The most successful Charlotte FC team this season is not the one that plays at Bank of America Stadium. Crown Legacy FC, the club's MLS NEXT Pro development side, sits second in the Eastern Conference at 8-2-6, and for the first half of the year it has done both of the jobs a reserve team is built to do: win, and hand players up to the team above it.
Those two jobs do not always align. A reserve team can win by leaning on older players, or it can lose while giving teenagers minutes. Crown Legacy, in its fourth season, has been doing both at once, which is the whole reason a club runs a development side in the first place.
The players moving up
The clearest evidence is on the First Team roster. On April 10, Charlotte FC signed forward Rodolfo Aloko off the Crown Legacy roster to a First Team contract, a U22 Initiative deal that runs through 2030. Aloko had opened the MLS NEXT Pro season with back-to-back braces and was named the league's Player of the Month for March. Eleven days later, the club triggered the Homegrown option on midfielder Aron John, a Charlotte native, making him the fourth Homegrown player in club history.
Two others made the same jump earlier. Goalkeeper Isaac Walker and midfielder Baye Coulibaly both earned First Team deals after coming through Crown Legacy.
A record March, then a record season
The winning half of the equation started fast. Crown Legacy went 4-0-0 in March and scored 17 goals, which the club says is the most any team has scored in an opening month in MLS NEXT Pro history. The league named it Team of the Month. The side is run by Kevin Sawchak, in his first full season as head coach after being appointed in January.
The scoring has not been a one-man effort. Forward Hugo Mbongue has 8 goals and 3 assists and has converted all three of his penalties. Forward Nathan Richmond leads the team with 8 assists to go with 5 goals.
The teenagers
The other half of a development team's job is minutes for young players, and Crown Legacy has spent them. Nimfasha Berchimas, a High Point native who signed with Charlotte FC as a homegrown player at 14, has 8 goals in 14 games. In March, academy forward Daniel Brown came off the bench against Huntsville and became, by the club's count, the ninth-youngest player ever to appear in an MLS NEXT Pro match, at 14 years and nine months.
What it means upstairs
Whether any of this reaches Bank of America Stadium is a longer question. Aloko, John, Walker, and Coulibaly are on the First Team roster now; how many minutes they get is a separate matter. The first team, which just placed three players and its head coach in the MLS All-Star Game, sits at 6-6-3 through the World Cup break and has spent the year around .500.
The point of a development side is to make the question worth asking. This year, Crown Legacy has. It returns to the field Saturday against New York City FC II, still second in the East.