The setting is a magisterial April evening in Orlando, and even in the press box, the sing-song chorus of the purple-hued Orlando City supporters groups “manning the wall” at the refurbished Florida Citrus Bowl are riotous and audible. Once again, the MLS expansion club has 30,000 plus in the seats, en route to an expansion attendance record through their first month and a sign that MLS, once again, chose wisely in its decision to drink from the expansion chalice. Drawing 60,000 fans on night one against New York City FC, and at least 30,000 since (up until this weekend’s match at home against reigning champion LA Galaxy), Orlando hasn’t just met expectations, it has exceeded them, embracing soccer in a way that conjures up mental images of the roaring crowds in Portland and Seattle.

On this night last week, what’s even more remarkable is that they are in full throat late in a 0-0 game (DC United would win a game in which they were thoroughly dominated with a goal in stoppage time); cheering and singing as if their very voices would will a winner into the net for the Lions. Listening as I write a mundane postgame story, I begin to say “soccer is here” before I catch and chastise myself for a phrase I’ve grown to resent. I’d promised to stop waiting for the “soccer has arrived” moment a year or so ago, vowing that I’d let it happen at the organic, childlike growth rate that it was already occurring at. There was no need for a watershed moment. Small and subtle benchmarks will do: an expansion success here, a decorated Italian player in his prime playing there.

That I have to remind myself not to make this wonderful moment anything beyond a moment reminds me: American soccer fans are an insecure lot, still. A decade ago, back when Bill Simmons blogged on page 2, before US qualifiers were in HD and MLS had anything resembling fixed television coverage and Fox Soccer Channel existed and was part of an “added tier” to your cable package (Man, is it dusty in here? I’m as sentimental as a Rockwell painting all the sudden…), the insecurities were worse, of course. Most of our legion had mental if not actual “Answers to this bad American argument about why soccer sucks” lists and/or flashcards we carried with us at almost all times. We spent more time apologizing for the guy in the Guy Harvey shirt that studied in London and “loved Man U” than we did advocating or enjoying our game. I don’t miss those days. But the fact that they’ve largely since departed them doesn’t mean the insecurities are gone. They’ve just grown more layered and complicated.

Soccer stateside used to be about survival. The questions were simply about whether a lasting place or even niche could be carved, with most debates involving American-based critics and cynics firing off salvos that rang more like old standards: not enough scoring, not physical enough, boring, too European (my favorite, because what the hell did that ever mean) and the like. Those debates were irritating, swirling like gnats in summer, ritualistic, sometimes racist and myopic, but at least they were predictable.

The debates today — soccer’s niche carved and place in the American sporting landscape and lexicon only a question of size — are far less so. They are about direction and implementation and chickens and eggs and which comes first and at times it is all a bit overwhelming. American soccer used to be the game with the big tent. It resembles more and more a collection of small and encircled camps.

Soccer remains the ultimate “find the global within the local” sport, and its parochialism is, even in the digital and social media age, part of its charm, mystery and appeal. The parochial within the global has become increasingly evident of late in the American game, where the fervent followers of the sport have a deep sense of community, whether it is on social media or in fan groups like the American Outlaws, who take their sense of community and belonging to the far corners of the globe.

In the United States, developing a sense of community and harnessing the draw of the parochial, is part and parcel part of US Soccer’s growth strategy. Build community, build great supporters groups, extend your base, extend your audience. The formula has worked in Seattle and Portland and Kansas City and in Salt Lake and elsewhere and the search to replicate that sense of belonging and organic support is almost always central to the conversation about further expansion (see, any conversation about Sacramento, San Antonio and Minnesota). Organic love and affection for club are essential to the entrenchment of Major League Soccer, and MLS, the argument goes, is essential to the growth of US soccer. That the second part of the argument has piggybacked on the first is a discussion for another time. The first portion of the argument is compelling enough.

Indeed, so engrained into the American soccer psyche is the idea of community that Alexi Lalas, one of the game’s best spokesmen stateside for two decades, suggested two years ago that you “can’t support soccer in the US without supporting MLS.” The statement was meant as a rallying cry for local/global growth of the game in this country, a short yet sweeping critique of the “aughts” tendency of the typical US Soccer fan to focus far more on global leagues- namely the Barclays Premier League, than the game at home. Viewed only in that lens, which was unquestionably Lalas’s intent, the statement was correct and motivating. The game doesn’t grow in the United States because of the Guy Harvey guy wearing a Man United hat at the bar on Friday night speaking elegantly and effusively about how he’s loved the Red Devils since he studied in London. That’s just douchey. That’s bad for American soccer.

The problem, of course, is that over the past two years, Lalas’s rallying cry has been interpreted beyond that motivational critique, becoming more a justification for MLS protectionism than a call to action. In the character limited frame of Twitter, utilizing MLS to illustrate a larger point about the need for soccer fans to support their local clubs to grow the game in America makes sense, and Lalas knew that.  There was never any intent to exclude swaths of the country without MLS. But that’s what’s happened, in many instances.

This isn’t all or even largely Lalas’s fault. His tweet was misinterpreted and he expressed a sentiment long held by others. Plus, when you have a national team manager that criticizes (his) league players only to see a press conference held by the commissioner, there isn’t exactly leadership by example coming from headquarters on the issue of fan inclusion.

If you aren’t “for MLS, you’re against it.”

Argue for a promotion and relegation system in the United States, similar to every major soccer country in the world? That’s against MLS. (And yes, I’m well aware that the pro/rel folks don’t help themselves framing the debate, either. Read Will Parchman on that question.)

Praise the NASL, its free market principles and open bidding, or even give half-credit to its brazen (for better and worse) commissioner Bill Peterson openly, and the perception is you aren’t for MLS. After all, Peterson refuses to accept second-division status in a development and professional soccer pyramid that isn’t really a pyramid (the nerve of that guy!), so he must loathe MLS.

