By Andrew Dixon - MIAMI, FL (Nov 25, 2008) USSoccerPlayers --
One Grown Man: Goal! Whaaa, huh! Oh man!
Mrs. One Grown Man: You ok?
OGM: Yeah, yeah...Wow. That was some dream.
MOGM: Who was she.
OGM: Huh, no, not like that. I was dreaming about the Fusion?
MOGM: Who?
OGM: The MLS team that was here about seven years ago. I dreamed they were still here.
MOGM: Oh... were they any good?
OGM: Yeah, they were actually. I dreamed that MLS and Ken Horowitz' the Fusion's former owner/investor had worked out the numbers and decided to give the Fusion one more year. See in 2001 they had gotten to the semi final round only to lose at home overtime. But they were able to stave off contraction and play another year in Lockhart.
MOGM: Isn't that the stadium up off Commercial Blvd.?
OGM: Mmm hmm, but the Fusion were still playing there. At least for awhile. The team got another year to come together and just rolled past through rest of the league. Nick Rimando continued his progress in goal. The defense was bolstered by a quality Haitian defender in Pierre Bruny forming a partnership with Carlos Llamosa. The midfield with Preki (who would later win an MVP award in Fusion colors), Ian Bishop who still had another good year or two left in his 35+ legs and Kyle Beckerman started earning more playing time.
Diego Serna - Cuahatemoc Blanco in MLS before there was Cuahatemoc Blanco - was scoring goals and infuriating defenders with his diving and Alex Pineda Chacon followed up his MVP season with another spectacular run. Ray Hudson kept the engine running, and with the Fusion winning the championship they were able to stay in Miami.
MOGM: Wait, the Fusion actually signed a Haitian player?
OGM: Yeah, see they realized that their marketing philosophy of "It's soccer... the Hispanics will come up to Broward to see them the team play" wasn't working. They only averaged 9,000 fans through its first four seasons and only 11,000 in 2001.
Then they did their homework and realized that they were approximately 113,000 folks of Caribbean descent living in the Broward County area where Lockhart was located and another 110,000 in Miami-Dade. So they began going on Caribbean radio stations, in both English and Kreyol to drum up support amongst the Haitian, Jamaican and Trinis living in South Florida that MLS never seemed to think existed.
By signing Bruny, one of the top Haitian players at the time, Haitians began feeling wanted, that they too were part of the Fusion family target audience.
MOGM: Well they're so close to Caribbean, they SHOULD have been finding players from the Caribbean.
OGM: Well, yeah. In this dream I had, the Fusion were the first team to really scout well in both markets. As the stars of those 2001-03 squads began to age, they were replaced with quality players from the US, Latin America and the Caribbean. It helped because Horowitz, tried as he did, never was able to get a deal worked out for a site in Miami-Dade County. They continued playing a few games in the Orange Bowl.
The team kept winning, kept threatening to win championships, and played some good soccer so that attendance increased to a respectable 14,000, occasionally selling out for the big matches.
MOGM: Do they move to FIU into the new stadium there?
OGM: Indeed they do. The demographics changed and now the people who were loyal Fusion fans in Broward and Palm Beach County began attending less and less matches, but the team gained more of the Hispanics in Miami-Dade MLS was always targeting.
Crazy situation.
Ultimately, the Fusion's attendance out by FIU wasn't much better than it was when the Fusion were winning silverware in Broward. By moving all the way out there, they abandoned fans up north, but they kept making the playoffs. Winning cures everything.
MOGM: Wow...some dream.
OGM: Yeah, felt real, too. Too bad it didn't end up that way. The Fusion's one good season after three bad ones didn't save them. Fan support was never what it should have been because of a lack of effective marketing. Fans from the Caribbean never embraced the side because they felt the club never embraced them.
Players like Serna and Chacon, Jim Rooney, Henry Gutierrez never did anything in MLS again. Ian Bishop retired. Ray Hudson took Nick Rimando to DC with him the next year. At least Tyrone Marshall, Beckerman and Jay Heaps all went on to productive careers and Jeff Cassar is an assistant.
Lockhart, a nice stadium that rocked when it was full, now plays host to a bunch of high school kids playing football. Fusion fans have had to sit and watch places like Salt Lake City get a team because they didn't support the team enough when it was here.
No way that should have happened. There still should be a team here, a successful team that FC Barcelona should be looking to partner with rather than helping to found.
MOGM: Well you'll always have that dream, right?
OGM: Something like that.
Andrew Dixon is a soccer writer based in Miami and a weekly columnist for USSoccerPlayers. Contact him at: golnoir@golnoir.net
