Bad turf, cold showers, wash your own kit: life at the top of US minor league soccer
Turbulent times at minor league Loudoun United, where player say they have succeeded despite uncertainty and upheaval.
Bad turf, cold showers, wash your own kit: life at the top of US minor league soccer - The AthleticBad turf, cold showers, wash your own kit: life at the top of US minor league soccer
By Pablo MaurerApril 7, 2025
Professional soccer in the United States is a hot commodity these days, with some MLS teams valued at over $ billion and the country preparing to co-host the 2026 men’s World Cup. Even the public’s perception of the USL, which accounts for much of the country’s lower-division soccer, has shifted in recent years.
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Gone, for the most part, are matches played at high school stadiums in front of a handful of friends and family. Clubs in smaller markets are regularly attracting capacity crowds, and the league has announced plans to launch a first division in the years to come – with promotion and relegation incorporated between all three of USL’s tiers.
Behind that facade, though, life at a professional soccer team can still feel threadbare, and teams are still folding every year. At the very top of the USL Championship table, Loudoun United — a team part-owned by an MLS club — is just barely hanging on.
Amid rumors of an ownership change, players and administrators alike are scrambling for their jobs and existing in conditions that feel entirely unprofessional. Players, many of whom make the league minimum, often wash their own kits and play in front of a handful of fans on a rapidly deteriorating playing surface. Coaches, several of them volunteers, guide those players without access to basic biometrics, data or video footage.
As rumors about changes at the club swirl, Loudoun has quietly and miraculously put together the best season in its six-year existence. Conversations with a half-dozen sources who are familiar with goings-on at Loudoun all paint the same picture, one of a tight-knit group with a singular focus.
“We have one common enemy,” said a source within Loudoun United’s locker room, who requested anonymity to protect their professional relationships. “Ownership. In my words? It’s ‘f— the owners.’ All we have is us, at this point. And who knows how long we have left together.
“A lot of us will be gone. Unless we keep winning.”
Loudoun United began its existence in 208 as the USL affiliate of D.C. United. From the beginning, it was an odd fit.
D.C. United struck a deal with the local government to throw up Segra Field, a 5,000-seat modular stadium tucked between the local jail and a commuter airport. The club thought it might carve out a niche in an incredibly affluent area, one that’s long been a hotbed of youth soccer.
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Instead, it watched as the club floundered. Year after year, the team struggled, and the stadium — which wasn’t much to speak of in the first place — rapidly began to show its age. Loudoun matches offer little in the way of amenities, and fans have largely stopped showing up. The club has regularly hovered near the bottom of USL in terms of average attendance. On the field, Loudoun has never made the playoffs.
D.C. United had its own issues, and in 202, the club sold a controlling interest in Loudoun to tech executive Greg Baroni, CEO of Attain Sports. Attain already owned four minor-league baseball teams in nearby Maryland and seemed well-positioned to make something of the club. D.C. retained a stake in Loudoun but distanced itself from the day-to-day operations as it sought to start an MLS Next Pro team in Baltimore.
D.C. United sold a controlling interest in Loudoun to tech executive Greg Baroni in 202. (Reggie Hildred / Imagn Images)
Loudoun had long been an afterthought to D.C, but many felt excitement when Baroni came on board. Many also assumed that Attain would bring increased investment in facilities, players and resources. In the short term, that perception proved true, largely out of necessity. With D.C. United largely out of the picture, the club was forced to spend more on players, and Baroni spent money marketing the team, which has led to meager gains in attendance year-over-year.
Attain’s efforts have proven to be largely in vain. The club lost millions last year, according to multiple sources familiar with the club’s current financial state, leaving them further in the red than almost any other club in USL. Ownership’s view has largely shifted towards “stopping the bleeding,” one source said, and that mentality has reached new heights this season.
Rumors circulated among players and staff late last year that there was a potential change coming to the ownership structure, with Baroni and United transferring sizable pieces of their shares to a new investor.
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That investor, according to multiple sources familiar with the transaction, is Virginia Revolution, which is among the area’s elite youth clubs. The deal is not a sale — there’s no money changing hands — but a merger, with all three parties maintaining an equal percentage of the club. For decision-making, Virginia Revolution will be the managing partner.
On Wednesday, VA Revolution confirmed that news in an interview with The Athletic. D.C. United declined to comment.
On the surface, the deal makes sense for United and VA Revolution. United will inherit an ownership stake in Revolution’s training facilities and its small stadium, while the youth club will get to use Loudoun as a marketing tool, allowing them to pitch their youth academy as a direct pipeline to a professional club. For Baroni, diluting his share of the club helps cut losses, while leaving an opening for potential profit down the line.
In February, players and staff at Loudoun pushed ownership for clarity, and in early March, not long after the club won its season opener at Birmingham, Baroni summoned club employees and players to a Zoom call.
“He said that they were on a (non-disclosure agreement) and couldn’t disclose all the information,” said one source, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the meeting, “but that there was a third party coming in to essentially help with the club and build the club, and that there would be certain changes.”
In the days that followed, players got even more clarity, gathering from backchannel conversations with decision-makers at VA Revolution that there would be widespread changes in personnel, including the potential dismissal of Loudoun’s general manager, Oliver Gage, and the club’s head coach Ryan Martin, along with the bulk of his staff. Baroni has done nothing to push back on that information, according to multiple sources. Martin and Gage declined to comment when contacted for this story.
VA Revolution president and founder Niko Ekhart confirmed to The Athletic that Gage had already been informed of his dismissal. Ekhart also shed light on his replacement: former D.C. United captain Steve Birnbaum, currently the general manager of DC Power, the USL Super League women’s side owned by D.C. United. Birnbaum, among the club’s longest-serving players, was forced into retirement by injury last year but remains an employee of D.C. United, as he’s still under contract.
