What is Crown Legacy? It’s what gives Charlotte FC roster options it’s never had before
Bobby Belair noticed it at a practice in January, just a few days after Charlotte FC arrived back home from its preseason trip in Florida.
The technical director for the Major League Soccer club watched Brian Romero press in the attacking half. He watched Romero create for his teammates. He watched the 16-year-old Concord native — the one who ripped the left-footed shot that turned a summer friendly against Chelsea into a moment of North Carolina sports lore — act as the leader he knew he could be.
Belair noticed, in other words, that the Crown Legacy experiment was working.
“He’s the one setting the tone at 16 years old for Crown Legacy,” Belair said of Romero earlier this month. “That’s amazing. And that’s what we need.”
Crown Legacy FC is the MLS NEXT Pro side for Charlotte FC. That essentially means that it’s the squad within the CLTFC organization tasked with finding and developing the talent that will one day help the top-level team. It’ll play its first season in 2023, and it’ll play its home matches at Mecklenburg County Sportsplex in Matthews.
Crown Legacy holds the future of Charlotte FC, which begins its second season at Bank of America Stadium on Saturday. Romero and other local talents are a big part of that future, sure.
But it also offers Charlotte FC a bunch of roster-building possibilities it didn’t have before.
Here are three roster-enhancing options Charlotte FC now has at its disposal thanks to Crown Legacy.
1. Signing homegrown talents at the right time
From a 10,000-foot view, there are three main ways MLS clubs acquire young talent: They look overseas. They funnel young, local talent into their academies and then ideally watch them advance. Or they choose college players from the MLS SuperDraft.
Darrius Barnes, Crown Legacy FC’s president, was the latter.
Barnes grew up in Raleigh and played soccer at Duke before beginning a nine-season MLS career. He played with New England Revolution for all nine seasons — from 2008-2016 — and can even recall taking end-of-practice shots on a raw, fourth-string goalie named Matt Turner, who’s now at Arsenal and who started for the U.S. Men’s National Team in the 2022 World Cup.
Barnes, in other words, has been around U.S. soccer his whole life and has seen many of the issues the advent of MLS NEXT Pro teams might quell.
One big one? Signing players at the right time.
“A lot of times, before MLS NEXT Pro, clubs were kind of forced to sign some of their top talents on homegrown (contracts) before they probably needed to or wanted to,” Barnes said. “So you’re signing a 15-year-old who probably isn’t ready to play with a first team (Charlotte FC).”
Clubs would do this to ensure the top talent they’ve spent time developing didn’t leave for another offer with another club, but it often meant signing them before they were ready.
Now, with MLS NEXT Pro, those players have a means of playing professional soccer while keeping their individual development at the center.
CLTFC has certainly taken advantage of this: Take for example the aforementioned Romero, who scored a goal during the CONCACAF U17 Championship quarterfinals on Tuesday. Take for example, too, Nimfasha Berchimas, who when he signed was the sixth-youngest player (14) to ever sign a Major League Soccer contract.
2. Investing in young international talent
Another issue Barnes has likely seen in his long time in MLS: Signing overseas talent — particularly proven talent — can be expensive.
Charlotte FC knows this well. The Queen City club spent the most on international transfer fees in the CONCACAF region in 2022, per a report recently conducted by FIFA. Among the players CLTFC paid hefty transfer fees for include Designated Players Karol Świderski and Kamil Jóźwiak, as well as goalkeeper Kristijan Kahlina.
MLS NEXT Pro gives the club the chance to seek out younger, cheaper international talent that Crown Legacy could bring in and develop itself.
“The first team (Charlotte FC) has a salary cap, and whenever you buy (international) players who are ready for the first team straight away, it will cost you extra because the market value of those players is much higher,” said Thomas Schaling, Charlotte FC’s director of scouting. “And if you were to buy players that are not really ready and put them in the first team, that could create a different kind of problems and challenges. Now that we have NEXT PRO, we can actually go out and target players that need those 12, 18, 24 months, and put them in there.”
This doesn’t mean all Crown Legacy players will be this way. Last week, the team signed Nikola Petković out of Serbia for a reported $3 million fee.
It also doesn’t guarantee success. An adept scouting department needs to find the players, and a good coaching staff needs to train them. Crown Legacy FC has both, officials say.
“That’s a big reason why we brought in Jose Tavares, who comes from FC Porto, which has a fantastic record of developing young talent for a prestigious club like FC Porto,” Barnes said. “So being able to get a top coach like him, who sees eye to eye with Christian Lattanzio... we’re confident that it’ll result in a bunch of (Charlotte FC)players who fans get excited about.”
Said coach José Tavares: “I found that we have talent here in the club that can be developed at the highest level.”
Could this also open the door for Charlotte FC to sell its developed players for potential buyers overseas?
“I think we’re looking at this holistically,” Barnes said, adding, “If we develop talent that’s pleasing globally as well, we’ll look at those opportunities. You’ve seen (sporting director) Zoran (Krneta) and teams, they were players that were signed to (Charlotte FC) who never featured for Charlotte FC, and it was a good opportunity for them to be sold abroad. So holistically, we’ll look at all opportunities and do what’s best for the club at the end of the day.”
3. Keeps everything in-house
Crown Legacy also ensures that pretty much everything can stay in-house.
A player isn’t getting the on-field time he needs? Or a player is recovering from injury? Charlotte FC won’t need to loan any players to other clubs — the organization can just send its players to its MLS NEXT Pro side.
This impacts Charlotte Independence. The USL League One squad hosted a bunch of Charlotte FC players during its inaugural season. Among them: Quinn McNeill, Adam Armour, Brandt Bronico and Christian Fuchs.
“We have always maintained a good relationship with Charlotte FC on the personnel side and will continue to do so,” Independence head coach Mike Jeffries wrote in an email this week. He added, “I do not anticipate having any players on loan from Charlotte FC. We understood that our relationship would change and planned to build the roster without loan players from Charlotte FC. We will maintain communication with Charlotte FC as one never knows how situations will play out.”
Crown Legacy roster
The players who have been announced by the club are below.
Midfielders: Nikola Petković, Thiago Rodrigues, Jacob Williams, Philip Mayaka, David Poreba
Forwards: Josué Rodrigues, Iuri Tavares, Gurman Sangha
Defenders: João Pedro, Ethan Dudley
Goalkeepers: Nate Silveira
