This title is a misnomer because we know nothing about Louisville City or Racing Louisville’s spring training camps other than they are presumably still happening. Ben Hulsman is giving daily updates on Instagram stories about who’s winning some kind of scrimmage tournament the guys are having, so check that out.
We’ve gotten a couple nice highlight pieces on Emina Ekic and Wes Charpie in the last week or so, but other than that, nada. That’s okay, I guess, as the fewer distractions the teams and staffs have to deal with, the better, but still. No news means I have to start digging into stuff, and I’m a busy guy.
We still have no idea who’s on Christy Holly’s staff. We don’t know how the non-rostered invitees are doing. We don’t know if the ones that were there a few weeks ago are still around, or if they’ve been replace, or if so, by whom. All of this is normal, of course, but that makes it no less frustrating for those of us thirsting for Louisville soccer-related news.
We did, unfortunately, get some news about a youth soccer immigration visa scandal that tangentially involves Christy Holly, so I guess I should mention that.
This Boston Globe article plus Steph Yang’s reporting at All for XI are going to do a far better job explaining what’s going with the federal charges and what they mean than I could do, and I highly recommend checking out both of them. To paraphrase, a youth soccer company called GPS that operated out of Massachusetts submitted basically fake or fraudulent visa applications to bring people into the US under the guise of scouts or NWSL team employees when they were really going to be coaches for GPS’s coterie of satellite clubs.
Immigration fraud is a pretty big deal, and GPS’s intentions behind getting these fraudulent visas was essentially to exploit youth soccer coaches for cheap employment. Christy Holly didn’t likely know much about any of these nefarious legal machinations, but was the link to GPS when he was head coach at Sky Blue FC.
Holly’s name is already poison in the mouths of most NWSL fans online, which admittedly probably isn’t a lot of people. However, if you’ve spent much time in the soccer twitterverse (DON’T), you’ll know that there are a few very loud individuals with OPINIONS about WHAT IS WRONG WITH AMERICAN SOCCER and AMERICA and ONLY THEIR PLAN can FIX IT. The NWSL subset of these loud folks is even more tight-knit, as you might expect. And several members of this subset realllllllyyyy don’t like Christy Holly, or Amanda Duffy, or Soccer Holdings, or Racing Louisville. And they are very YOUR AUNT’S POLITICAL OPINIONS ON FACEBOOK IN 2020 about it.
Holly was not named as a defendant in the charging document. He’s not named in there at all, actually. He’s not identified as a co-conspirator. At most, at present, he’s a witness. Visa fraud is a pretty big deal, and it’s not good for anyone to be involved in it because the penalties are, shall we say, severe. But Holly doesn’t appear to be at risk of any of that.
Nonetheless, having your name bandied around in such a context is not a good thing. It’s not a disqualifying thing or anything else, but it’s not good. Based on the filings, it doesn’t appear that anything more will come of it, which is certainly best for Holly and Racing Louisville. Let’s hope that’s the case.
