MLS 2 and Pro/Rel (possibly)

There has been talk of the MLS cooperating with the USL and NASL to develop players. What if they took that one step further and merged the MLS reserve league with NASL and USL. in 2015, hopefully when the cosmos enter the MLS, and the first season of a new CBA, the NASL will have 10 teams and the USL will have 13 teams. This means 20 MLS teams and 23 D2/3 teams. Eliminate Antiga and barbuda, as well as the USL team in tampa, the flames, as well as one more, and possibly relocate some teams to bring them to bigger markets, better stadiums, etc. Then, affiliate each "MLS 2" team with and MLS team and have the MLS team transfer it's reserve roster to the "MLS 2" team along with the players already at the club. The new league would be a great place to develop players and evaluate talent. It would work like a farm system. It would have and increased quality of play than even NASL, and could work to develop soccer in more markets than the MLS can go to. The MLS can also evaluate potential expansion/relocation markets by looking at their succes in "MLS 2". It could also lead to a Pro/Rel system (for those of you pro/rel lovers) by eventually ending affiliations and promoting 2-4 teams to MLS and relegating 2-4 teams from MLS

I agree

I heard pro/rel can cure male pattern baldness.

It's a wonder drug.

3-2-1

You lost us at "the MLS"

The rest of your post is not worth commenting on at this time.

Reserve teams competing in the lower divisions?
Possible.

USL and NASL merger?
Unlikely. They split a few years back for a reason. It's going to take some time before both ownership groups are willing to work together again.

Pro/Rel?
Highly unlikely.

With a username like "Goforthekill", you can't say we weren't warned.

Actually my username refers to the coach of the Minnesota golden Gophers football team. I should have put Gopherthekill or Killthegopher but anyways, his name is jerry kill, and he looks exactly like a gopher, look him up. Just for the record, i am not in favor of Pro/Rel, just put it in as a possibility.

Pro/Rel will never be viable if it starts from the top down. Hell, even Tinfoil Teddy recognizes this. If the teams in USL-Pro were all that concerned about pro/rel, they'd demand pro/rel with the PDL.

It's also important to note that NASL and USL hate each other (which has been mentioned)

It's also important to note that teams are in USL-Pro because they're not good enough to be in NASL.

But it's ok, it's not like we've said these things 50 times already

I am not against the idea of having MLS teams use lower division teams as farm clubs. It seems to work fairly well in baseball and hockey.

Making USL and NASL farm teams immediately ends any chance of their being pro/rel with those teams, which I think is a good thing. Once they become farm clubs, even independent farm clubs MLS teams will grow to like the idea of having a place where spare bodies and kids not ready for the limelight can keep fit and earn playing experience. They won't give that up and then allow the same teams they supported as farm clubs to turn into competitors. Now if they allow the number of farm teams to be larger than the number of MLS teams, then of course they can evaluate those markets for expansion. That just makes sense.

You had a kernel of a good idea here and then ruined by throwing in pro/rel. Even the six people who want Major League Baseball to have pro/rel admit that they would need to radically change the Minor Leagues before that happens. The Yankees don't want their AAA club to replace the Pirates in the Big Leagues and no one wants the Pirates as a AAA affiliate when they get demoted in the first season.

This plan does not work: 1) Pro/Rel....2) ????????....3) Magic!
This plan also does not work: 1) Minor League Soccer....2) Successful Minor League Soccer....3)Pro/Rel.....4)Magic!

Are you talking about level of play or financial structure? Because there isn't much of a difference between the talent in the USL-Pro and NASL. Outside of the horrible Antigua and Dayton, most USL-Pro teams are good enough to play in the NASL.

A number of USL-Pro teams, like Rochester, chose to be in USL-Pro for financial reasons. Economically it didn't make sense for them to be in the NASL with the USSF's D2 standards. But then you have a USL-Pro club like Orlando which probably had a higher payroll than any club in the NASL. Rochester, Richmond, and Charleston also have comparable payrolls . Their status as D3 clubs is more about other costs than talent.

