would hit the torso of North Carolina’s Mikey Maldonado as he ran towards the goal. Due to Maldonado’s forward momentum, the ball ended in the back of his own net as an own goal.
Blake would go on to have four of Indy’s seven shots on the night.
Three minutes later, an unstoppable, point-blank header from Pérez gave NC the 51st minute equalizer off of a long Mentzingen cross from the right side of the pitch.
Then, in the 75th minute, Blake would find himself again with a set piece positioned on the right side of the pitch above the penalty box. This time, he found the boot of his teammate Callum Chapman-Page, whose pass bounced straight to the head of Douglas Martínez in front of North Carolina’s net. Martínez sent the ball to the right bottom corner from in front of the goal, catching NC keeper Jake McGuire on the wrong side of the net and scoring the winner for the home side.
With the win, Indy improved to 8th in the USL Championship’s Eastern Conference, while NCFC fell to 12th, putting the team in last place in the East for the first time since joining U.S. Soccer’s second division.
NCFC returns home on May 4th, facing a first-year Rhode Island side that lost its last match in North Carolina to the Charlotte Independence in the U.S. Open Cup.
Indy Eleven make a statement after a statement win
After Saturday’s match, Soccer Sheet reached out to the Indy Eleven for a statement about the Thursday announcement. We have reproduced the club’s statement in full below:
More than a decade ago, Indy Eleven built on a solid grassroots foundation to launch modern professional soccer in Indiana. Since then, Indy Eleven has worked diligently to secure the Indiana General Assembly's first authorization for a soccer-specific facility in the state, engaged in a city-wide site selection process for that stadium's home, and acquired at its own expense a key riverfront property that presents a unique opportunity to reconnect the Near Westside of Indianapolis to downtown.
The end result is Eleven Park: a transformational project that would bring more than just an MLS-eligible stadium to our state capital, but also the kind of mixed-use development and vibrant community space representing the highest and best use for this long-neglected part of our city.
Indy Eleven and private development partners have been, and remain, ready to bring this vision to reality with a fiscally-responsible, developer-guaranteed partnership that won't require one penny in new taxes. Unfortunately, after years of good-faith negotiations, and recent bipartisan approvals from the City-County Council, Mayor Joe Hogsett's administration is preparing to walk away from the state and city leaders who entrusted him with this project and the neighborhoods who are depending on the progress Eleven Park represents.
In December, Mayor Hogsett's administration submitted a Professional Sports Development Area map for Eleven Park and urged its approval. As a result, every single Republican and Democrat caucus member on the City-County Council voted to approve this map. In recent weeks, both Indy Eleven and City-County Council leadership have become aware that the Mayor's Office has refused to submit this PSDA map to the State Budget Committee as called for by state law.
Even more troubling, Indy Eleven and City-County Council leadership have become aware that for some time, Mayor Hogsett's negotiation team has been shopping the state legislation championed by Indy Eleven, working behind closed doors to offer publicly-owned real estate and public financing to the highest bidder, with assurances that neither the redevelopment of this riverfront parcel nor the continuation of the Indy Eleven as a team would be requirements for city support.
This is more than disappointing – it's a shocking reversal of Mayor Hogsett's public support for this project at the 2023 groundbreaking, for the dozens of local investors in this team, the thousands of Marion County jobs committed by Indiana companies who have been working on this project, and the tens of thousands of Indy Eleven fans in Indiana and across the country.
These actions by Mayor Hogsett's administration are a concerning departure from what the Indianapolis business community stands for: integrity, trust, and the expectation that one is true to their word. A dangerous precedent is being set for how city negotiators conduct themselves.
Indy Eleven and its partners urge Mayor Hogsett to retake the reins of this city's economic development strategy and redouble efforts to follow through on the promise he made to this community when he took the stage at last year's groundbreaking for Eleven Park. In so doing, he can restore hope to those who have entrusted him with the fates of this city's beloved professional soccer team, a reigning national champion women's soccer team, more than 18,000 Indy Eleven-affiliated youth soccer players, Indy Eleven's Professional Academy, and the future of the world's game in Indiana.
While Indianapolis is currently home to two major league teams - NFL’s Colts and the NBA’s Pacers - it is unclear how serious the city’s MLS bid is, and what its prospects of success are as MLS prepares to add its 30th team next year.
Last year, when San Diego was awarded that team, MLS commissioner Don Garber was skeptical of efforts to grow the league beyond 30 teams in the near future:
“I don't think sitting here today that we have any plan in the near future to go beyond 30 teams. We've got a lot of work to do to build the league to sort of capture the opportunity that we all see in front of us in the years to come, particularly through 2026, but who knows what the future looks like after that, but nothing in the immediate future for sure.”
More on this story as it develops.