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Ekhart, along with VA Revolution’s chief operating officer Karl Sharman, acknowledged Martin’s place in the club’s current success and said they did not have immediate plans to dismiss him or his staff.
“We are here to support players and staff,” said Ekhart. “We want to be player-focused, and we want to graduate Loudoun United from a team into a club. Ryan has driven the team to success this year, and in Steve, we have a GM who has known Ryan for a long time. He is the right person for the job.”
Players at Loudoun considered boycotting the club’s second match of the season, said multiple sources within the team, but eventually relented, understandably concerned with the long-term professional consequences. Many players on Loudoun’s roster make the league minimum of $2,000, with some of that total sometimes being accounted for through housing costs, health insurance or other expenses.
Conditions at the club have been bleak at best. The club’s equipment manager departed earlier this season, and there’s been no effort made to replace him, said sources, leaving players responsible for basic tasks like laundering their own kits or caring for their own equipment. Segra Field has had its own issues, with players forced into locker rooms constructed from shipping containers and forced to share a single functional shower, according to multiple sources within the locker room.
“We were walking on the field the other day and there are parts of the turf that are coming up from the ground,” said one source. “That could hurt somebody, or the ref could deem the field unplayable. Who knows what it comes down to.”
Loudoun’s coaching staff has no access to GPS data from players, a basic tool used at every level of the professional game and even at elite youth clubs and most colleges.
“This is the first place I’ve ever played, and I’m including college in that, where we don’t have GPS tracking,” said one player. “We have no way of tracking how many miles any of us have on our legs at any given time, which is ridiculous. A lot of the guys are pushing minutes and we’re not getting rotated. Eventually, our bodies are going to fall apart.”
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Loudoun employs a single trainer for upwards of 0 players and trialists, bringing in an additional medical professional for matches to meet league guidelines. Strength training at the club is done by Victor Lonchuk, Martin’s primary assistant coach, and by one of Loudoun’s players with certifications. Aside from Lonchuk and the club’s goalkeeper coach, the remainder of Loudoun’s coaching staff works on a volunteer basis, not an entirely alien concept in American lower-league soccer, but also not the case at every USL club.
For its part, decision-makers at VA Revolution are open to discussing Segra’s shortcomings. The team seems almost certain to train on VA Revolution’s 7-acre campus going forward, just five minutes from the stadium.
“It’s a fair assessment to call Segra an incomplete project,” said Ekhart. “But there are a lot of positives as well, between the parking and the location. It will take -2 years to get that stadium right, but we believe we can do that. We want to invest in that facility, to get it to a ‘2.0’ standard. We want to make this club a place where players want to come to play, where they look forward to training every day.”
Working conditions vary wildly between clubs in the second and third divisions, particularly when MLS Next Pro is added to the mix. Many of those clubs train at MLS facilities and pull staff from the first team when needed. In the past, Loudoun has trained at D.C. United’s facility, just down the street from Segra Field. That is no longer the case, for the most part.
Loudoun United no longer uses D.C. United facilities to train. (Reggie Hildred / Imagn Images)
“We don’t see (D.C. United), we don’t talk to them,” said one club source. “I know last year, the club used their facility at times. We don’t even use it now to stay out of their hair. There are always complications. We just train at our game field, and if we use their training facility we have to wait until their entire first team is gone. They don’t want any cross-contamination.”
Players and staff spoken to for this piece almost universally expressed support for Gage and Martin, largely crediting the two for the club’s recent success. Martin, who has coached the club since its inception, has sometimes faced scrutiny for the club’s historical struggles, though Loudoun has never spent much on its roster. Gage, who served for four years as the director of football for the Canadian Premier League, arrived from the Houston Dynamo, where he headed up the club’s recruitment and analysis department. As of Wednesday afternoon, players had yet to be officially informed of his dismissal.
“Owners will always take credit for whatever results we get on the field,” said one Loudoun United player, who requested anonymity. “But (Martin and Gage) are an integral part of our successes this year. Bringing the team together, bringing back the pieces that came back and adding the new ones, that’s their work behind the scenes. Keeping them around has led to what we’re doing right now.”
The uncertainty surrounding Loudoun’s future has led to an exodus at the club, with about half of the club’s non-soccer staff having departed in the last six weeks, said multiple sources. As of now, the front office has only a handful of salespeople, easily the smallest sales staff in all of the USL Championship.
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“There was just never any effort made to build a real club,” said one former Loudoun United staffer. “And there still isn’t.”
To players, the threadbare operation is only part of the problem. The bigger issue, in a way, is the uncertainty.
“We haven’t been told anything directly,” said one player. “We’re pushing the seventh game week of the season and we still don’t have any clarity. There’s been no transparency to us as a group, which is the most disappointing part of it all. As much as they want to keep this all quiet and do things behind the scenes, we are the ones on the pitch every week and they’re not disclosing any information to us.”
Loudoun crashed out of the U.S. Open Cup on Tuesday evening in a hard-fought affair with fellow USL Championship side Louisville City. That match was played in one of the league’s premier stadiums, a soccer-specific venue that houses not only the USL team but the NWSL’s Racing Louisville. Louisville City regularly draws crowds of 0,000 or more and has become a bit of a cult phenomenon in the city.
Back at Segra, things feel much bleaker. Players pitted against ownership. A barebones staff and front office. A team that continues to win, despite all odds. It begs comparison to a famed American sports film of the 990s, one where a rag-tag baseball team is galvanized by a potential ownership change.
“People keep saying it’s like ‘Major League’,” said one player, offering up a laugh. “I guess all we’re missing is the cardboard cutout of the owners in their underwear.”
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(Top photo: Roger Wimmer/ISI Photos/USSF/Getty Images)
Aug 4, 2025
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