Birmingham Legion WFC kicks off Friday

We haven’t reported on the new Legion team in the USL W League much so far, but times are moving on and the team is getting ready to start its inaugural season.

Indeed, that will happen this Friday. Legion WFC heads off to Statesboro, Georgia where they will play South Georgia Tormenta, a club already well known to Legion fans. The game is at 6:30pm Central and will be streamed on Tormenta’s YouTube channel, which can be found here.

The W League is already under way, having started 2 weeks ago. In the Legion’s South Central Division only 2 games have been played to date. Chattanooga Red Wolves (yes, the ladies will have their chance to beat them too) beat Tennessee SC (from Brentwood) 3-1 and Tormenta drew 0-0 with Southern Soccer Academy (from Marietta, GA). Not much to draw on yet.

Legion WFC will have an extended road trip to start the season. They will play all four of the teams listed above away before finally getting their first home game. That will be Wednesday June 7th at the annoyingly inconvenient time of 4:30pm against Tormenta. However, it does mean that the game will not clash with the Legion home game against Memphis 901 later that evening (7:00pm). The horrific US 280 traffic notwithstanding of course, as Legion WFC’s home field will be at the Dunnavant Valley Fields almost out to Chelsea (and less than half a mile from this writer’s home).

The remaining two teams in the division North Alabama SC out of Huntsville and South Carolina United SC from Columbia. Like Legion WFC, NASC are an expansion team for the league and offer an immediate local derby. No longer in the division is Peachtree City MOBA.

The roster for the team is extensive and will for the most part be names unfamiliar to most of you. Kaylor Hodges over at Hammering Down has a very useful breakdown on the team, which has most of the AHSAA high school first and second teams on the roster as well as more than a few members of the high-performing University of Alabama squad. This team is going to be competitive. Head coach will be Nathan Archard, who is Technical Director at BUSA and Alabama FC. He will be assisted by Janet Parks, also of BUSA.

Since Tormenta’s opening game was away, they do not have any video for it and Southern Soccer Academy doesn’t either, so there isn’t much scouting we can do. Tormenta won the league title last year, so Legion WFC is getting a tough introduction to the league. Tormenta have retained a number of players from last year’s team and have added several experienced college players this season and are not going to be easy to beat. The 0-0 draw with SSA was, per Tormenta’s own report a generally cagey affair, largely because the team had only been together for ten days ahead of the match. That won’t be the case this week, obviously.