The only way there will ever be pro/rel in the US system is when there are more financially viable teams wanting to get into MLS than there are realistically available places in the league. And by financially viable I mean - self-owned SSS stadium, owners with deep pockets and the expansion fee to hand, an expectant fan base, and general support from the media, sponsors and the local community.

Until all that happens it's a pipe dream - and even then, if you did have (say) a total of 30 viable teams wanting in, a 2-tier/15-team hierarchical pro-rel structure isn't mandatory when you can easily keep the multi-conference structure and have a large D1, as per NHL, NL, baseball, etc.

The teams in NASL and USL Pro either don't want to be in MLS right now, or are financially incapable of surviving in MLS, because if they DID want to be there and had the finances, they would already be there - qv Seattle, Portland, Montreal, Vancouver, who essentially self-promoted when the financing and timing was right.

some of us wanting pro/rel agree that that would have to come first. I made a post that pretty much said what you are saying. Some agreed with me but then there was the usual anti-pro/rel brigade that threw a hissy fit. Actually, I went a little further than you. I said that pro/rel wouldn't be viable until we had a D2 that had 3/4 of its clubs playing in SSS and drawing big crowds.

It's like the Walking Dead on here. You mention that you favor pro/rel and the zombies come out. What i think is funny is that some of the MLS homers on here actually want a league that is structured just like the NFL with 6 regional divisions and multiple wild cards. Now that's hilarious.

Exactly. Just when you think you're safe, another pro/rel thread pops up. And another. And another. Soon there's a herd of them. The same mindless crap, over and over and over again. It will never end. It is hopeless. We're all gonna die. Only question is will you be promoted to heaven, or relegated to hell...

Being Catholic, I have the inside track on knowing the truth of the afterlife pro/rel debate:

Purgatory: The Playoffs to Get into Heaven

It's funny, you say that above (the top paragraph) but everywhere I see you in these and other threads, you're talking about pro/rel outside of this context. So which is it ?

Can you direct me to a post that shows what you're talking about in the 2nd paragraph there ? I know that many people have stated that a more logical and probable choice to addressing the "if" the MLS ever gets to a high enough number to warrant pro/rel talk, would be the American Conference structure. I've not really seen anyone championing for what you're talking about though.

Because everyone fails to answer the underlying question. Why would MLS owners agree to pro/rel?

(And no, "because USSF/CONCACAF/FIFA" forces them to is not a valid answer. Unless you can explain why one of those organizations would want to force that when they've failed to do so up to this point. And no, "the AFC did it" is not and answer to that, at least not until the A-League has pro/rel at minimum.)

What about the J-League model. Interesting article at footiebusiness. http://footiebusiness.com/2012/11/20/what-american-soccer-can-learn-from-japan/

Why is this funny? I am someone who loves to watch international leagues and I love to watch MLS, I just understand they are different. Mostly because those international leagues evolved 100 years ago organically from amateur leagues and amateur clubs, while this league is a franchise league started by the owners. We are the first division of 2 nations that are almost 350M people with another 100M coming in the next 50 years. When you are 10 times bigger both in population and geography than European countries than it makes sense to structure the league to fit YOUR situation not other countries. For us if we are not ever going to have pro/rel due to the single entity (that USSF and FIFA agreed to when they gave MLS the bid for D1) then it makes sense to have a larger league. It also makes sense to create competitions that are limited to geographic conferences. I know its great that in Europe you can take a bus to almost every game but we have teams 3000 miles apart (and we didn't even expand into the South yet). It would be like English teams attempting to play in the Egyptian league. If 'purists' don't see that, and don't see that it brings down the quality of play to be traveling like that every game, than that is on you...go pick up a map.

And as far as the NFL comment, yes there are lots of people who want to emulate the most successful sports league in human history.

It's not mindless. There's positives and negatives to the discussion. What's mindless is people not willing to talk about the points and just dismissing the entire conversation.

Look no further than the J-League. There's clear benefits.

The Avoid-Relegation Scrap would be a true market differentiator for soccer in the crowded American sports market. Unlike any other North American sport, the idea of relegation/survival could captivate fans on this side of the Pacific too.

