There was just no way the Columbus Crew’s fans were going to let their team leave. That was, after all, the plan. Crew owner Anthony Precourt announced last season that it was his intention to relocate the franchise to Austin, Texas, with a deal agreed with the city of Austin for the contraction of a $225 million stadium for the new team. Precourt perhaps didn’t count on the response from the Mapfre Stadium stands, though.

Austin is still getting its team, with the city awarded a Major League Soccer expansion place just last week. Precourt was on stage with league commissioner Don Garber as the announcement was made that Austin FC would start play in 2021. But they will join a division that continues to count the Columbus Crew as a member.

The Crew are now embarking on an exciting new era. Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam completed a takeover, backed by various supporters groups. The future of the club in Columbus was secured as Tim Bezbatchenko was lured from Toronto FC as general manager and Caleb Porter was appointed head coach. 

2018 was a year most at the Columbus Crew will hope to forget; 2019, on the other hand, is set to be one to remember.

From now on, the tale of the Columbus Crew and their steadfast refusal to leave their home will serve as an illustration of how MLS differs from other sporting leagues in the United States. Had the Crew played in the NBA or NFL, it very well might have been the case that Precourt would have got his wishes. However, the MLS — and soccer in general — cultivates a very different culture with very different values.

Relocation and rebranding have always been a quirk of the North American sporting landscape. It’s not something commonly seen in soccer in Europe. It happened in England once, with Wimbledon moving to Milton Keynes to become MK Dons. But even in that unique case, it is a millstone that continues to hang around the neck of the sport in that country. The backlash was so severe it’s unlikely that another English club will ever relocate in such a way again.

Of course, there is backlash in other American sporting leagues whenever there is a relocation. Look at how the Oakland Raiders fanbase has rallied against plans to take the NFL franchise to Las Vegas. It was the same in St Louis and San Diego when the Rams and the Chargers both moved to Los Angeles.

However, the Raiders will eventually move to Las Vegas just as the Rams and the Chargers did in 2016 and 2017, respectively. That’s where the difference between other sporting leagues and MLS can be found. As the Columbus Crew fans showed, fanbases in North American soccer are intertwined with the teams they support in a way that isn’t common in the NBA or NFL. 

It has become a cliche of the modern game to claim that soccer clubs are brands — that their purpose can be boiled down to a numerical value. But at their core, soccer clubs are communities. Remove them from those communities and they become nothing. They represent nothing. They stand for nothing. 

Ripping the Columbus Crew out of Columbus would have left a gaping hole, not just in the city’s sporting landscape, but in its society. Precourt didn’t seem concerned with this, but he was faced with plenty who were. Franchises might have owners, but soccer is not owned by any one person. It was not Precourt’s to take away.

Precourt likely won’t be the last MLS owner to have thoughts of relocation, but at least now the Columbus Crew stand as something of a deterrent — just as is the case with the MK Dons in England. They also stand as a picture of MLS’s unique nature, of its charm, and of the way it is rooted in community, not capitalism.

Graham Ruthven is a soccer writer based in the U.K. He has written for the New York Times, Guardian, Eurosport, Bleacher Report, and others.