It's been suggested before (on these forums, not officially) that everything below MLS get put into one big bucket. It's an interesting idea. (If NASL wants to stay seperate, then everything below them would be in one bucket.)
I like that idea. I think the only way for NASL it make it is to go for the 2nd or 3rd markets first. Like Vagas, Birmingham, St. Louis and ect. NASL just isn't going to compete in NYC, LA, Boston or Chicago.
Well, LA and NY are big enough to allow for a 3rd team as a NASL club (like the Cosmos will be when NYCFC join NYRB). You put the stadiums in different parts of town and they can still be successful. But for NASL to be successful, I do think they need to push forward with larger markets without MLS (St. Louis, Detroit, San Diego, etc) and hope that MLS decides NOT to expand much past the 24 they are projected for.
======== With Garber an old NFL guy, that would not surprise me. If we had to go with 2 conferences of 16 each, home and away in conference is 30 games. Perfect season. The MLS cup is then a home and away #1 E vs #1 W. Short and intense. Slightly shorter season and shorter playoffs leaves more room for USOC , FIFA dates, avoids weeknight games and we can either start the season later or end earlier. Everyone gets to play other teams in the USOC at times which then becomes more special. This is the problem when our #1 league in soccer, MLS, goes and expands beyond a normal size league. This is another problem of the USA of having an alphabet soup of leagues that for the most part don't work together, although we are starting to see that with MLS/USL. One of these days, this issue will come back, either through mergers, consolidations, or USSF involvement. Too many teams and too many leagues and growing too fast in some ways. I don't want to see a crash and burn like we have in the past.
=========== It could work because of our single entity structure since that limits losses, controls costs, shares expenses. It would have to be entirely within the MLS family , say MLS 1 & MLS 2, no dropping from MLS say to NASL. It would allow MLS to literally cover 32 markets in the North American (more if Canada were to go to a separate league) and puts out league on same size basis as other US sports leagues. Then instead of having only 1 race for the #1 team in the first division, you get 3 races to watch= the bottom of the first division and who will fall and the top of second division and who is coming up. More excitement all around. - And then if you really wanted more soccer, with 32 teams, you could expand the MLS into a true league cup and play a 5 round cup...
I think we all agree that you could shoehorn pro/rel into the MLS system, if you really were intent on finding a problem for that particular solution.
Just a way to get to 32 teams and throw a little fun into the season. I just see the MLS like a drug dealer, every expansion fee is like a "hit", and I don't see 24 teams stopping them. 24 is an arbitrary number, so why not 26-28-30- or 32 ?
not having pro/rel is a "problem" That's not the same as saying it should be implemented or that it would be easy to do. If it were implemented next season it would be a financial nightmare.
its the most successful structure for our sport. It started in England in the beginning of the 20th century and was copied everywhere. It's the most successful structure for growing lower leagues. We've seen this in countries who, once they adapted pro/rel, saw their soccer pyramids flourish(South Korea, Japan). Pro/rel is used in every industrialized country that plays soccer except for the U.S and Australia. It's even used in countries that have yet to industrialize. I'm sure if you counted up all the soccer leagues in the world you could probably count on one hand the ones that don't have pro/rel. When an idea spreads that far and wide and is used by so many countries we know its a good idea. It's really no different than how the use of an assembly line for producing mass goods became the standard method for capitalism. Good ideas are copied. So, the U.S not having pro/rel is a "problem" in the sense that it is a good idea we are not using.
How many of these countries with Pro/Rel have the population size and geographic size of the United States plus Canada? There is a vast number of large cities in the United States plus Canada which is why our leagues often look different from those in other countries in sports outside of soccer as well.
India will probably get rid of it. Afghanistan does not use pro/rel. South Korea only adopted it last season and we are yet to see if it is benefitial or not. Many people say Japan has done a good job regarding pro/rel... the J. League membership says 2nd Division teams must play in stadiums with 10,000 seats yet the league averaged like 5,000. My V-Varen Nagasaki was averaging 5,000 in a 20,000 seater! Not really paradise, is it.
For a country the size of Japan, 5k for 2nd tier is pretty good. All you have to do is look at how many football clubs have joined the J-League since Japan went to the Euro model to know its been a success. Anyways...there are enough threads about pro/rel. I don't want to hijack this one. I'll post in the other threads my opinion of pro/rel and why its a good idea.
