Arizona is a lovely place.

The weather’s practically perfect for most of the air, the skies are open, and the mountains in the area serve as a lovely backdrop.

When you’ve got a soccer club over there, is there even a need to attach some sort of team name to it? It’s Arizona. What more do you even need?

Now introducing FC Arizona, who have qualified for the finals of the 2024 USASA Amateur Cup and will travel to DeKalb, Illinois on July 27th for a semifinal matchup with the Milwaukee Torrent.

Origin story

What’s interesting is that the club hasn’t always gone by that name.

“So the club first started under the name Classic Soccer Academy with just the youth program back in 2015,” said owner and president Jamie Landreman. “Then around the beginning of 2020 is when I took over from the previous owner, and that’s when I changed the name of the youth program and everything so it’s all called FC Arizona.”

The rebrand was a clever one, which allowed the club to streamline everything and build a brand that’s clean and crisp. The FC Arizona website showcases the meaning of the logo, which had some meaning beyond its simple design.

The shield honors the Arizona National Guard, the sun rays references the state flag, and the color scheme matches the Arizona state colors.

If it’s not been made clear enough already, the club has made sure to focus on the state instead of highlighting a specific city, like Tucson or Phoenix. That’s all on purpose.

“Arizona is kind of a unique state. I mean there's really three major cities. Phoenix is obviously the biggest, and then we have Flagstaff in the north, and we've always kind of expanded down in Tucson. We've expanded in other cities too, like Casa Grande, Maricopa, but our hub is obviously in the Phoenix area,” said Landreman. “The name allows us to do other things. When you hear things about how things are done in Europe or across the sea with the youth, there's like six divisions in some of these leagues in Europe. What we're trying to do is get the youth involved a little bit more to watch more games and have more adults playing soccer. Then hopefully they're on that path to either continue to play or to continue to support soccer when they're older, and when they have kids that they're always going to love the game and hopefully have FC Arizona a brand that they can identify with.”

That’s also part of the reason they stuck with a simple FC instead of adding a team name like the Diamondbacks or the Coyotes.

“We wanted to create a platform where everything was from the youth level all the way up to the semi pro team so the kids in our program can come support our teams and then play on those teams eventually,” said Landreman. “We've toyed around having a name like a mascot. If you go to our website, we have the skull, we haven't named the skull, but everybody kind of wears it. There's a Hispanic kind of theme to being in Arizona, but we haven't really come up with the right name. We want to represent all of Arizona.”

It’s one thing to say that you’ve created a clear path for development, but it’s another thing to actually have a pipeline in place. Arizona walks the walk, and the amount of teams they have in total is proof of that.

“I mean we operate from youth all the way through semi pro. We started at the age group of four or five, and then in our youth program it goes all the way up to about 18 and then our semi pro teams go from there,” said Landreman. “In our youth program we're in the competitive leagues in Arizona, and then we also have the ECNL. Our semi pro teams, we have one women's team in the UWS, we have another men's semi pro team in the UPSL, and then of course we have another one in the NPSL with those being in the Phoenix area. We also have a division in Tucson where we run a men's UPSL team and a NPSL team. We actually have five semi pro teams in total.”

Amateur Cup calling

The focus here will be on the men’s NPSL team that has qualified for the Amateur Cup semifinals.

Arizona got to this stage by winning Region IV, which mainly covered the Southwest area of the United States. They got a bye in the first round, and their second round game was practically as easy as they throttled UNM Club Soccer 4-0.

Things were tougher in the next stage, but they still managed to get past Temecula FC. That set the stage for the regional final versus Azteca FC, and even though overtime was needed to decide a winner, Arizona did enough to secure the victory and their spot in the national finals.

“The NPSL is a good league, and so there was some competition there that kind of prepared us for this. Temecula had a very good team, and then the finals that went into overtime time that we played against Azteca FC was very hard fought. They scored a really good goal, but our team just persevered in the end,” said Landreman. “That's what you kind of like to see from anybody, right? No matter what level, whether it's the professional level or how many goals are scored or whatever it is, you want to see the heart and the desire from your players. I think that the level of training that our staff does every single week, our staff puts in a lot of time and effort to really focus on the players. When you put in the time, good things happen.”

