The Puerto Rican Islanders’ success in the CONCACAF Champions League is almost as unexpected as the difficulty in finding a soccer field in the baseball and basketball-crazed, Spanish-speaking U.S. territory. The five-year-old USL-1 team’s unlikely path to Tuesday’s semifinal against ancient Mexican club Cruz Azul is just another story in the sports history of “the little island that could,” writes Goal.com’s Andrea Canales.
USL President Francisco Marcos recounts how the idea of the Islanders was once considered “a joke” due to the travel required to compete against other Second Division teams on the U.S. mainland and that their home is “not a soccer country.”
But with the help of ex-MLS players (some from the recently dissolved Reserve division) and former FC Dallas coach Colin Clarke, who through his results with the team was later given the country’s national team post, Puerto Rico has defied doubters and far exceeded any American soccer expectations.