ROCHESTER, N.Y. (BVM) – In November of 2017, the Rochester Rhinos soccer team announced its intention to take a one-year hiatus from the United Soccer League (USL) to reorganize its finances. It would be almost four and a half years before the team would play again. In March, the beautiful game finally returned to Rochester, albeit with a few changes.

Now rebranded as Rochester New York FC (RNYFC), the team is part of the inaugural season of the MLS Next Pro league in the third division of American soccer. Premier League superstar and cult hero Jamie Vardy is now a co-owner of the club along with Wendy and Dave Dworkin (who also own the Sacramento Kings).

RNYFC’s story mirrors that of Jamie Vardy who rose through the ranks of England’s various ”non-league” systems before landing at Leicester City. Vardy and Leicester City wound up winning the Premier League in arguably soccer’s greatest Cinderella story in 2015-16 after starting the season with 5000-1 odds. In 1999, when it was still known as the Rhinos, Rochester became the first and only team outside the first division to win the MLS Open Cup. 

Vardy ended up bringing on Dr. Lee Tucker, who used to run his V9 Academy, as a Sporting Director. Tucker started his new role in October 2021, three months before the MLS Next Pro was even officially announced. The announcement was finally made in December 2021 which still only left Tucker with two months to fill out a roster before the season started in March 2022. 

“We weren’t allowed to do any groundwork in terms of talking to players or agents or anything like that,” Tucker said. “It was quite late in terms of the process getting started…So we were faced with the task of basically getting a roster together in two months which was very different and quite challenging.”

In its recruitment process, RNYFC had initially intended to rely on American players that came up through the collegiate system. However, once the process began in earnest in December 2021, Tucker was surprised to find that agents were reaching out to him to offer international players.

“There was a plethora of the agents who were offering us player after player that we then had to do our homework on,” Tucker explained. “Some of these players—and I’m talking about ones that we didn’t go for, as well as ones that we did—weren’t necessarily on our radar but cropped up because of the story [of the club], because of Jaime, because of the opportunity that it presented to players.”

While not uncommon for the world’s most popular sport to attract players from across the globe it’s surprising that RNYFC, with its short hurried recruitment and third division status, was able to attract players from top soccer countries; like goalkeeper Caique from Brazil, midfielder Bubacar Djaló from Portugal, and right back Milan Vanacker Belgium.

The other major draw for players looking to join RNYFC was the possibility of working with Portuguese head coach Bruno Balthazar, who joined the team in March 2022. Tucker thinks that if joining Vardy’s club was the “initial attraction,” it was Balthazar’s record that ultimately sealed the deal for players.

“More importantly, was the connection with Bruno,” Tucker said. “Just because of the day-to-day interactions that [players] have with the head coach and Bruno’s experience and successes in the past of developing players like [Nelson] Semedo who’s at Wolverhampton Wanderers and Matty Cash at Aston Villa. Bruno has worked individually with those guys to help them on their career paths. I think that that was more important for the players to hear about.”

With no relegation and promotion in American soccer, players don’t have the possibility to take a club up the ranks to the first division. This means that in order to play at a more competitive level they’ll likely have to transfer to a different club. That makes player development not just part of RNYFC’s sales pitch to prospective players, but part of its ethos.

“We want to be as successful as we can on the pitch and challenge for things within the league that we’re playing in,” Tucker said. “But, we also see success as our players moving onto bigger and better things…We would be very happy to see two or three of our players at the end of this season, go to play MLS or into Europe and play at a higher level than what we can offer an MLS Next Pro.”

Even though the MLS Next Pro season just started at the end of March, Tucker is already looking forward to next season now that he’ll have more time to plan his squad building strategy.

“Recruitment is a long-term process; it doesn’t happen overnight,” Tucker said. “Even though we were pushed into a scenario that we only had two months to recruit this time around, we feel very, very fortunate and happy with what we’ve done this time around. But hopefully, having more time to give it more consideration and look at options in more depth and up profiles of players over season should put us in a better position for next year.”