Columbus Crew SC announced Tuesday evening that the club have formed a partnership with USL PRO expansion club Austin Aztex, beginning in 2015.
Crew SC partnered with the nearby Dayton Dutch Lions in 2014, but head coach Gregg Berhalter said the change helps align the club's goals with their partner's.
"I think it's the environment the players are going to be in and the potential for development," he said. "When you look at operating budget, when you look at the philosophy of the technical staff and the aspirations of the ownership, it fits pretty well with ours."
The partnership will allow Crew SC to send younger players on loan to the Aztex to get professional games under their belt that they would not otherwise get with the first team.
The Aztex announced the move at their launch party Tuesday ahead of their first season in USL PRO. A former iteration of the team existed in the old US second divisions from 2008-10 before becoming Orlando City in October 2010, and the resurrected Aztex played in the USL Premier Development League in 2012 and 2013 (pictured above).
While they may be new to USL PRO, Berhalter believes the Aztex will find early success and said their expansion-team status did not affect talks at all.
"They're very well prepared, very thorough … and they've got a good structure in their club," he said. "That's what was most important. So to put our players in an environment where they're expected to perform and expected to compete for a championship was important to us."
Working in the Aztex's favor is their big-name head coach, Paul Dalglish, son of Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish. The Aztex boss played professionally in England, Scotland and MLS with the Houston Dynamo and began his coaching career in the Dynamo's academy system before coaching in the USSF Division 2 Professional League (as the second tier was known in 2010) and the USL PDL. With the PDL Aztex, Dalglish coached several players who have already gone on to MLS, including Kekuta Manneh (Vancouver Whitecaps), Kris Tyrpak (San Jose Earthquakes) and Michael Lisch (Houston Dynamo).
He most recently worked as an assistant to Real Salt Lake head coach Jeff Cassar.
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Berhalter said he and Dalglish "go way back" and met in England as early as 1999.
"Paul is a young manager who has strong opinions about the game and has a certain way he wants to play and excels in coaching the offensive group," Berhalter said. "I think it's going to be an exciting team in Austin."
With the change in affiliation comes a change in mindset. Berhalter said the team may change the kind of player they sends on loan, and he expects the loan spells to be longer this year, especially given Austin's distance from Columbus.
"We expect guys to be there for a longer period of time, and really we're trying to address the guys that didn't get enough playing time this year to develop," he said. "The guys that are getting regular playing time for us, we won't send them to the odd game like in Dayton. ... We look at guys who got very little minutes this year and still need to develop. Those are guys who we're looking to address in this partnership."