Their mindset now shifts from the Southwest to the Midwest, and a trip to the lovely state of Illinois. It’s not going to be a quick trip, though. You know how far apart Arizona and Illinois are, you don’t need me to tell you.

“Obviously it’s traveling from Arizona for a Thursday night game, so there's a lot of challenges that come with it because our players work. They have lives beyond soccer, so there's a lot of challenges about playing a game during the week like this,” said Landreman. “We do travel a lot, though. Last year we traveled to Washington, and we've traveled to Oregon and our girls traveled to Canada and we traveled to Northern California. There's a lot of travel that we've already done, so the staff has the players kind of prepared on what to do for that.”

It’s a real contrast to the opposition, the Milwaukee Torrent, who just have to drive down from Wisconsin. The good news is there’s a special connection there.

“Ironically I am from outside the Milwaukee area,” said Landreman. “It's going to be Milwaukee's NPSL team who's had a good run lately, and I believe they won their conference as well. At the end of the day, yes, the air travel is going to have a little bit of effect, but I think that the guys are prepared for it, and we're looking forward to an exciting game against Milwaukee.”

That’s set to be an exciting semifinal, and even though Arizona won’t have everyone available for selection, they’ve still got their ace in the hole.

“We have a lot of younger players on the team, 18 years old, and some of them are not going to be able to make the trip because they have to report to their college. It is what it is. Our midfield is very solid. We have a couple injuries, and obviously it doesn't help,” said Landreman. “One player we have will be Marco Alfonso, our captain. He's a good player to keep an eye on. He's a very good player on the field and a really nice guy off the field. Don't tell Milwaukee, though.”

What it means

The Amateur Cup has already been a lovely experience for Arizona, and they’ve used it as a vehicle to grow the club while also growing the soccer community in their home state.

“It was a good opportunity when it was brought to us. It's always good to play other teams, and that's kind of what it was for us in the beginning. I wanted to expose our players to other opportunities and play different teams. We went to New Mexico and then we played two different teams when we were in Las Vegas. It really allows our players to be exposed to new things and continue to train and play at a high level,” said Landreman. “Of course for the club it's always good when fans see us traveling around, and they see us winning and now we're going to Chicago. There's a really good buzz behind what we're doing because it really starts from the ground up. So it's been a very positive experience and we continue to look forward to going to Chicago and hopefully have a good turnout there.”

“The Amateur Cup is another great event to bring teams together from across the country. FC Arizona will always look to showcase our players, and look for opportunities to help them go to the next level. A lot of eyes are on our club right now, and we are excited to do our part for US Soccer,” said head coach Alejandro Aguilar.

This run, and a potential run to the title, would only further help Arizona’s goal of developing players in the area, which has had it’s issues in recent history.

“Arizona soccer's very broken. There was a division that was placed a couple years ago where some clubs left the state association, the youth programs were split up and the teams weren't playing each other. That's all come back to the state association, and obviously there's a problem,” said Landreman. “It's not just Arizona, it's throughout the United States where there's a lot of money involved and a lot of these leagues and a lot of these clubs are so money driven and they want to be the biggest club and they want to have like four or five age groups and four or five teams in an age group.”

Arizona is trying to change that, focusing more on the quality of players and their experiences instead of bringing in a mass quantity of players.

“We've kind of taken a different approach. We've actually scaled down our club, we've actually reduced the number of kids in our club. Really we're focused on the development of kids, and sitting down with parents and kids about what it's like to play at the next level as far as college professionally,” said Landreman. “We actually come up with a roadmap for them and what that looks like. What are the financial implications? What is the GPA for college? If we send you to Europe, what does that look like? There's multiple coaches who have their hands on all of these kids. There's more positional training, there's more game fit training. We're not looking to be the biggest club, but we're looking to be the best club where kids and families know that they can come to know that they're going to develop. We're not just here to try to take money from 'em.”

You know what’s one way to really ramp up excitement and bring in young players to the club? Winning a national tournament.

That’s the goal for FC Arizona.

- Adnan Bašić