Make It.

Or Break it.

After seven seasons and many millions of dollars in investment, it appears to be ‘Show Time’ or ‘Go Time’ for FC Edmonton.

If you spend a portion of a game with owner Tom Fath and the rest of it sitting with the fans in the stands, as your correspondent did Sunday, it’ll take you less than 90 minutes to come to that conclusion.

Fath doesn’t come right out and say he’s thinking of pulling the plug on this franchise if his soccer club doesn’t turn the corner soon. But he does say he’s getting weary of spending so many millions with so few results so far.

“I’ve always said that the team has to be sustainable,” said Fath after about a seven-second delay when I came right out and asked him where he’s at as an owner.

“For a team to be here for 10, 20 or 30 years, it has to be sustainable. You can’t have two brothers carrying it.”

How about in two or three years?

“That’s another question, isn’t it?” said Fath.

“The fans here today obviously want it. A lot of people talk about wanting it. A lot of people tell me how good it is for the city. But we have to make FC Edmonton a habit. We have to capture the hearts of corporate Edmonton. Until now, we haven’t done that.

“Once people are buying tickets and supporting our cultural or sports groups, then it becomes a habit and keeps continuing.”

Is there becoming a time frame involved in that?

“I’m getting tired of it. But we’re here right now.

“At some point you have to become sustainable. The break-even point is around 9,000 in attendance. Right now, in this location, we have no chance at that.”

Asked how much money he’s lost, Fath won’t throw out a number.

“Lots,” he said.

Expand on that?

“It’s millions of dollars.”

Asked how short the window might be to decide whether to keep pouring money into this, Fath offered no clue.

“As short or as long as I decide to make it,” he said.

“My only partner is my brother and we’re basically partners in everything we do.”

Tom and Dave Fath didn’t get into this to turn a profit.

“We didn’t expect to make money in soccer.”

Tom, when he got in, didn’t know a corner kick from a corner store but has become a real soccer fan since. Now he admits it would be hard to walk away from personally, and even emotionally.

“We’ve done a lot of good things for kids and the sport. A lot of it, like our academy, is virtually unrecognized in the community. There aren’t many people who realize what we’ve achieved with our academy.”

And right now, Fath admits, it’s a lot more fun being the owner.

“It’s been exciting this year because the last few years we’ve come out of the spring season at the bottom of the league. We end up getting close to playoffs but not quite. To be one win out of first at this stage of the season is wonderful.”

Make it or break it?

Coach Colin Miller and the players have finally put the team in position to have something going from start to finish in the North American Soccer League.

Nik Ledgerwood scored a man short in the 82nd minute yesterday to win the ‘Canadian Derby’ 1-0 over the Ottawa Fury Sunday. Before a season-high crowd of 2,861, it was a sixth straight home win and pushed Edmonton (7-3-3) into third place in the overall standings in the now 12-team league, three points back of the league leading New York Cosmos with 27 points and one back of the Indy Eleven with 25.

Usually Edmonton is down at the bottom of the standings chasing (and occasionally almost catching) the season. With the win, the team has given itself a chance with a massive home game here a week Wednesday against the New York Cosmos.

The twist here is that our lovely bunch of coconuts at city council, the folks that took down those City of Champions signs, is failing to give two of the greatest champions in our city a chance to succeed when the moment appears to be arriving.

The Fath brothers spent just under $1 million constructing extra bleachers at Clarke Field. They spent just under another million installing a large, modern video scoreboard at the other. Both were done to attempt to bring their home field, which is at least better than the Foote Field location where they started, up to NASL standards. They haven’t done that. But it’s nice lipstick on the pig of a place that looks like some sort of mechano set where it’s impossible to seat 4,000 comfortably.

City council has failed to create the 8,000-seat soccer specific stadium to house this team and be the featured venue for any number of other matches at various levels of play in the city.

To me, city council is going to be responsible if champions Tom and Dave Fath take the FC Edmonton signs down.

This group of politicians seems to specialize in the igore-it-and-it-will-go-away philosophy.

They can’t ignore it much longer or the Faths will go away.

Back when I covered the team’s first game, a 3-0 win over the then-NASL Montreal Impact, when Tom and Dave Fath launched the team with an exhibition schedule under coach Dwight Lodeweges, everybody’s expectations were that FC Edmonton would be paying in an expandable 8,000-seat soccer exclusive stadium by now.

“I really believed that when we started it, too,” said Tom.

“We went to city council several years ago and they supported the concept to the extent of telling us that if we sold out they’d expand the stadium. But it’s just not happening.”

My belief is that the product is there now to be able to draw well in an 8,000-seat stadium. But as long as they’re stuck in this bastardized bandbox, they’re going to keep spinning their wheels until they fall off.

“I think you’ve hit the nail on the head,” said Fath.

“I think with a real soccer stadium to grow this environment and be part of the experience itself, we’d be off to the races. But council had the idea we’d have to sell out.”

Fath admits he and the various versions of his organization have made many a mistake in getting to this point.

“When you are not a soccer guy and have never been in the sports and entertainment business, it’s not going to run as well as it might in the beginning. But I think we’re putting together a lot better show and we’ve had a really good team since Colin started.”

Yesterday, there was excellent atmosphere with flags waving and singing and chanting in the stands, and an explosion of noise equal to that of ‘Touchdown Eskimos’ in Commonwealth Stadium next door.

FC Edmonton sits 11th in average attendance in the now 12-team league, with an average crowd of 2,256 prior to Sunday’s game in the makeshift temporary-seat-created Clarke Field in the shadows of Commonwealth Stadium.

Only the Fort Lauderdale Strikers (1,382) have a lower crowd count in a league where the Indy Eleven (8,678) and Minnesota United (8,653) are tops and Ottawa Fury, Tampa Bay Rowdies and Puerto Rico FC are averaging 6,000-plus, and nobody else is under 3,000.

This is a team that seems to be in that awkward stage of existence as a team in a town dominated by the Edmonton Oilers and Edmonton Eskimos.

They’ve been around long enough that they’re past that here-and-gone history of soccer teams such as the Black Gold, Eagles, Brickmen, Aviators and the like. It’s not like the team has captured the community yet, either.

Other than one playoff loss in 2011, there has been no playoff success and nothing but two-and-outs against the Vancouver Whitecaps, Montreal Impact, Toronto FC and now Ottawa Fury in Canadian Championship play.

If FC Edmonton can win this week in Indianapolis and come home to play the New York Cosmos for first place, maybe they can get their sellout to motivate city council to add the one sports facility this town so clearly requires.

terry.jones@sunmedia.ca

@sunteryjones