Okay, that is 1. And none of the teams play in the East of Russia. Here is a map of where they play: http://www.sportmapworld.com/map/soccer/russia/russian-premier-league/
that map doesn't include FC Tom Tomsk. Anyways, there is considerable travel in the Russian Premier League.
This is debatable, and essentially hinges on your definition of 'successful'. It's not successful for Pompey. To solve a specific problem. Namely "What do we do about their being too many good teams". In the US, we had the same problem. Instead of merging our two major leagues and instituting pro/rel, we started uneven schedules and playoffs. One problem, two solutions. This was already refuted. So, instead of thinking about this situation rationally and logically and decide whether it makes sense for the US, given that the US has a size and population closer to "Western Europe" than any single European nation, all because Wales and Finland do it? We can't make are own decisions?
Everything is debatable. The concept of social physics and how and why good ideas spread and are copied suggests that promotion/relegation's spread through 99% of the soccer world makes it the most successful structure for soccer leagues. It has literally been copied everywhere. That doesn't happen with bad ideas. And the size of America( a very weird excuse by some for not implementing this good idea) is irrelevant to whether or not it would be a success. You only have to look at how successful it is around the world to see that it would also be successful here. I mean, the statistical probability of it not being a success is very very low when you consider it works everywhere and it continues to spread. The reason it isn't being implemented here does have something to do with America's size, though. America is such a big country that bad ideas just won't go away. We hang on to bad ideas because we aren't challenged by them by and because it is more difficult for good ideas to spread throughout the country. Good ideas travel faster through Europe because of the close proximity of countries. Why is it every country in Europe uses promotion/relegation? Why didn't any of them develop a closed league system? Or a draft? Who knows, they may have considered it, but those are bad ideas. Good ideas win. America stubbornly resists good ideas because it thinks it knows better. Look at other good ideas we are stubbornly resisting: Universal Health Care, Guaranteed vacation for all full-time workers, High Speed Rail/Public Transportation, fuel efficiency (took us awhile but we're less resistant to this good idea now). I could go on, but you should get the point. Would pro/rel be easy to implement? No. We're building a soccer infrastructure from scratch. Should it be implemented in five years? No. What about ten? Probably not. But when the time comes that we have a D2 that mirrors the English Championship in attendance and interest, then pro/rel should absolutely be implemented. It's the best idea we have for soccer.
Your math is bad. I can name 3 nations without pro/rel. Can you name 297 that do? Also, you're defining "successful" as "popular". I'd disagree with that definition. It has not been "literally" copied. Argentina's pro/rel system is different than Spain's is different than England's. You're pretending they're the same when the systems are, y'know, not. England is the size of Louisiana. The better European comparison isn't to have one pro/rel in the US. It's to have 50 pro/rels in each state and one American Champions League. No one I have ever heard. No one. Has argued for a pan-European Single Table pro/rel system. Yet a pan-North American system, people seem in love with it. You wanna talk about good ideas? 4 of the top 5 sports leagues on that planet (as defined by the only standard that, y'know, the leagues themselves use) use a closed, franchise system with playoffs. 4 out of 5! "Good ideas get copied" The good ideas are winning. At the bank. It's just not your ideas. You should resign your comments to soccer, and not your critique of American culture in general. I've heard over and over again that people don't support NASL because the pyramid is closed. If we have a D2 that gets largely successful without pro/rel, then we wouldn't need pro/rel to make it successful. Like I said, pro/rel is a good solution and you're trying real hard to find it a problem
Well since Canada and the USA are basically in the same system (the pro leagues), I will count them as 1, Australia is 2, I am sure there are way more than just 3, but could you tell me your 3rd nation, just curious. Also, I can name multiple countries where pro/rel stops after certain level, or countries that have restrictions in pro/rel (example stadium requirements). I have (no one really important).
Singapore. Whoa! You met someone with an idea so terrible that it hasn't even popped up on YBTD? Did you insult some hex-giving gypsy woman?
Every time I've seen the SuperLeague idea floated, it had been a more-or-less closed league. Bad ideas fail.
Just a couple of questions for the pro/rel advocate: 1. Please explain why there are so many leagues with pro/rel that are worse than MLS? 2. Please explain the failure of BAFL (British American Football League) despite it having pro/rel?