“The second act is called The Turn. The magician makes his ordinary something do something extraordinary.” -The Prestige

Now things get interesting. As Chattanooga FC sits tied atop the Southeast Division, we begin the middle third of the season. This weekend’s away match against Jacksonville United FC marks the beginning of a three-road-game stretch that will test the team’s depth and endurance. As expected, JUFC has improved every game, dispatching Knoxville in last week’s Open Cup Qualifier. Thoughts of a repeat shutout would be too obnoxious. Instead, CFC should be happy with any sort of victory on the road in Florida.

After Jacksonville, we’ll visit Madison, Alabama for a rematch of our initial Open qualifier match versus Rocket City United. Nobody I’ve talked to believes me when I say, this is likely the easiest of our road contests. While RCU has looked great as a traveling squad, they’ve inexplicably foundered at home. Something’s not quite right in Madison and I expect CFC to take full advantage.

Our third June road trip is the much discussed US Open Cup match against USL Pro club, the Pittsburgh Riverhounds. Obviously, CFC got a bad draw in its first Cup appearance, but what’s done is done. This match reminds me a lot of last season’s friendly vs DC United’s reserve squad, where we were blanked 3-nil. If this game were in Finley (as it SHOULD be), I’d feel a lot better about our chances. As things stand, our best hope is that Pittsburgh enters the game overconfident and unfocused, giving us a puncher’s chance. Regardless of the match result, I just pray the squad comes through uninjured, as the aforementioned DC reserves game marked the end of veteran Russell Courtney’s season. I’m convinced that Courtney’s injury, coupled with Ochieng’s, directly led to our lost in the NPSL finals a week later. As deep as we seem to be this season, we can’t afford similar injuries if we hope to win the NPSL crown.

We’ll finish out June back in the friendly confines of FInley Stadium, where the squad has lost only once in club history. The June home slate features a dose of Open Cup Qualifier Déjà Vu with week-to-week matches versus Rocket City United and the Atlanta Silverbacks. But as hard fought as last month’s qualifier victories were, I expect our huge home field advantage to once again pull us through (it really is tough for amateurs to deal with that environment).

June promises a full schedule of quality CFC soccer, with each game holding some importance. Simply surviving a month like this is the goal for ordinary clubs, but CFC’s recent success has shown, we’re not like most clubs. It’s time to do something extraordinary.

It’s a veritable treasure trove of soccer goodness for us at the Chattahooligan this weekend, and it all starts tonight: first, we’ll drop in on the US Open Cup Qualifiers that start at 5:30 with Jackonville United playing Knoxville Force, then is followed by Rocket City United playing FC Tulsa at 8:00 at Finley. (We’re cheering for Tulsa in that one so we can only have one NPSL Southeast team the we play three times this season, and that would be the winner of the 5:30 game vs Atlanta tomorrow…).

Next, we’ll be up bright and early for England’s Championship playoff between Swansea City and Reading, while jumping to the League Two playoff of Stevenage vs Torquay (on FOX Soccer channels) at 10:00. When those are over we’ll roll into the pregame hype around the Barcelona – Man U Champions League Championship, probably meeting the other Chattahooligans at a fine local establishment to watch the festivities of the actual match at 2:45 pm…

About the time that ends, we’ll be ready to head on over to watch the 5:30 match between Atlanta Silverbacks Reserves and the winner of the JUFC and KF game.

By 8:00 pm thing should be quite comfortable weather wise and we’ll enjoy a good victory by Chattanooga FC in the semis… We’ll sleep in on Sunday and take a little breather for the day, only to be sure we turn out for the US Open Cup Championship game at 7:00 pm. Then we’ll turn in on Sunday night with visions of little soccer balls dancing in our heads… all to wake up to a very nice Memorial Day holiday on Monday!

What a great weekend! Will you be joining us?

Dear Readers, A disclaimer: While we at the Chattahooligan may be soccer crazies and would like everyone else to be too, we are not stupid. We live in America, in the South no less, and we are more than aware that Finley Stadium was built solely for American Football. Especially for the Mocs, but also for an occasional National Championship (oh those are gone aren’t they?) and a big high school game every now an then. We do not ever expect that priority to ever change.

What we do hope for (not even expect) is that Chattanooga FC (and the fans) might be given a modicum of respect and courtesy more than they have received through the past 3 seasons — this season in particular.

So: while we will elaborate on what we mean, please keep in mind that some of this info is based on hearsay (albeit from reliable sources: the CFC board or eyewitnesses). And while some of our exact figures may be imprecise, the overall attitude they communicate is not inaccurate (say 70% vs 90% as opposed to 70% vs 20%).

So to the point: Do you think Chattanooga FC has been a good or bad thing for Finley Stadium? We think Finley sees Chattanooga FC as a quick way to up some profits and that is all. Finley does not care about the fan experience or the larger Chattanooga community that can be cultivated through soccer. Finley is unfairly changing policies and fees for CFC — doing the old ‘bait and switch’, offer one thing then deliver another.

“What do you mean?” you ask?

