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Pro Soccer League Shuts Down The Atlanta Silverbacks

January 12th, 2016

The Atlanta Silverbacks soccer team, which plays at Atlanta Silverbacks Park, will not be playing with the North American Soccer League this season.

BRENNA BEECH / WABE

When the North American Soccer League (NASL) season starts in March, it will be missing the Atlanta Silverbacks.

Monday night, NASL announced that it is shutting down the team for the spring 2016 season, and possibly forever, because it can’t find the right owner.

“Unfortunately in Atlanta — a market we continue to believe could be successful in the NASL — there wasn’t an ownership group identified that met the very specific standards we hold ourselves to as a league,” NASL Commissioner Bill Peterson wrote in a statement.

“It’s a great sport for kids, but when you get up into the pro ranks, at the end of the day, soccer is a business,” said Shawn McGee, who was the general manager of Atlanta’s women’s professional soccer team, the Atlanta Beat, until that team shut down in 2011. McGee said a unique challenge in Atlanta, with its many suburbs, is rallying support from the entire community to come out to games.

“You have to have deep-pocketed owners who are willing to lose money for a while and eventually the team has to generate revenue in order to at least pay its bills,” McGee said. “Finding the right owner who has interest in that particular community, who loves the sport of soccer — it is a challenge.”

But with the arrival of the Atlanta United Football Club, McGee said the Silverbacks could be revived.

“They might find the right owner,” McGee said, “Or the other thing that may happen is, once Atlanta United Football Club gets up and running, you may find them starting an NASL or United Soccer League pro team in town, playing maybe even in the same stadium as Atlanta United.”

Several large metro areas with a major league soccer clubs have a second division league team to act as a feeder team.

The Atlanta Silverbacks team is asking people to leave comments on whether they should keep playing, but in another league, on its website.