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    Categories: Lights

Las Vegas Lights To Begin Signing Players This Week

About 500 soccer players dreaming of making the Las Vegas Lights FC came out on Saturdau and that group was trimmed to 75 for Sunday's scrimmages. Maybe one or two could be signed by the United Soccer League team that begins pre-season play in February.

By ALAN SNEL

 

The downtown Las Vegas Lights FC soccer team is getting down to the details of signing players as 30 pros were scheduled to arrive in Las Vegas Sunday night with salary negotiations set for this week.

 

But Lights owner Brett Lashbrook told LVSportsBiz.com said Sunday that just because there are salary talks, it doesn’t mean all the players will be signed. In fact, Lashbrook predicted that perhaps 10 of the players will sign. The number of players on the Lights roster could be in the 23-30 range, Lashbrook noted. The players who are in town could be talking with other pro soccer teams, too, he said.

 

Players prepare for a soccer scrimmage held by the Lights Sunday.

 

LVSportsBiz.com caught up with Lashbrook Sunday mid-day when about 75 Las Vegas area players were trying to catch the eye of colorful Lights coach Jose Luis Sanchez Sola (also known as “Chelis”), who stood in the middle of a scrimmage game at the Kellogg Zaher Soccer Complex.

 

Here’s Lashbrook in his own words about this weekend’s combine, which he hopes will yield at least one signed player.  But it will be Chelis, a star soccer coach from Mexico who also coached in the MLS, who will decide the player signings.

The Lights will play three pre-season games at Cashman Field in February and then begin their United Soccer League season in March. They will share Cashman with the Las Vegas 51s baseball team in 2018. But then the soccer club will have the venue to itself in 2019 when the 51s are scheduled to move into a new ballpark in Summerlin next to City National Arena, the NHL Vegas Golden Knights headquarters and practice center.

 

Follow LVSportsBiz.com on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and contact LVSportsBiz.com founder/writer Alan Snel at asnel@LVSportsBiz.com 

 

Alan Snel: Alan Snel brings decades of sports-business reporting experience to LVSportsBiz.com. Snel covered the business side of sports for the South Florida (Fort Lauderdale) Sun-Sentinel, the Tampa Tribune and Las Vegas Review-Journal. As a city hall beat reporter, Snel also covered stadium deals in Denver and Seattle. In 2000, Snel launched a sport-business website for FoxSports.com called FoxSportsBiz.com. After reporting sports-business for the RJ, Snel wrote hard-hitting stories on the Raiders stadium for the Desert Companion magazine in Las Vegas and The Nevada Independent. Snel is also one of the top bicycle advocates in the country.
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