“This is the most important game ever; this game means nothing. That's kind of how I feel about it,” said Jim Hicks when asked about the upcoming US Open Cup match between his club Chattanooga FC and the Chattanooga Red Wolves. Hicks has been following CFC for as long as the club has been around, first as a fan and then as a writer and podcaster. He saw the Red Wolves come to town and even described their arrival (and what that meant for his club) as what “radicalized” him.

While soccer fans from outside the area might be excited about tomorrow’s crosstown battle between the two Chattanooga professional men’s sides (count me as one), there are many CFC fans who are less than thrilled that the teams will finally play each other. For Hicks and many other long-time fans of the Blues, the battle between the two teams was won years ago and the result from this match won’t mean much. “Of course I want to show that CFC is a better team than the Red Wolves,” Jim responded when asked about how invested he was in the result. “I know they [CFC] are off the pitch. I know they are in all the ways you consider yourself a club off the field and that’s why the match doesn’t mean all that much.”

If you’re new to the story of Chattanooga soccer, the story is complicated and dramatic, but also emblematic of American soccer.

Bloodsport

If you’ll permit me, Chattanooga soccer fans, I’ll try to do a quick summary. CFC began as an amateur club in 2009. The club played in the NPSL through 2019, never winning the league, but coming close several times. In 2018, Chattanooga Red Wolves were founded by Utah property developer Bob Martino, who purchased the USL territory rights after CFC declined to enter the newly-founded USL League One. With the threat of a professional team in the area and a ton of local support, Chattanooga FC went pro and joined NISA in the fall of 2019. The chaos of NISA and the consistent departure of other legit clubs made staying in the league a bad idea for Chattanooga FC, but with USL having sold the territory rights to Martino and the Red Wolves, CFC had only one option. In 2024, CFC joined MLS Next Pro (I’m confident there’s a CFC fan ready to skin me for not mentioning some key fact, but I’m doing my best off the top of my head).

Since its founding, Red Wolves have struggled to compete with CFC for fans and the club has been accused (albeit by CFC fans) of inflating attendance numbers. The build on the team’s stadium is still incomplete and the team has been underperforming in League One, finishing 10th and 11th in its last two seasons. If you were hoping to win hearts and minds, that ain’t it.

It is hard to not see Red Wolves as the villain here, given the things the team embodies: the use of USL’s restrictive territory rights approach and the outside ownership with little connection to the local community flies in the face of what lower league soccer fans love about soccer. On the other hand, CFC prides itself on investing in its community through outreach and youth programs. It’s been a model soccer club for 15 years. Oh and yeah, it plays in MLS Next Pro. So there’s that. There’s nuance, because this is soccer in America.

For a much more extensive, informed, and excellent presentation of how Chattanooga soccer got to this point, I’d recommend this fabulous episode of Section 109 Podcast.

The Future Is Now

In preparing to write this story, I sat down with Primary Owner and Chairman of the Board of Directors Davis Grizzard and Senior VP of Strategy Derrall Stalvey. Both have been with the club for several years and been witness to the tension within the Chattanooga soccer scene.

But while some of have stopped following CFC after the change in leagues, Davis was quick to highlight that things have never been better for the club. “The primary reason for the move to MLS NEXT Pro was stability. When we were with NISA, we sometimes didn’t even know if we would have a game next weekend, because they would cancel last minute or get moved around…When we were in NISA, we had a staff of 7 or 8 employees, now we have 40 full-time people.” While expansion has come to the staffing department, the team is working feverishly to complete its brand new headquarters, hoisting the final steel beam in the structure last week. Chattanooga FC is flourishing.

Team members and staff celebrate the completion of the steel support structure for CFC HQ.

Davis, who describes himself as a CFC fan at the time the Red Wolves arrived in town, sees a lot of the animosity between the organizations as being in the past and most definitely does not see the relationship as a rivalry. “You know, the best rivalries in Europe are all the teams that are so close to each other, but they also have to play each other. You don't have a rivalry if you never if you never play. And so from my point of view, there is no real rivalry or bad blood or hatred because most of the people that were a part of that are no longer a part of either organization.”

Darrell followed that comment by pointing out that some of the original fans still see it differently. “I think without a doubt, the scars are still there for a lot of people…sure, rivalries are good for this sport. I think no one would dispute that. But it's different when a club comes in to try to kill your club. That's a little bit bit different than a rivalry. I think that's going to take some time for it to not still feel that way…I think to use the scar analogy, scars do take a little bit of time to heal. So for a lot of people, the scars are still very fresh.”

But for all the scars left behind from the attempted takeover of their market, Chattanooga FC continues to grow within their new league. And if outside soccer fans are critical of their decision to join NEXT Pro, Chattanooga fans and employees alike tell you it was necessary and they aren’t looking back. They have too many important things happening as they move into the future.

Distant Neighbors

In some ways, the two clubs operate as if they weren’t in the same market. They’ve never played each other, rarely interact, operate in two different leagues - it’s as if they aren’t sharing Chattanooga as a home. In fact, the fans of CFC most often times refer to Red Wolves as “East Ridge,” the suburb of Chattanooga that CRW calls home, almost as if to separate the two geographically as well.

On the episode of Section 109 that’s linked earlier in this article, one of the hosts is explaining why the move to Next Pro was justified and says “The only thing that ever mattered in the end was to use soccer as a tool to make Chattanooga a better place…to use soccer as a tool to make the community better. And you can’t do that if you’re DEAD.” Through that lens, the move to Next Pro makes sense, regardless of how outsiders (including myself) might have seen it at the time. It was a self-preservation move that has, by all measurement, paid off, much to the benefit of the city of Chattanooga.

So is there a rivalry in the city of Chattanooga? Not any sort of a traditional one. The two clubs happen to play in the same city, but were founded for different reasons, have dramatically different goals, and certainly have different futures. Depending on which side of soccer warz you’re on, you may choose to root for one or the other, but as for Chattanooga FC, they’ll be just fine.

- Dan Vaughn