Re: San Diego??? Very interesting, the USL1 is and will be a national league, theres plenty of cities that can have a squad in USL1/USL2 West. Nice pic of a possible San Diego stadium. MLS with 24 teams, I hope thats not the plan. 20 is the perfect number.
Re: San Diego??? maybe they should join forces with the San Diego Soccers and an own SSS is perfect but maybe they should start with using Torero stadium in the meanwhile, I believe it can host 7 000 fans
Re: San Diego??? Wow. A blast from the past. I swear I remember seeing that stadium drawing (and the business plan) back around 2000. Nice list of people. But I'd think, if it was serious,that we would've heard some rumor better than this.
Re: San Diego??? I'm about to move to SD (probably Hillcrest or Little Italy), and don't wish to go way out to El Cajon or wherever for SD Utd. matches in the USASA. It floors me almost that there is no USL team. A little less so that there's no MLS, but man, I'll go batty if there's no pro team in 2010. *prepares to go batty*
San Diego Flash Any word on any new developments regarding the comeback of the San Diego Flash or the San Diego Soccer Partners?
Re: San Diego??? Anyone heard if SD Soccer Partners have gotten any traction? I know SD United is likely coming back in 2010 but it sure would be nice to have someone higher than NPSL or USL Super 20 playing in the second biggest city on the west coast. If SJ, Portland, and Seattle can all rate a pro soccer team in MLS I can't believe San Diego can't support a USL 1 team. That and now living in SD I'd love to have some mid level soccer to watch live in the interim while I'm away from my Quakes.
Re: San Diego??? SDSP have been very quiet in BSland, and saying the same old stuff on Twitter. Also, one rep from SDSP who has a BS acct. was infracted (yellow, I think) a while ago. Not sure why.
Re: San Diego??? Well I did find this, and it does have active news http://www.facebook.com/pages/San-D...er-Club/229626495214?v=wall&viewas=1461200946 Seems they're going to be relaunching the website shortly as well. And are hosting tryouts right now with the intention of fielding an exhibition/charity team next year with a 2011 USL 1 launch. All of this assumes USL 1 exists by then I assume.
Westward expansion needs to happen all at once, and not for at least five years, until the rest of the league is stable. And when/if it does, it should be part of a plan to make USL D-1 more regional, so as to offset travel costs. In order for San Diego to come into the league, there needs to be at least 4-6 other teams ready to come in at the same time. My list of possibilities would be: - San Diego (a given, since this is an SD thread ) - Phoenix/Tuscon/Glendale - Anaheim/Orange County (previous ASL team, as well as NASL) - Sacramento (former ASL) - Las Vegas (former ASL & NASL) - Oakland (former ASL & NASL) If Kitsap, Victoria, and the USL rights holders for Vancouver and Portland want D-1 teams as well, that's fine, but whatever second tier league comes out of the chaos is going to have to address travel costs, will eventually come to grips with the fact that the league will have to end up with at least two independent conferences under the D-1 umbrella, with the conference champs (and possibly a wild card) playing for a national championship. Either that, or the league will go from 16, to 12, to 8, to 4, to 0, in rather short order, if this current potential brouhaha doesn't kill the thing altogether.
While I think some of your city choices might work out, Oakland and Anaheim I'd label as non-starters. First neither has a place for a team to play that is anywhere near acceptable. And second, they're both too close to an existing MLS team (or 2 in Anaheim's case). That said, if SD does join the league in 2011 or 2015 I hope they join with at least one more western team to offset some of the travel costs and to create something that can be played off as a rivalry/derby. Particularly since in 2011 the remainder of USL-1's existing west coast teams will be gone when Vancouver and Portland move up to MLS.
Fair enough; but the Western teams do need to be in a decent vicinity of each other, so as not to rack up excessive travel costs. A Western division/conference/whatever consisting of only SD, Victoria, Sacramento, and Kitsap would die in a minute. In order for it to work, I think there would have to be at least four teams come in at once, so there would be only a very few, if any, flights to the East, or at least past Austin or San Antonio. maybe SD, Sacramento, Vegas, and Phoenix?
