I never said that. But the U.S. "pyramid" doesn't foster or preclude such movement between leagues either.
The USL should choose Austin to host their Nat'l PDL finals. Apparently they had 2400 & 2600 for each Conference playoff match. Austin is one of the best cities for soccer.
Get ready Aztex fans. We're hosting the PDL Semifinals & Finals this weekend. Aztex To Host USL PDL Final Four
GAME DAY Excited for tonight & hopeful for the Win in front of 3000 fans FYI, I invited my daughters Soccer team's parents to the last game of the season and a couple came along, They enjoyed it that much that they and more families attended the (Next match) play off game & then the regional final, Tonight even more families of her team are coming out, Almost to a man they express how they never knew Austin had a semi-pro team plus what a good family night out it is etc, Now this is coming from committed soccer families so the potential fan base is still somewhat in the dark, but out there and willing to become regular supporters.
I've been wondering about that. And hoping that this might break through some barriers. We'll have to see what happens next seasons though. It's a long enough off-season that it's easy for people to forget.
This is only the second time that a team I support has won its league. And I can say I was there! What a season indeed.
On the subject of a change in tiers: I brought several people to games this season whom I had also brought to Aztex 1.0 games, and many of them said that the felt this team played a higher quality of football than the previous team. I also overheard various people in the stands saying that. While that felt true to me as well, at first I was responding, "Well, winning makes us look good regardless of whether it is actually higher quality or not," and "Well, the quality of the opposition may be lower." But after a while I came up with another theory. It may be that in some ways the quality of football in PDL is higher than USL-Pro or NASL because many PDL players go on to be drafted into MLS, whereas in the ostensible second and third divisions there are players who often washed out of MLS squads or are still hoping to be noticed by an MLS team. Perhaps that's one of the strange effects that the existence of the college game has on the US soccer pyramid. Now that I've come up with that theory, I'm less eager to move up, though I'd still prefer a longer season. Then again, PDL teams still usually fall to NASL and USL-Pro teams in the USOC, so maybe my original thoughts were more accurate.
As far as I know, nothing more than fan pub talk. Now, granted, we've had some lively discussions the past two weekends. But I'm not sufficiently in the know to really know, so, who knows? But to give my opinion -- I don't think they currently have deep enough pockets to go NASL. And I expect the NASL would want to have a better stadium situation in place before allowing it. House Park is nice and all (especially when it's 4/5 full), but too skinny. And the Aztex wouldn't be able to play the entire season there, unless they played their games on Tuesday or Wednesday nights during school.
I think there's a lot to be said for the 'we have a damn good team' theory. The Aztex 1.0 tried to go heavily local their first year and found themselves pretty well outclassed. They spread their net a lot wider, and were a lot better the second year. It is a tough thing to figure out which way I'd like the team to go. The problem is, Austin is a much bigger town than PDL level. Look at the cities that we hosted. Thunder Bay, Ontario (I had never heard of it before the PDL team came along 10 years ago); Victoria, BC; and Ocean City, NJ. I'm still not exactly sure where the latter is, but I'm pretty sure Victoria is the biggest of those three, and Austin (ignoring the suburbs) has 10x the population of Victoria. Realistically, we are, at minimum, an NASL city. And to carry an NASL quality squad, we need to draw from a much bigger pool. At the PDL level, with the ebb and flow of talent and ownership, its easier to have a stand-out squad. It's a lot harder to keep it that way for a long time, though. Thunder Bay has figured out how to do it. Laredo has. El Paso seemed to have, but something happened this year. Maybe us, sucking up the better talent.
Congrats to the Aztex! i'd like to see them in USL Pro next year, and NASL after that. where are the investors at? I would think if any team would be attractive to a deep-pockets mr. moneybags soccer-club-buyer it would be the Aztex, the way Austin is booming these days...