National Indoor Soccer League (2008-2009)

Background

The NISL of the two offshoot leagues, along with the Xtreme Soccer League (2008-2009) which formed in 2008 out of the crack-up of the second Major Indoor Soccer League (2001-2008).  The resulting two leagues were both very small. The NISL had five clubs, distributed awkwardly from the Northeastern U.S. down to Monterrey, Mexico. The rival XSL had just four teams.

Originally, the NISL was supposed to include Baltimore, Monterrey, Orlando, Philadelphia and Rockford (Illinois). Rockford was a new club, while the other four were refugees from the MISL. However, the Orlando Sharks club disbanded in late October 2008, just three weeks before the NISL’s scheduled opening matches. League officials hastily recruited a semi-professional club from the Springfield, Massachusetts – the Massachusetts Twisters – to replace the Sharks. The Twisters were horribly over-matched in the NISL, posting a record of 1-17 and at one point losing a match by the score of 43-0.

The Baltimore Blast won the only NISL championship in April 2009, defeating the Rockford Rampage in a single-game final at 1st Mariner Arena in downtown Baltimore.

Following the 2008-09 season, the Massachusetts Twisters disbanded. Baltimore, Monterrey, Philadelphia and Rockford made peace with the Milwaukee Wave, the only surviving member of the rival Xtreme Soccer League. Ten days before the start of the 2009-10 season, those five clubs took back the old Major Indoor Soccer League name they had abandoned just over a year earlier and re-branded themselves as the 3rd version of the MISL.

National Soccer League Franchise List (2008-2009)

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