As the 2015 NASL season opens, the Jacksonville Armada FC are a new side playing in a still-new soccer league.
Founded by owner Mark Frisch and his Sunshine Soccer Group, the Armada have materialized in navy and white after two years of solid planning, hiring, and community-building effort.
The owner’s first hire, Dario Sala, brought a plan to deliver an attacking, lyrical style of offense-minded play to the local fanbase in northeastern Florida. This was a savvy approach in principle, as this same fanbase has been weaned on decades of high-flying, high potency, and high-scoring offense in games played by the region’s two most successful sports programs, the college football teams at the University of Florida and Florida State University.
In practice, it is an approach and a philosophy geared toward winning that will depend heavily on the performance of specific player personnel, as well as their chemistry of play once the ball goes live.
The Armada’s first organized home match, a preseason friendly ending with a stunning 3-1 takedown of MLS side Philadelphia Union on February 7, showcased Sala’s vision of unrelenting, mercurial offensive play to the extent that it seemed almost scripted by film producers. This was a validating, thrilling event that sold many season ticket packages. But it also set something of an expectation in the minds of new Armada fans, half of whom are soccer veterans, the other half of whom are new converts from fandom in other sports still mystified by concepts like penalty time.
The remainder of the preseason seemed grim, as the Armada lost twice to USL side Charleston Battery, and suffered an 0-5 shelling on the road at Fort Lauderdale. Armada co-head coaches José Luis Villarreal and Guillermo Hoyos have urged patience throughout these mixed (and to new soccer fans, confusing) preseason results, and stress that they have been using the early match time to find combinations of players—reserves, deep reserves, and starters alike, that will sustain their preferred strategic approach over the course of the long NASL season.
Foremost among the coaches’ priorities has got to be melding the talents and cadences of forwards Alhassane Keita Otchico and Marcos Flores. Keita, recently signed out from the Swiss professional league, was the darling of the triumph over Philadelphia and is small, dagger-swift, and rather solitary. Flores, who joined the team after the moment against the Union, is a loping runner recently on injured reserves in Australia who prefers distributing assists and directing air traffic in the center lane. During the preseason, Keita and Flores failed to play a half in which they synced their styles into an effective attack sequence, although in fairness they rarely shared the field in the majority of preseason contests.
The Armada’s starting keeper is Miguel Gallardo, known lately as “San Gallardo” by Orlando City fans for his exhaustive and precise brand of goalkeeping, which typically can last throughout a match and a series of matches as long as his in-season fitness can hold. Gallardo was brilliant in the preseason home opener, but a drop-off from his presence to that of the reserve keepers was soon evident, and so another priority of the preseason has been to give time to the reserve goalkeepers in the hopes that the live fire will prepare them for intensive bouts of spelling Jacksonville’s hoped-for “St. Miguel” and for replacing him should he succumb to injury.
Armada fans and most of the players are new to the NASL, and with the exception of the tuition from a few in-league friendlies, Armadans on the field and in the stands know little of the rest of the league. Jacksonville supporters know at least that the Strikers use a rough, rumbling, rugby-like physicality. They have gotten hold of the Cosmos’ endless press releases and starry announcements. They have seen doughty Atlanta fans cheer on an ownerless team on Twitter. They have watched Minnesota announce a move to MLS, and wondered at the howls of soccer careerists in favor of and against the news. But in terms of the split schedule, championship scarves, supporters shields, and the foibles of the league referees, they haven’t gotten a clue to date. And yet, with talent on the field, a new and robust fanbase, a smart kit, a cozy home pitch at a converted but still new-smelling baseball park, and a giant inflatable octopus mascot—the Kraken—Armada men and women feel very good about making it all up as the season goes along.
Now FC Edmonton looms as the opponent for opening day, and Gallardo, Flores, Keita and the rest of the hand-picked starters will ready themselves to test the NASL waters with the aid of an expected 15,000 count set of voices cheering them on.
It is the dawn of a season of firsts for Jacksonville Armada FC, and a new team and supporters set are dearly hoping for a first real win as the dawn breaks.
(image courtesy of armadafc.com)
