Lower League America returns with Episode 8 covering the USL playoffs, as both the Eastern and Western Conference finals will kick off this weekend. New York Red Bulls II will visit Louisville City FC on Friday night, while Orange County SC will host Phoenix Rising FC on Saturday. The two winners will meet in Thursday’s final at 8 p.m. ET at the home of the team with the best regular-season record. Host Jason Davis welcomes USL commentator Mike Watts to size up all the action.

You can watch Episodes 1-7 below:

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Photo credit: Hayden Schiff

Two weeks ago or so, you may have started following Dan DiMicco, the new majority owner of the Charlotte Independence. And if you’re the average American soccer fan, there’s a good chance you stopped following him shortly thereafter.

DiMicco was president Donald Trump’s trade advisor during the 2016 presidential election, and his Twitter timeline shows it. Such outspoken opinions have been known to derail American soccer owners before. Kyle Eng, the previous majority owner of Arizona United, sold his stake after the supporters’ group La Hermandad 1912 boycotted the team simply for Eng’s support of Trump.

So should Independence fans be worried about their new big-money owner being boycotted out of American soccer? The short answer: probably not.

DiMicco’s tweets are mostly harmless. His timeline consists mostly of re-tweets, and while people generally re-tweet things they agree with, one should be careful to conflate those with endorsements. Of his actual constructed tweets, a vast majority of them focus on issues of fiscal conservatism. It should serve as no surprise that someone rich enough to own a majority stake in a Division 2 soccer league would be a fiscal conservative. According to a New York Times exit poll, voters making $250,000 or more preferred Trump in 2016 by two points and voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 by the same margin.

Further, a vast majority of his fiscally conservative tweets relate to China, which is also logical considering his vast experience in the steel industry (he was CEO of the Charlotte-based Nucor Corporation), an industry China is trying its hardest to gain a foothold in. So in a sense, it was only natural that now-President Trump would reach out to DiMicco during the 2016 campaign for help in crafting Trump’s trade platform.

By the way, fiscal conservatism may not mean what it used to in large part due to DiMicco. As recently as 2015, congressional Republicans and then-president Barack Obama had struck a deal in an unusual alliance to support and eventually ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). It was to be a huge win for free trade and a push against China (which the TPP did not include). However, as the ratification process stumbled along, Democratic pushback led both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders to declare against the TPP. It was one of their few points of agreement with then-candidate Trump, who claimed that similar trade agreements — NAFTA in particular — were harmful both to the American business climate and to the American worker.

It was an effective economic populist message to lower-class and lower-middle-class workers, who hadn’t felt the wage growth apparent in the rest of the economy, and it was probably why Trump performed better than expected in areas like the Midwest, where free-trade agreements were arguably the most harmful. So while fiscal conservatives maintain an affinity for domestic free trade (this is the genesis of many a Republican deregulation call), they’re becoming more skeptical of international free trade, in no small part due to China’s currency manipulation.

This may not seem like it has much to do with soccer, but it’s important to understand DiMicco’s role in Trump’s campaign beyond “he helped him get elected.” If you weren’t at all interested in the last two paragraphs, you probably have few complaints over what lies nearest and dearest to DiMicco. As trade advisor to then-candidate Trump, DiMicco’s likely contribution was in the crafting of that economic populism message.

If tweets are a good indication of how one spends their time, DiMicco will likely continue to focus on his manufacturing interests, limiting his role in running the Independence to hiring the right people and writing checks.

But there could be repercussions if DiMicco’s non-economic political views start to bleed into his running of the team. American soccer fans trend younger and more diverse than the typical sports fan, and probably wouldn’t take kindly to a public rebuke of a player kneeling for the anthem, for example.

Other than a few liked tweets, however, there isn’t much evidence yet to suggest DiMicco would take action on such things. If president Jim McPhilliamy continues to run the team, drawing on DiMicco for funding and help in the business sector, the future of the Independence is bright.

(Disclosure: Ian works for a local Democratic Party in North Carolina.)

Follow Ian on Twitter: @ianarmasfoster.

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Here’s a gallery from Indy’s 1-0 loss to FC Cincinnati via Soc Takes photojournalist Robbie Mehling:

Follow Robbie on Twitter: @RobbMeh.

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“MLS Fantasy Boss” Reid Connelly and 2018 MLS Fantasy spring champion Tod Modisette join co-hosts Kevin Johnston and John Lenard to preview the 2019 season from a fantasy perspective.

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