‘It’s incredible’: First-year expansion team Spokane Velocity one win away from USL League One championship

Expansion franchises usually take time to find their footing.

It is a classic conundrum across any level of sports as new teams have new ownership, new staff and new players.

The Spokane Velocity are one win away from the championship game after downing second-seeded Colorado Hailstorm FC last week in the USL League One playoffs.

The perception around the league is that Velocity FC’s 3-0 win over the Jägermeister Cup champion Colorado is one of the largest upsets in USL League One playoff history. People point to the seed differential and the fact expansion teams don’t usually advance this far, let alone make it to the playoffs.

In its fifth season, USL League One is a newer league in the scheme of American soccer, but Spokane has still found a way to push its way toward prominence within it.

The Velocity became the third team to win a postseason match in its first season while becoming the first team to enter postseason play with an active winless streak of four matches or more.

“It’s incredible,” Velocity head coach Leigh Veidman said. “I think the work of the group over the course of the year is what’s got them to this point. The fact that we’ve got ourselves into this position is a massive credit to the players, to the staff at the club, to the community for showing up and pushing us through this this season.”

In the postseason, everyone has a 0-0 record, Veidman said, so the past doesn’t matter. It’s all about who shows up on game day.

That mentality will be important Saturday when No. 7 Spokane heads to No. 3 Forward Madison FC at 4 p.m. at Breese Stevens Field in Madison, Wisconsin, in the semifinals of the USL League One playoffs.

Spokane is 0-2 against Forward Madison, with a goal differential of 5-0 .

Veidman said the experienced Flamingos – who were one of the original League One teams in 2019 – have an established culture and roster that has strong depth.

After suffering a 2-0 defeat to Madison on the road, Veidman thought Spokane did enough to win the game until a 59th-minute red card changed the trajectory of the match.

“They’re a strong team on the ball, they want to play possession football, they want to play through the lines,” Veidman said. “Defensively, very, very compact, high numbers in the back line. They don’t give you a lot of space and pressure you in the right moment. Their overall game plan is very solid, and they’re a very well-coached team.”

In the first round of the playoffs, Forward Madison held Charlotte Independence to six shots, none on target, while creating 16 shots .

Christian Chaney and Devin Boyce lead the Flamingos with six goals apiece, but Mitchell Osmond has completed a league-leading 1,422 passes this season.

This week has been spent dialing in a game plan that has a chance to advance Spokane to the title game.

In the third matchup, Veidman said Spokane will stick true to its principles and tactical approach. Some tweaks will be made to how Forward Madison plays, but Veidman said they will maintain the strategy that has them as one of the final-four teams .

After going up 3-0 on Colorado, the tactics paid off last week and kept that advantage for 90 minutes.

Having Veidman at the helm during the playoff run has been beneficial because of his 2023 season with the Charleston Battery when he was an assistant coach. The Battery made the finals last season.

“They biggest thing that I have learned along the way is consistency is key, not changing your environment, not treating this game any differently,” he said. “It already has a different feel emotionally, but if you start to change your environment, how you train, when you train, what you do in training, your tone changes. As a coach, you just start to change.”

Soccer players are superstitious and have their routines. They can tell when things are tweaked.

Veidman said those changes can alter the vibe and build pressure and that Spokane doesn’t need that. The playoffs already create a natural pressure point with the one-and-done nature.

Changes don’t need to be made, he said. Spokane plays the way Spokane plays.

“By the end of this season, somebody who’s a bystander, a fan, a neutral fan, can look back at our team and say, ‘Hey, that’s a Spokane Velocity team. We can identify that by how they play, their work, their style of play,’ ” Veidman said.

Implementing an identity is not an easy task in the first year, which often prevents teams from making the playoffs.

Spokane, being one of the three teams to make the USL League One playoffs in its first season, had a believer from the first day.

Veidman said his logical brain knew the history was going against his team, but his competitor brain said otherwise.

“Deep down in my soul, yes, I wanted to be in the playoffs this year, yes, I want to go and win this thing,” he said. “There are still two games to play for and the championship to play for. But what we’ve done already is quite incredible.”

The winner will face either Union Omaha or Greenville Triumph SC in the finals.