Well in the end I think it will come down to where ownership groups form more than where we'd think the teams should be. While I think SD, Sac, Vegas, and Phoenix would be great cities, do any of them other than SD have potential ownership groups?
Well, I don't know anything. But, that should be the objective for the USL while they are trying to stabilize what they have. They should take at least five years to stabilize the East and Midwest, all the while talking to prospective owners in the West, getting ready another shot at westward expansion. But it would have to be at least 4 teams coming in at once, rather than what MISL2 did, having Stockton out in the middle of nowhere, while the rest of the teams were back East. Don't bring in SD until you have 3 other cities ready with a check on the table and a place to play, who are also content to play each other a good bit. Anything else would be absolute suicide.
I don't know if you necessarily need three other teams. The Pacific Northwest seems to have done pretty well with just three teams total, so I think it'd be ok with just two more teams along with San Diego. Preferably somewhere relatively close -- say, Phoenix and... and... uh, I have no idea. Las Vegas? Tucson? Albuquerque? Fresno? I think Sacramento is getting too far away.
Problem I see though, is what if no ownership groups pop up in any of those cities and say only San Diego and another western city come forward wanting to join the league. Do you turn them away just because they're a bit further away than some of the other teams?
If it were me, and there were two teams reasonably close together (say, Phoenix) I would be OK with them joining. But if it were just San Diego, I'd say no. But this is the USL, so they wouldn't.
So you don't think USL would turn away a lone western city or a pair of western cities that were further apart? Which IMO is the right thing to do. Sure the travel issues might be difficult, but it shouldn't preclude the league from expanding into a region that MLS has essentially stolen out from under them in Seattle, Portland, and arguably the Bay Area with the failure of the CA Victory the season before the Earthquakes restarted.
The question is travel costs. It's better to bring four teams in at once, who can play each other on a sort of regular basis, and do a couple of home-and-homes with their Eastern and Midwest counterparts, than to have two-week long road trips playing everybody, than having them all come out to play you. You put, for example, SD, Vegas, Phoenix, and Sac'to in a division, where half their games are against each other, and the rest are divided up between midwest and eastern teams (home and away), you'll spend less money than you would packing up for a six game road trip once a month. Travel is a big budget-killer for minor leagues, which is why they are regionalized. The USL or whoever it turns out to be needs to seriously look at this, and have a plan in place before they set out for the west again. I'm not saying don't do it, but wait until the time is right (remember, had not San Jose not come into the NASL in '74, Seattle, LA, and Vancouver would not have happened, and possibly not Portland ('75), either; they were all contingent on at least four teams coming in from the West at once, to alleviate this very problem). You don't sacrifice one team just so you can call yourself a national league. It never costs too much to do it right the first time.
No, I don't. But I'm basing my opinion on the long history of the USL taking money from fools that can't afford to play the game. Granted, that's based on behavior from Marcos/Holt, and now we have Holt/Papadakis. And from the discussions in the TOA/NuRock thread, the other owners seem to have some say. So things could very well change. But I won't believe it until I hear about the USL turning someone away.
You say that, but isn't it not true now that USL has had 2 teams on the west coast for a number of years now without much trouble? Why should that change just because you're changing the names of the limited amount of cities that are on the west coast (for instance -Seattle, Portland, Vancouver and + San Diego and Phoenix?) Additionally, USL-2 is already a midwest and eastern regional league. USL-1 without any expansion will be a midwest and eastern regional league. If not USL then what will be the pro minor league presence in the west? I mean right now other than the USL PDL amateur level there is no soccer presence in the Southwestern US outside the 2 MLS teams in the LA basin. And even the PDL's presence is limited. (even the NPSL has no SW presence right now).
But that's different than just one; they still play each other a few times. The USL should certainly go for the West again, but they should bring the teams in at one time. Then, they should separate the league into at least two divisons, with very little inter-divisional play, and have the division champs (with a wild card, if necessary) play each other in the final (no more of half the league making the playoffs). Expanding willy-nilly is one of the things that killed both the NASL and ASL. The Westward expansion of 1974-75 is one of the things the NASL got right. You don't put one team out on the West Coast and expect everybody to pay out the wazoo to go play each other. That's why teams like El Paso and Richmond chose to self-relegate.