USL Feature
Friday, April 29, 2011
By NICHOLAS MURRAY
While the team’s preparations have been slightly different than in previous seasons, the Fresno Fuego have their eyes firmly fixed on what they hope to achieve as they open the USL Premier Development League season tonight against the LA Blues 23 at Chukchansi Park at 7 p.m. PT.
After missing out on the PDL playoffs for the past two seasons, and a berth in the U.S. Open since 2003, Coach Scott Alcorn believes his team is ready for each phase of the upcoming season.
“We have a huge emphasis on the U.S. Open Cup this year,” Alcorn said. “Since we had our winter combine in January we’ve talked about the U.S. Open Cup, and the way it worked out it’s basically a home and away with Ogden and BYU, and our players are looking forward to that. The way our qualifying works out, we play for four straight weekends against those two teams, almost like the Champions League.”
The U.S. Open qualifying games begin in two weeks, but before then there are a pair of games against two teams that are expected to vie for the Southwest Division title along with the Fuego this season in the Blues and the Ventura County Fusion. The Fusion were the division’s representatives in the Open Cup last season, while the Blues are the reserve team for USL PRO’s Los Angeles Blues, which has made a strong start in its inaugural professional season.
That those teams, and the Southwest Division as a whole, should be this tough shouldn’t come as a surprise. With the numbers of players who have gone on from the division’s clubs to turn professional in recent years, Alcorn is aware of the challenge that faces his team.
“I think the west coast, and specifically California, is a hotbed for soccer, just like Florida and Texas are,” Alcorn said. “The first thing is we have a large player pool and we have a lot of high-level college soccer players here.”
Of course, for clubs like the Fusion and Blues, and also the teams further up the coast in the Northwest Division, getting high-profile college players to join their clubs is an easier sell than it is for the Fuego. With no major Division I program located near the club, Fresno has had to work hard to not only develop its own players through its youth system but also try and find players who are prepared to step into a different environment for the summer.
But with the way the club has been run there are now players who see the Fuego as a club they want to play for. The Fuego recently signed a deal that saw Radio Univision buy all of the team’s tickets for the upcoming season and distribute them around the community, which could see even bigger crowds that the 2,900 average the club saw last season arrive at Chukchansi Park. Getting to play in that kind of atmosphere, and with a club that has had a history of sending players into the professional ranks, Alcorn believes the club is starting to be able to cast its net wider in the search for player.
“I think it’s a great team effort ,” Alcorn said. “We’ve got the fan support which the players love and when we have success and move players on, which is another selling point for us. Our players that have moved on continue to be great alumni for the Fuego and speak highly of the program.”
Alcorn now hopes his team can give its fans and alumni something they can be proud of this season.
“We want to get back in the playoffs,” Alcorn said. “30 points is the number that we throw around with our teams, and we know that we’re not going to go undefeated, at least in our conference which is I think very competitive, but we know we need to get 30 points between now and Game 16. If you can steal a point on the road and get three points at home, which you want to shoot for every time out, and if you’re successful 90 percent of the time. We’ve missed the playoffs the last two years and I think we have a team that is capable of winning a national championship.”