This is a very good argument that's been made before. Domestic soccer in this country needs to differentiate itself from other American sports. Having a country with 100+ pro teams all fighting and scrapping to get into the top league would do this. The relegation battles, the promotion etc, all of this would bring a lot of excitement.

Having a soccer league that just mirrors the nfl or the nba is never going to be that successful. We're kind of seeing that now. MLS gets good attendance but no one is watching on TV. There's been no improvement on TV ratings that mirrors the rise in popularity of the sport. A static/franchise league will reach a peak where it will have its fans but in my opinion the amount of soccer fans that reject it will be larger than those that support it. We already see that now and there's no reason to believe that soccer fans in this country are all of a sudden going to accept the uber-Americanization of the global game.

No the question is about reality vs. meaningless speculation. MLS is a single entity and J-League is not. It couldn't be clearer than that. Its not about the idea of relegation, the issue is 'how do you get from here to there?' It has nothing to do J-League or A-League or Liga MX or EPL or any other league, the conversation is about MLS and single entity. How do you create a pro/rel system in which the clubs and league are the same ownership. No one on the board of MLS wants pro/rel because it endangers the clubs they operate. And there is no realistic scenario in which an external force will make MLS change. So we end up with these circular arguments about the 'spirit of the game' or whatever. Which is nice and even if you agree with that idea it doesn't answer the question of 'how do you get from here to there?'

Where I think you find strong opposition is the fallacy about pro/rel itself changing US soccer. The idea that pro/rel itself causes more fans or makes more money for owners or whatever. Those are the ones that you find the opposition to. And those are fine debates to have, but again it doesn't answer the question of 'how do you get from here to there?'. The only 'plan' I've ever seen was soccerreform's fantasy about USSF stepping up and forcing MLS to relegate, and then creating some multi year transitional format. I think that plan is naive and legally may be very difficult to execute since FIFA/USSF accepted the single entity model and the courts have already upheld its existence.

Yeah, I posted the J-League article in another thread and there are valid points. It aint mindless like some portray.

But the part you quoted isn't the main positive for me. It's the development issue. It's about more markets, any market which wishes to take on the challenge, to invest and have the option of moving upward. It'd bread more competition in development which this country needs. The aspect of what J-League2 has done in Japan for development, the reasoning behind it and it fitting into a cautious financial approach makes sense. If the NASL for example turned into MLS2 at some point, and the ability to move up was based on development and on the field production rather than buy in fees, it'd help development across the nation. There'd be more competition to improve within NASL/MLS2.

I wonder if there's potential investors out there who would fork over 10M into development/coaching at the NASL level, but won't because there's a ceiling they'd reach and they can't afford the huge buy in fees, yet investment like that in non-MLS markets would be a positive. There's no incentive for it at the moment though. J-League2 was put in place specifically for that reason, owners/markets who want to invest and grow the game but financially can't compete at the moment with JL1 requirements. And the competition and ability to move up has worked in Japan. They are developing more top players than MLS right now. More technically and tactically sound players. That's the biggest positive to me, development. And I don't see why MLS fans who want to grow from within instead of buying a bunch of foreign talent aren't taking more seriously what has worked in Japan, where they're developing very good players from within, and have done it after their league collapsed only about 20 years ago.

Still waiting...

It's more development to me than the appeal and captivating US fans, which we don't even know if it would happen. Under the current landscape you're right, it'd be damn hard.

But I'll say, I doubt the league remains static in it's model. It changes. The more the game grows and the more new investors step up, the more the landscape might potentially change. It's about the money/profit. If the owners thought they might make more profit down the road with an MLS2 and the improved development that might create, which would raise the overall level of play quicker over time, leading to larger tv deals and more markets watching, then something might happen.

I'm not saying to copy any model, and I'm definitely not saying to do it tomorrow. But there are positives which could possibly lead to more revenue/profit for owners down the road stemming from more competition nationally and improved development. That's what would cause the conversation to become more serious, not that because it worked elsewhere we'll simply copy it.