It was almost a year ago to the day that the Tampa Bay Rowdies embarked on what was promised as a new era of growth and prosperity on and off the field. The highly regarded Farrukh Quraishi was brought in as the new president and general manager on November of 18 of last year and shortly after that Quraishi’s longtime friend and collaborator Thomas Rongen singed on as head coach.

Quraishi’s hiring was a no-brainer. Apart from being an original player from the Rowdies inaugural season in 1975, Quraishi also had immediate respect from the supporters as a local with valuable connections, both within the market and abroad.

Rongen’s reception was a different story. He brought glory to the region with a Supporters Shield victory for the Tampa Bay Mutiny in the team’s inaugural 1996 season, but some Rowdies fans expressed hesitancy about signing a coach whose last significant achievement on the professional level was a 1999 MLS Cup win with DC United.

That skepticism quickly faded in the face of Rongen’s wildly charismatic and magnetic personality. Rongen’s penchant for interacting with fans and his omnipresence through social media made him the unquestioned face of the club that had previously lacked true stars to latch onto in the modern era.

Rongen’s passion for recruiting young players and youth development in general also won over hardcore fans that yearned for some semblance of an academy to achieve sustainability and establish roots in the community. No NASL team has cracked that difficult code yet, so fans were understandably excited at the prospect of the Rowdies being the first to do so after the partnership with Brazilian giant Sao Paulo was announced in June.

A hot start in the Spring Season only engendered more good will toward Rongen. No one expected the club that had gone through a complete rebuild with 20 new players to finish one point behind the first-place New York Cosmos. This only ratcheted up expectations, even though the reality is that serious evaluations from the short 10-game Spring Season are severely misguided. Truncated preseasons for many teams in the league can make the talent gap seem much larger than it actually is.

Rongen himself tried to temper expectations in interviews with our site and other outlets after the surprising spring start. Inarguably, the best performances by the Rowdies in the spring came in opening and closing weeks. In the first week they ran roughshod over a San Antonio Scorpions side that had been haphazardly slapped together a few weeks before the season. The Rowdies then closed out the spring with two thorough home wins over an injury-depleted FC Edmonton and the Atlanta Silverbacks, who were falling apart at the seams with under limited resources.

The opening to the more pivotal Fall Season was a swift kick in the rear to those newfound expectations. The Rowdies listlessly earned a 2-1 win in a rematch with Atlanta and then lost three straight matches, including two to the Scorpions and Eddies after those sides had regrouped and retooled during the break. The Rowdies only managed one more one win (a thrilling 3-2 result aided by an embarrassing defensive effort from Jacksonville) in the following weeks before owner Bill Edwards brought the axe down and fired both Rongen and Quraishi in August. The team was still in a playoff spot at the time, but had only taken seven points from their first eight matches of the fall after taking 19 during the spring.

Supporters were shocked by the sudden decision to pull the plug on what seemed like a promising new era. The root cause of fan agitation, though, was the way in which the firings were package and presented. Edwards was the only one permitted to address the move in public and he did so in an ill-advised YouTube clip that didn’t even crack 100 seconds.

In the video, Edwards made the now infamous quip “… they had a five-year plan and I have a one-year plan. I’m 75-years-old. I don’t have time in my lifetime for one-year plans.” The tiny wry smile that showed on his face on the end of that sentence implied the comment was possibly his poor attempt at humor at a time when fans were looking for anything but that. It showed a fundamental lack of understanding of how popular Rongen and Quraishi had become in a short period of time. Supporters wanted and deserved more illumination on the subject than that short blurb from someone whose soccer prowess is unproven provided. Edwards would be better suited going forward to allow those who have deserved capital with the fans, like Perry Van der Beck and Lee Cohen, to speak for the club after such substantial soccer decisions.

Perhaps the only factor that prevented fan discontent from completely boiling over was the promotion of Stuart Campbell to the full time head coaching position a week after the sackings. Campbell had a wealth of admiration built up with fans and players from his years as a player and assistant coach with the club, which kept the atmosphere from turning sour.

Unfortunately for Campbell, the on field results never swung back in his favor. Facing the more arduous half of the team’s schedule, the Rowdies went 3W-4D-5L to close out the year and miss out on the postseason to intrastate rival Fort Lauderdale by only by a couple points.

Some maligned the team’s effort in the final months of the season, insinuating that a malaise consumed them after the departure of the revered Rongen. The evidence does not back this theory up. Under Campbell, the squad made marked improvements on defense and pushed to stay competitive in all but one match. A deflated and discouraged team does not produce defensive outings like the ones the Rowdies did in the bitter 1-0 loss to Minnesota and the uplifting 2-0 win over New York. After conceding a humiliating 50 goals in 2014, the team rebounded nicely with a respectable 37 goals allowed. Notably, 15 of those goals came in the abysmal eight-game stretch to open the fall.

The downfall of the Rowdies in 2015 was the inability to score on a consistent basis. Rongen and Quraishi’s gamble to sign the injury-prone MLS veteran Maicon Santos did not pay out. The Brazilian was the leading scorer with seven goals, but he was only fit enough to start in less than half of the team’s games. The regression of 2013 NASL MVP Georgi Hristov and the overall woeful production from the pool of attackers is what ultimately sunk the Rowdies. Despite three games being added to the schedule this year, the Rowdies scored three fewer goals than they did in 2014. A true goal scorer should be priority number one when the Rowdies look to add players for next year.

Since their 2012 Soccer Bowl title the Rowdies have missed out on the postseason in three straight year. That will undoubtedly cause consternation for fans. However, using hindsight to claim the Rowdies would be in the playoffs now, or on the path to future success had Rongen not been let go is an unfounded assumption. The crop of players that were recruited this year contains a few gems, but for the most part it does not match up to the talent that will be on display in the postseason this weekend. What ifs are always frustrating, but the fact is that Rongen had not yet proven himself a savior in the head coach position.

Stability is obviously needed for the franchise going forward. Indications are strong that Stuart Campbell will return for next season. That is a smart move, but coaches are always in the line of fire as their job is always dependent upon results. The real area in need of consistency is the front office. Quraishi is a savvy soccer mind that possibly could have brought the club to a new level, similar to the way that other NASL executives like Nick Rogers, Peter Wilt and Erik Stover have done in their markets. The Rowdies need a keen executive in place for a sustained period of time to implement a strategy for the future.

That could be current COO Lee Cohen, unless Edwards chooses to bring in an outsider with a stronger soccer pedigree. Campbell may be back as coach, but will he be in charge of building next year’s roster? Separating the coach and technical director positions like many clubs have done could be a wise way to move forward. These are the questions that should be first and foremost on the agenda for the Rowdies this offseason. How Edwards answers them should be the ultimate deciding factor in how invested he is in the long game, not one midseason coaching change.

IMAGE, PATRICK PATTERSON