Protagonist Soccer

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Protagonist Soccer

Protagonist Soccer is the go-to site for American grassroots soccer coverage.

14/11/2025

🫵 Can YOU name the player? Settings… VERY DIFFICULT.

13/11/2025

🏜️ Pre-Sale for Issue Two, “Soccer Songs of the Southwest” includes 40 pages of soccer stories from AZ, NM, & TX
🎨 Art by Gabaldon, SABA, & Apodaca
⌨️ Words by Vaughn, Gawronski, Brandt, & Morrissey - (check out the shop on our website)

11/11/2025

🧣 Want a scarf!? - of course you do. To be entered into our drawing…
▪️Follow us, Follow them, hit like on this post by Nov 18th.
▪️The winner will be drawn on one of our podcasts recorded that week.

11/11/2025

🌻 Who Are Ya!: Sunflower State FC (USL L2 / WPSL)
▪️Based in the Kansas City area, Sunflower State FC has evolved from a cheesy Sunday League team to a real competitor in their local field. We wanted to catch up with the team and see how they’ve upped their game - co-founder and current president of the club, Joey Lipoff, was kind enough to share the story.
(Read full article on our website)

07/11/2025

🏆 This is it! Your big chance to inspire, inform, & influence our End of Year categories.
🫵 You tell us:
▪️What kits you love!
▪️Where’s the best place to catch a match?
▪️ What WAS the game of the year? And more…

https://www.protagonistsoccer.com/endofyearnominations

06/11/2025

🦜Birds of a Feather, Flock Together: Sets Four & Five:
🦩Supporting soccer is totally for the birds! These athletic aviators are hoping to help you part ways with a little cash in exchange for some patches - 100% of the proceeds will be split into four nests and donated to charities decided by the four clubs.
🦆This year, we’re going big with two sets simultaneously! When we reached out for new bird-branded partners, the positive response was overwhelming!
🦢Set Four: Tormenta FC (USL League One), Rio Grande Valley Red Crowns (The League for Clubs), Austin Rise FC (WPSL), & Spam FC (Minnesota Amateur Soccer League)
🐦‍⬛Set Five: Forward Madison (USL League One), Febre Amarela FC (Bay State Soccer League), Rochester FC MN (UPSL / USL L2 / USL W), & TLH Reckoning (USL W)

05/11/2025

🟨 Kicking Back: The History of The Philadelphia Fury - Part One
🔸Author of multiple soccer books and articles, Stephen Brandt continues his journey through NASL history for Protagonist Soccer. In this set of retrospective articles, we explore the brief history of the Philadelphia Fury https://www.protagonistsoccer.com/coverage/kickingback-nasl-philadelphia-fury-part-one

04/11/2025

⚫️Catching Up with Tesho Akindele
▪️Breaking the Lines’ Zach Lowy catches up with Tesho Akindele . Now retired from professional soccer, he still makes the Wikipedia page for Des Moines Menace’s recent USOC run, but is making his real run in Charlotte as a Development Analyst https://www.protagonistsoccer.com/coverage/catching-up-with-tesho-akindele

03/11/2025

⁉️ Who Are Ya!
▪️TLH Reckoning (USL W League & Women's Premier Soccer League)
▪️Slowly growing from the grassroots and up - TLH Reckoning - Tallahassee is fortunate to have been founded and run by Dr Ashlee Fontes, someone well-known for her understanding of soccer as well as the business of sport. The club is partnering with local business, and working to invest in the community as much as the community can invest in them to put multiple pre-professional squads, as well as academy teams, on the pitch https://www.protagonistsoccer.com/coverage/whoareya-09-tlh-reckoning

01/11/2025

📚 No more past tense, The Protagonist ‘Zine - Issue One is all packed up and pre-orders will ship out on Monday!
⚽️ The printer made 10 extra! Which means there are now 10 copies in the shop. These may be the last 10 as we gear up for Issue Two: https://www.protagonistsoccer.com/shop/rdli1h4p975g8y9ehjt41zcfdymw9r

31/10/2025

⚫️ Michael Lahoud Opens Up to Protagonist Soccer
▪️From child refugee to NCAA National Champion; PDL up-and-comer to MLS veteran; Michael Lahoud has plied his trade at every level of soccer available in the United States and even earned a few national caps for his country of origin, Sierra Leone. Michael opens up to Zach Lowy of Breaking the Lines, who has chosen to share his story with Protagonist Soccer https://www.protagonistsoccer.com/coverage/michael-lahoud-opens-up-to-protagonist

30/10/2025

🧟‍♂️ Just a couple days of Spooky Month are left and we’re re-animating The Living Dead: Bethlehem Steel FC by Phil Baki from 2018

The concept of zombies has fascinated humans for centuries. The idea that some sinister magical, scientific, or paranormal force could reanimate a previously deceased human is truly chilling, especially since zombies’ main desire is to bite and turn all living humans to their undead state. One of ...

