When Gian Neglia took over as sporting director of the Las Vegas Lights in February, it was a team in name only.
That’s not a figure of speech but a literal description of the situation Neglia inherited. The Lights, who played in the second-tier USL Championship, had no coach, no players and no employees on the soccer side when he joined the team less than two weeks before training camp was scheduled to start.
“We didn’t know where we were going to have training camp. So we needed to find a place, we needed to set up games,” Neglia said. “You really sit down and think about everything that we did and everything that needed to be done in the time frame that it needed to be done, you might think to yourself, well, maybe this isn’t the right move to make.”
He certainly wouldn’t have thought that three months later the Lights would be preparing for arguably the biggest match in team history, a U.S. Open Cup round of 32 match against LAFC on Wednesday in Las Vegas.
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LAFC’s short-lived relationship with the Lights is one of the reasons the cupboard was empty when Neglia arrived. For two seasons the team was the MLS club’s affiliate in the second-tier USL Championship, with the players living and training in Los Angeles, then traveling to Las Vegas for home games.
Steve Cherundolo, who has taken LAFC to consecutive MLS Cup finals, got his U.S. managerial start there in 2021, and former and current LAFC players — including Danny Musovski, Christian Torres, Bryce Duke and Tomás Romero — played there. But the affiliation agreement, which was actually separate one-year deals, ended after the 2023 season, leaving the Lights to hire a new coaching staff and 25 new players.
That team won just three games last season, and in January, founding owner Brett Lashbrook sold the rights to the Lights to former baseball all-star José Bautista. Some assembly was required since the team once again had no coaches or players. But for Bautista, that made the investment more desirable.
“It’s somewhat of a rescue project,” he said in a video interview from his home office in Tampa, Fla. “You have to get your hands dirty. But I liked the fact that it was a project that you have…