Make the argument that Jürgen Klinsmann is right to look at players like Miguel Ibarra of Minnesota United, who MLS missed on, and you aren’t being genuine. Klinsmann can’t stand MLS. He’s just trolling the league, the argument goes, no matter its merit.

Criticisms of MLS remain sound as long as they remain compartmentalized and in-bounds.

You can argue passionately that the CONCACAF Champions League is futile, until you live tweet every moment once a MLS team makes the semifinals, and that’s fine, because your criticism is really about CCL and not MLS. And when MLS loses in the final, you can talk about the flaws of MLS at present because contemporary criticism doesn’t tear at the whole edifice. Ditto criticisms of the new CBA, or discovery rules, or allocation rules, or young designated players from CONMEBOL nations yet to receive senior team caps rules (which one did I make up?)—which are all about what the league can do better, not about the merits of anything outside of the league.

It’s a “join or die” mentality, the result being too often criticisms of MLS, even from the national team manager, that become polemics about MLS, and things to be protected against.

That’s a shame, because within the specter of the “with us or against” us rhetoric, there’s plenty of great things happening in American soccer. And many of them are happening outside of MLS, whose collective bargaining fight dominated league headlines until opening weekend.

In Jacksonville, one night after the sing-song Orlando supporters were sent home unhappy, 16,164 fans saw the opening match for another Florida expansion team, the Jacksonville Armada, who play in the North American Soccer League. The crowd was a record for the recently reformed NASL, and one of three matches in Florida that week that saw a combined attendance of over 60,000 fans. It goes without saying that two of the matches that attracted that number of fans occurred in the second division of American soccer is another benchmark for the progress of American soccer. It’s a shame so few nationally heard or paid it much notice.

Jacksonville has succeeded, averaging about 11,000 a night, by tapping into the local, the same way Orlando and Seattle and Portland built their support organically. There’s a strong sense of community and civic pride in Jacksonville, and the ownership group, headed by local businessman Mark Frisch, has effectively dialed into that sense of community. As far removed from opening night as 2013, Frisch was thrilled about what the Armada were building.

“We have a great mix of people here in Jacksonville,” Frisch told me in 2013. “When you look at the soccer landscape specifically, we have very competitive teams at every level from youth clubs, to high school, to college, to (then current) NPSL team Jax United.  There is certainly a strong passion for soccer here in Jacksonville.  I see it and hear it every day.”

Jacksonville had drawn nearly 100,000 people to two US Men’s National team matches before the Armada kicked off their inaugural season, but national team matches, regardless of city, don’t tend to be predictive of club level success. There were questions as to what type of draw a second division team would be.

Frisch was undeterred. “The NASL is a professional soccer league,” Frisch said. “Yes, it is second division but the league brings great athletes to the pitch.  So that high level of play coming to Jacksonville is certainly exciting to our soccer fans here.  To the casual fan, it is a great night out with the family, friends, coworkers, etc. and a great experience to interact with professional athletes up close and a good way to embrace and fall in love with the game.”

Jacksonville Armada supporters’ group leader Kyle MacNaughton told longtime Jacksonville sportswriter Gene Frenette that supporting the team was about civic pride: “People my age are in love with whatever team is Jacksonville’s own, and a lot of us are soccer fans. We’re not a one-horse town.”

Less than a minute- 12 seconds, in fact- into their opening night, both Frisch and MacNaughton were rewarded with an Armada goal. Former Manchester United product Jemal Johnson scored 12 seconds in. Johnson’s goal was just one more incredible wrinkle to a great expansion story, and the team’s attacking style has built on that moment in the month since.

And the Armada are just one great story in the NASL.

The New York Cosmos haven’t lost, having signed the legendary Raúl in the offseason and then playing to crowds of 25,000 on a tour that included a match in El Salvador. Next month, the Cosmos will become the first American professional sports franchise to play in Cuba since the reset of diplomatic relations announced by President Obama early this year.

The Cosmos brand continues to prove valuable globally, and with the signing of promising US U-17 product Haji Wright this spring, it appears to have worth among players as well. The Cosmos are operating, as Brian Straus wrote last month, like a big club, and while attendance figures remain modest, the Cosmos, and the league itself, have seen a 2,000 or so increase across the board with improvements both at the ownership and stadium level and on the pitch.

In south Florida, stadium improvements and an influx of Brazilian talent have helped Fort Lauderdale play attractive, attacking soccer immediately, after early questions about the new ownership group’s intent. Meanwhile, the Railhawks saw Traffic Sports invest in stadium improvements and enter into, last month, serious negotiations to sell the team to local owners, an important move for the NASL, which could end up shedding the Traffic Sports label altogether only half a decade or so into its rebirth. Clubs that are owned locally almost always tend to flourish better than teams that serve as tax shelters, and Traffic’s exit from the NASL would be massive progress on top of massive progress.

In Minnesota, a transition to Major League Soccer beckons and Bill Peterson wishes them well, choosing in a conference call this April not to criticize the Loons for leaving NASL but arguing instead, with some justice, that their transition is also a testament to the NASL’s ability to identify burgeoning soccer markets.

The North American Soccer League isn’t without its questions, to be sure, but the idea that people give the league short shrift seems antithetical to the big tent push to grow the game in the United States. These disputes among fans about whether you can support NASL and MLS contemporaneously are all fires that should be put out as the game grows, with a nod and a wink acknowledging that perhaps they are just that, growing pains.

After all, you don’t hear too many Barclays Premier League fans chastising the existence of the Championship, or League One, or so on. Strong lower divisions foundationalize strong soccer houses. American fans would do well to see that. If they don’t, well, they are missing some great stories.