So, you’re not from North America and you want to know who Sporting JAX are? Fasten your seatbelts, chums: I’m about to give you an introduction to the alien world of North American sports!

It’s only fair that you have to get round heads round this, as our North American fans have had to work out how the European club model works, so it’s about time we got a taste of their medicine. I’m not going to pretend I can explain in as eloquent and clear a manner as “Welcome to Wrexham” did in Season one, but I’ll give it a stab!

Sporting JAX will offer a serious work-out for our Champions League adventure next week, as they nearly won the top tier of women’s football last season. However (this is where it gets complicated for the likes of us!), it wasn’t the league the US national team draws its players from!

Unlike in Europe, South America and most other traditional football countries, there’s no promotion and relegation in the North American leagues. So far, so simple, but oddly the women’s game in the USA has two top divisions! The NWSL is the long-established league we all think of when we talk about the game across the Atlantic, which certainly showed the way to Europe and featured icons like Hope Solo, Abby Wambach and Megan Rapinoe.

However, there is another top division! The USLS is a much newer creation, founded just two years ago. It is recognised by USSF, the governing body of football in the USA, as equal to the NWSL, although the truth is more complex, at the moment at least.

Clearly, the NWSL is a much higher level. It has bigger crowds, pays higher salaries and features better players. Most teams have their own purpose-built stadiums, whereas the USLS teams share existing venues with other sports teams.

Of course, everybody has to start somewhere, and while the USLS doesn’t boast the big city glamour of NWSL, we must remember that the USA is big! There are substantial cities represented in the USLS, and clearly there is potential to grow into an equivalent to the NWSL. I guess the ideal would be to emulate MLB, divided between the American League and National League with the post-season bringing the best of both conferences together, culminating in the World Series.

Sporting Jax are a new club, and last season was their first. They primarily recruited young players from college football, with only a couple having previous professional experience, and enjoyed a remarkable first campaign. Going into the final game of the season they were top of the league, but a controversial late penalty in another game denied them. In truth, they ought to have closed out the title as they had raced into a strong lead but ran out of momentum during the run-in. Worse was to follow, and here’s another key difference between US sport and the model we’re familiar with over here.

Winning the league carries nothing like the same cachet in North America as it does here, which explains why the rather artificial elevation of Inter Miami to last Summer’s Club World Cup, in order to involve Lionel Messi, was so farcical. They finished top of the league, but fell away in the post-season and that’s what matters Stateside. It’s all about the post-season, and Sporting couldn’t close the deal, losing the semi-final at home to Carolina Ascent.

Still, it was a brilliant opening season, and they have recruited heavily this Summer as they hope to earn their first trophy.

First Team Coach, Stacey Balaam, deserves a huge amount of credit for pulling an entire squad together and nearly guiding them to the ultimate prize in one season, and was a popular choice as USLS Coach of the Season, earning a massive 78% of the vote with the runner-up getting just 6%. A former England Under-19 international, she played in Iceland and the USA before moving into coaching, and has earned huge praise not only for her squad-building, but also for pulling together a group of players who have gelled well off the pitch. Interestingly, she’s been glued to the Wrexham story and was in The Turf on the day of the match against Charlton which earned promotion to the Championship! She couldn’t get her hands on a ticket, though, and had to watch the game in a pub in town!

She has been assisted in her squad-building by a familiar face: Mark Warburton is Sporting Director and Head of Soccer at Sporting JAX, having been a successful manager in the UK for Brentford, who he took into the Championship, Rangers, who he returned to the top tier after demotion, Nottingham Forest and QPR.