First, a tad of background:

Season One: CFC was welcomed to play in Finley by then Director, Frank Burke (owner of the Lookouts , who — if he had the same attitude of the current Director, Merrill Eckstein — would’ve been threatened by the competition for his baseball team, but somehow was not. And rightly so, as it has been proved.). Finley lies dormant all but 6 UTC games, some Blue and Gold games and practice scrimmages — let’s say 7, 2-3 high schools games, and maybe a concert or monster truck pull a year… A total of 15 -20 days of use out of 365 days of the year. And the Stadium Corp was losing money btw.

CFC attracted about 9,000 people to the stadium in just 4 games over the summer — averaging 2,200 people a game. About the same as the very lackluster UTC football team — though the announced UTC attendance stats are inflated by including staff, both teams of players/coaches and season ticket holders (even those who were most likely not attending) in the final numbers. Meanwhile CFC generally undershoots attendance figures, listing only torn ticket stubs that have been counted!

But Finley found CFC a mildly amusing anomaly, deciding to humor it, and expecting it to go away over time. They charged a few hundred to the team for stadium use, allowed them to find their own food vendors (a nice international mix of foods from real restaurateurs) and charged them for only how many hours they used the lights. A nice arrangement for a non-profit team made up of volunteers and almost no sponsors to speak of… The team made some profits to store away for the second season — not to pay any greedy owners.

Season Two: Finley (and probably CFC!) are shocked to see almost 7,000 people at the opening day exhibition match against Atlas from Mexico. Lights start to go off with Finley that there is money to be made. Parking begins to be charged for. Food vendors are charged larger sums, driving some away. Finley employees are seen yanking water bottles out of children’s backpacks so that they will be forced to buy water from the Stadium.

General fees to CFC to use the Stadium are higher this year, and the stadium requires the team to employ 1 security officer for every 200 fans in attendance, even though there proves to be no need for even 2 officers. Nevermind that this is not an industry standard for the police or security companies.

Still, the team brings in almost 22,000 fans — an average of 4,400 per game. A figure that no doubt dwarfed UTC’s football attendance in 2007, 2008 and 2009, but is overshadowed by the arrival of a good coach, a popular quarterback, a good team and fantastic attendance for UTC in 2010 (though one that declined over the season instead of growing as CFC’s did).

Other good news from seasons one and two: Big River generously donated beer to CFC, letting them sell it at a great price and keep the profits. Finley was also respectful of this arrangement and only took a 10-20% commission on the beer sales. Yay Finley! Yay beer! Oh, and even in the paper Finley trumpeted their success about NOT LOSING MONEY in 2010, but in making a $10,000 profit. Hm.

Fast forward to this season:

Now, not only is Finley rigidly enforcing the security guard requirement (1 per 200 fan) and therefore fees (causing CFC to ‘officially’ announce a number of 1,175 fans when we could easily count far more than that), but they have demanded 90% of the money from beer sales! This is beer that Big River has donated to CFC, not to Finley! Charging $5 for parking (an adult ticket to the game is only $5!) and completely ousting any food vendors but their very own mediocre Stadium offerings. “Hey, let me get a side of stale popcorn with that boiled hotdog and some unveiled contempt for good measure.”

On top of that, CFC pays $1000 per game to use the stadium, about $400 for lights, not to mention about $1000 for security (how many fights have we seen in 3 seasons? Oh, none). The Lookouts, who can have as many as 2,500 fans at a game, only always have 2 security guards. What the heck?

And in all of this we’re not even talking about the unwillingness to make the field better or to remove the football lines for the summer.

The long and the short: Finley sees CFC as a way to get more money in the here and now. They do not care about cultivating a good relationship with CFC, or promoting the obvious popularity of the team within the city and with its fan base. They are looking to take what they can, figuring that CFC has no other options for decent venues that can serve beer and feel professional.

Our take: Yes, it is acceptable for Finley Stadium to make money on CFC. Yes, they can increase fees as the team proves it is more popular and successful. But Finley needs to SHARE in success, not usurp it. Think about it: if Finley were to encourage and help CFC, the potential attendance over 9 home games (based on last year’s average of 4,400) is almost 40,000 people. That rivals UTC football’s attendance (6 games at 8,000 people = 48,000). Isn’t that good for the stadium? Aren’t they already earning $4,000 more this year just by the 4 more CFC games from last year? Why do they need to inject themselves unreasonably into areas where they are not wanted?

What do you think Chattahooligans? Are we crazy?

*Worth noting: We are not journalists. Please correct inaccuracies for our readers where they exist. But tell us what you think.

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Sorry for the inconvenience.

Well our gritty team has nabbed all 9 points possible from our first three league games and we are undefeated on the season. Heck including the last 6 games from last season, Chattanooga FC is 8-1-1 in our last ten games. Not too shabby.

Alas, we couldn’t follow the team or watch the Twitter feed or even El Conductor’s live stream of the game (due to a prior immovable obligation) so we only have a vague idea that we went up 1-0 right before half (Salazar?), then fell 1-1 early in the second and then quickly grabbed the lead back 2-1 (Espinal?) to hold on for the win… Who can do better at reporting than this?

Please email us and fill us in!

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Aha — The Chattanoogan provides this good review…

However, it would be nice if someone else could elaborate or commentate…