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How We Got Here

Reader,

I suppose if you’re on this site and gone so far into it that you’ve clicked on a link to get to this letter, some of what I have to say here will be no surprise to you, the reader. I do think it important, however, to share how this site began, what we hope it will be, and why we think it important to invest our time, energy, and money.

This site was the brainchild of three guys: Ryan Stallings, myself, and Spencer Baugh. I put myself awkwardly in the middle there because chronologically it makes sense. We’ve all been friends for some time now, unified by a love of lower tier soccer and snide remarks. Ryan and I appeared as guests on a podcast, representing our supporter groups (The Red Watch and Notorious FCG, respectively). After the show was over, Ryan shot me a text asking why we had never done a podcast together. I couldn’t think of a good reason why not, though time might have been a great answer. At the time of his question, I was involved with two shows on a weekly basis, leaving little time to add another project.

So we kicked around a lower tier podcast idea for a couple of days and decided that idea was too small. What we wanted to do was make this into a media organization, entirely devoted to covering lower tier soccer. UPSL and NPSL were the obvious choices of leagues, as the clubs we rooted for were in those leagues. So we ran with the idea, what would the organization look like? How would it function? What would type of content would we produce? And as we began answering those questions, we realized we needed another voice in the room. Spencer and I had been on a podcast together for almost a year so he was an obvious person who we could count on to work his ass off for free. Podcasting isn’t exactly a lucrative art form. So the three of us formed Protagonist Soccer.

Up until this point, few sites have taken a stab at effectively covering the NPSL and UPSL, for various reasons. There’s an assumption that no one cares, that there’s too many teams, that people only care about first tier soccer. All of those assumptions are bu****it. People care because they are at matches all over the this country every weekend. Sure, there’s a lot of teams, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth covering. And MLS is its own league with its own fans, plenty of people support lower tier clubs.

For too long the lower tiers of American soccer have been almost entirely ignored by the major sports sites. The only sites devoted to covering the leagues are those paid for and run by the leagues themselves. There is little independent journalism focused on the lower tiers, so much of what readers get is a box score, a scoreline, and some photos. But I think there’s rich storylines all over the country, in every club, being missed by this marginal coverage. Protagonist will be there for those storylines. We will shine a light on those clubs and their work. They are important, they matter, and we will be there.

One of my favorite teams in American soccer history is the Fall River Marksmen. They played in the 20s and 30s in the American Soccer League. They were an amazing bunch of American soccer players, but because the soccer media coverage was so sparse at the time, there is little known about the players, the tactics, or coaches. This was the best soccer team in the country for a decade and we have nothing but some newspaper clippings and boxscores. It saddens me to know that all that history has evaporated in time, because no one thought to save it. This will not be the story of lower tier American soccer in 2018.

So the realities of covering two national leagues (and a couple of regional leagues) are facing our little start up site. We’ve built a network of writers from all over the country, guys who already love local soccer and want to see it grow. We’ve utilized streaming site to catch matches too remote to visit in person. Our team works for free for the time being, because we love the sport. We love it enough to give our our time and effort to spreading the word of what is happening across this country on local fields in every neighborhood. This is our passion so we will press on and deliver the best soccer coverage that this country, these clubs, and you, the reader, deserve.

All of us at Protagonist Soccer would encourage you to find a local club to support. They need your dollars, your voice, and your support. If this site can encourage anything, I hope it is that. All soccer fans across this country need to stand up and support local soccer. It’s not enough to say you care, put your money where your mouth is. A pyramid is only as strong as its base.

Dan Vaughn Editor and Founder

Lower Tier Soccer | Top Tier Coverage

14/11/2025

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How We Got Here