by JAKE NUTTING

It was less than six months ago that the North American Soccer League made the decision to fold the Atlanta Silverbacks after a suitable ownership group could not be secured in time for the 2016 season.

Now, reports state that the league is in negotiations to come back to the market with a new group of investors.

According to a report from the Atlanta Journal Constitution, a league source confirmed that the NASL met with investors this past week to discuss the possibility. The source did not name the group involved, but Atlanta Sports Connection posted photos of a meeting it held with commissioner Bill Peterson on its Facebook page.

Atlanta Sports Connection is a corporation aiming to construct a new sports complex that will include a 10,000 seat stadium outside of the city in Dekalb County that they hope will serve as the home of future NASL and National Women’s Soccer League teams.

The group behind the NWSL team has already been active for months now and has chosen Atlanta Vibe as its moniker. The Vibe’s website also gave a possible hint of the potential NASL team’s name when it posted that the new sports complex will host them and the “Chiefs.”

The Atlanta Chiefs were one of the founding members of the original NASL in 1968, winning the league’s first league title that year by defeating the San Diego Toros 3-0 on aggregate. The team eventually re-branded as the Atlanta Apollos after being sold in 1973, but it folded at the end of that season. A revived Chiefs team started up in 1979 before folding up shop two years later.

Moving back into Atlanta so soon after failing to find ownership for the Silverbacks, and with Major League Soccer debuting with Atlanta United in 2017 might seem an unlikely move, but Peterson asserted the league’s interest in the market just a few weeks after the Silverbacks ceased operations.

“Next week we are meeting with a group that is still very interested [in Atlanta], but they weren’t going to hit our deadline to get scheduled,” Peterson told EOS back in January. “We haven’t given up on Atlanta by any means,” Peterson said. “If the right ownership group comes back with the right plan, we would love to go back there.”