Cleveland Force

The badge on the shirts today belongs, strictly speaking, to a team that folded in 1988. That earlier Cleveland Force played indoor soccer in the old Major Indoor Soccer League, packing crowds through the late 1970s and into the 1980s before the club shut down. Decades later, when three Cleveland youth clubs — CSA Impact, Cleveland United and Internationals SC — merged into one organisation, they revived the name, and with it the blue and yellow.

Exactly when that revived club began is not something the record settles cleanly. USL League Two's own listing traces it to 2011, back when it operated only as a youth programme; Wikipedia dates the current organisation to the 2018 merger. The senior side itself did not reach USL League Two until 2022.

Home matches are played at Krenzler Field, on the Cleveland State University campus, which holds 1,680 spectators.

The club's trophy case, by its own account, belongs to the age groups — Under-13s, ECNL sides, an Ohio State Cup — rather than the senior team, which has yet to break the hold Steel City FC has on the Great Forest division.

Its graduates page carries more weight than that cabinet: Darlington Nagbe heads the list, with Brad Stuver and Justin Morrow also coming through the same setup.

The fixtures that matter most locally are against Akron City FC and Lorain County Leviathan FC, the three sides' meetings bundled together as the Orange Barrel Cup.