Coming off the United States’ failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, Major League Soccer fans needed good news. What they got instead was a blindside.

Last week, Sports Illustrated’s Grant Wahl published a story detailing how Anthony Precourt, the California-based owner of Columbus Crew since 2013, had plans to move the team to Austin, Texas, over 1,000 miles away, in 2019. The stated purpose was to force the city of Columbus, Ohio, into giving the club a sweetheart tax deal on a new stadium in a downtown location. But the language of a press release from Columbus’ front office made the move sound like a done deal.

In the release Precourt said that “despite our investments and efforts, the current course is not sustainable”. MLS Commissioner Don Garber doesn’t seem keen to stop any move either. “Crew SC is near the bottom of the League in all business metrics and the club’s stadium is no longer competitive with other venues across MLS,” he said in a statement. “The league is very reluctant to allow teams to relocate, but based on these factors, we support PSV’s efforts to explore options outside of Columbus, including Austin, provided they find a suitable stadium.” The surprise nature of the announcement is unusual for owners attempting to stay in their city, as they often encourage fans to influence their legislators to push a deal favorable to the club along. (On Tuesday, the mayor of Columbus revealed he had reached out to Precourt and Garber for meetings exploring options to keep the Crew in Columbus, which both accepted. The meetings are to take place in the coming weeks.)

The thought of one of MLS’s founding clubs suddenly moving rattled the fans in the Nordecke, the supporters group coalition for the Crew. The Nordecke called for a #SavetheCrew Rally and they have enjoyed broad support from fans across the league.

It’s easy to see why the developments may scare fans of other clubs, who could find themselves in a similar situation one day. Season ticket holders who wish to claim a refund will be able to do so until 3 November at 5pm ET. The faithful who are able to overcome the betrayal to attend a game in Austin would find themselves facing a 36-hour road trip or a $250, four-hour flight with at least one layover.

The news is remarkable for a team that was dominant from the mid- to late-2000s under the ownership of the Hunt Family. From 2004 to 2009 they won three Supporters’ Shields, and added an MLS Cup to a Shield in 2008 for a double. There has been success more recently too. Since Precourt took over, the Crew made the 2015 MLS Cup final, where they lost 2-1 to the Portland Timbers. This season, they finished fifth in the Eastern Conference and made the playoffs.

While Columbus’s Mapfre Stadium, the supposed focus of Precourt’s decision to move is hardly Camp Nou, it was only built in 1999. And the stadium is something of a sacred site. It was the first soccer-specific-stadium in MLS history and laid out a blueprint for financial feasibility, leading the league out of situations in which teams played in huge, largely empty, NFL arenas. It is also the home of arguably the most memorable matches in US soccer history. After losses to Mexico in the US to largely pro-Mexico crowds, US Soccer took a chance on the stadium and the city’s ability to sell out the game in frigid temperatures for a true home field advantage. The result was the beginning of a US soccer legend, a string of four World Cup Qualifiers against Mexico that ended as 2-0 victories, entering the phrase “Dos a Cero” into American Soccer fans’ lexicon.

Of course, teams moving in US sports is by no means new. In the past two years in the NFL alone, the Rams have relocated from St Louis to Los Angeles, the Chargers from San Diego to Los Angeles, and the Raiders will move from Oakland to Las Vegas. The NBA also moved the SuperSonics from Seattle to Oklahoma City in 2008, and rebranded them as the Thunder. And the MLS itself has moved the San Jose Earthquakes to Houston and changed their name to the Dynamo after the end of the 2005 season, but San Jose would gain its team back in time to begin play in 2008 as part of MLS expansion.

It’s easy to see why Precourt wants to move. According to Forbes, Crew are valued at $130m, lower than any other MLS franchise. A move to Austin, one of the United States’ fastest growing cities – and a city without an NBA, NFL, NHL or MLB team – would instantly boost its valuation.

There’s no guarantee that there’s an appetite for an MLS team in the college sports crazed city where the University of Texas Longhorns reign supreme. But maybe it doesn’t matter, and Precourt is looking to pull a move similar to Dean Spanos, who is said to have upped the value of his Chargers team by a minimum of $500m simply by moving his team from San Diego to the more attractive market of Los Angeles despite their failure to properly fill the Stubhub Center, where the Los Angeles Galaxy are the primary tenants.

Perhaps MLS felt insulated from this as part of soccer, where team moves are so rare that almost everybody who follows soccer knows the name of MK Dons for the club’s 2003 move from Wimbledon to Milton Keyes.

Or perhaps it’s because MLS has always seemed progressive, if only because its fans have been. It’s not uncommon to go to a match and see an assortment of flags in the supporters sections championing LGBT Pride, Black Lives Matter, and other progressive movements. While some stadiums have removed these flags, the enforcement of what qualifies as too political seems to be left up to the front offices of the clubs themselves. Notably, MLS was home to the first openly gay professional athlete playing on the field in the US, Robbie Rogers. Now MLS has made it clear that it supports progressive values only as far as they help their checkbook.

And maybe soccer fans should have seen it coming. The MLS owners have continued an American tradition, despite overwhelming evidence publicly funded stadiums are a poor investment, as John Oliver memorably explained. The backlash against public funding has caused MLS its own headaches for stadiums that aren’t using tax cuts. Miami has been slow to warm to David Beckham’s forever-coming-soon team despite a private-funding promise after the nightmare of Marlins’ Ballpark financing. In that instance, Miami-Dade County pitched in $500m to construct that stadium, money they took loans out to get and will eventually cost the county billions.

Even deals that are in the team’s favor don’t alway ensure compliance down the road. In the years following the opening of Red Bull Arena, the Red Bull organization failed to pay dues on land that the small town of Harrison, New Jersey, had purchased for them at the cost of $40m to the town. Millions of dollars in back taxes were owed, and a compromise came years later. The area’s regeneration that Red Bull promised is still incomplete with empty lots dotting the landscape around the stadium.

With all this history, there’s a sense of inevitability to the Crew’s story. The Crew fans will protest, MLS fans everywhere will join in. The city of Columbus won’t and shouldn’t give in, and in all likelihood, the move to Austin was finished before fans knew about it. FC Cincinnati – who average crowds of more than 20,000 in the second-tier USL – will likely be one of the league’s next expansion choices, and Garber will offer that as an MLS “return” to Ohio. And eventually the league will feel like that’s the way it always was. But the era of innocence in MLS will be over.