What should the NASL do now?

Okay NASL is not going to be sanctioned as D2 this coming year. So where does NASL go from here?

Blow the whole thing up, and have the USSF work with people who have "almost MLS" money to start up a league either in 2012 or 2013. This NASL debacle needs to be put to bed.

That might be the best plan because we still have San Antonio coming in next year.

MLS had to delay a year and it turned out alright for them. I figure the league should go heavy into setting up for 2012. Looking for new investors, Setting up the front office and build up a strong advertising campaign.


San Antonio Scorpions
Tampa Bay Rowdies
Miami Strikers
FC Edmonton
Puerto Rico Islanders

5 teams for next year at least so the League try to set up 3 expansion teams and find investors for Carolina, Minnesota, Atlanta, and Baltimore.

Worst case Scenario is we either have to wait another year or we have 8 teams. Best case Scenario is we have 12 teams.

Worst case scenario: Exhibition season, high school ref's, no Open Cup.

Best case scenario: find owners and investors for those 3-4 teams that had snakeoil salesmen as their staff.

Why would there be no Open Cup? If even amateur teams can enter, I'm sure barnstorming league-less teams can too.

I don't think they'll have to do an exhibition season. Brian Quarstadt says that all the teams easily meet D3 standards, so my feeling is that they'll get a quick and dirty D3 sanctioning for 2011, play the season they were planning to play anyway, and try to get everything sorted out for D2 in 2010.

Quarstad's article: http://www.insidemnsoccer.com/2011/...ain-reason-for-denial-of-sanctioning-of-nasl/

If the league were to move ahead without sanctioning, players as well as management could conceivably face punishment from FIFA, including being barred from playing on national teams and having their contracts voided.

http://www.sbnation.com/soccer/2011...es-to-continue-to-seek-division-2-sanctioning

So according to this I don't know if they would be able to play in USOC

im sick of the sh!t . The USSF is essentially killing D2 soccer with there unreasonable requriments. I told you you when they first came out it was going to kill d2.

So don't be D2. Be D3 instead. Having a load of teams which don't have the financial stability to survive at D2 is killing it just as fast, because they'll simply fold.

The logical thing to do seems to be regroup while playing at D3 in 2011, and work your arses off between now and April 2012 to regain that D2 sanctioning. That is of course, assuming you would not be able to address whatever concerns USSF has between now and April 9th. Since we don't know what those concerns are (despite a number of people trying to say it's because of Traffic's financial backing of several teams while having no clue if that is it or not), there is no way to forecast if they could or not.

Davidson has said that they are going to try and address USSF's concerns right away, (hiring those consultants as league staff may be an indication of this already) and they would NOT be seeking sanctioning as anything other than D2. So that blows my first sentence of this post out of the water. At this point, I'm not sure how to take that. Does he really believe they have a chance to get at least the provisional back in place for 2011? Or are egos clouding judgment.

What all concerned parties should be able to admit is 8 months to get a brand new league set up and in place, AND meet those HEFTY D2 standards is a REAL TALL order. I always figured that was the reason for the "provisional" tag on the sanctioning, and I was expecting that tag to stay through this year. The standards are smart. They will ultimately tell us if D2 CAN work. BUT - expecting a brand new league starting up to fulfill them all in such a short time period is ludicrous.

All I know for sure is that Holt, Papadakis, and Marcos are laughing their collective butts off right now. By stealing away Austin and Rochester, they dealt NASL a major blow. They've also made things worse by pushing the whole possibility of getting into SA now, not long after NASL did first, to the point of unravelling ANY chance of lower division soccer working there before the first match is even kicked off. And I won't even go into the whole failed 16th USL D3 franchise attempt in Ft. Lauderdale, what a frakkin joke.

Looks like it will be no longer then a few more weeks now and we'll know whether or not we have teams and a league for 2011......

This is all truely disheartening.
More instability for an already unstable league.
Austin & Rochester moving I think were major blows!
The mls bound teams contributed a bit also, but I am sure the
"brain trust" of nasl had already planned for the mls bound teams, so
Their move to mls should not have been an issue.
I think there are some huge egos involved in nasl.
At this point, I think the only way nasl will survive is if mls gets
Involved, and do they want to get involved with a unstable Mickey mouse
League that is nasl?
How difficult will it be to get any sort of support and/or financial
Backing now?

for the 100th time

what the hell is the difference between D2 and D3 in the US? who gives a crap which one you are? why doesn't NASL just tell USSF standards to stick it and play D3 just like the USL did?

Exactly. There is no real difference between D2 and D3.

Only people that care are on BigSoccer.

But the NASL press release says they "will not pursue sanctioning as any other division under the USSF bylaws" to me that means D2 or bust.

http://www.insidemnsoccer.com/2011/...g-us-soccers-decision-to-decline-sanctioning/

Three weeks is damn near impossible to make this happen

True that. Without TV contracts, promotion/relegation, sponsor falling over themselves, etc. there isnt any advantage.

D2 gets a later entrance into the USOC but that is the only difference I see here in the states

Has he ever flat out been asked why they care about D2 vs. D3? Is it just a mindset thing for the owners/Traffic?

Or is it about being a level ahead of USL? If that's the reason, I hope they fail.

I agree as well.

Austin was never part of NASL so why mention them as moving?

gloat all you want soccersam it will bite you in the end:

http://www.soccersam.com/media/audio/20110122.mp3

Those guys are just petty and selfish. All they care about is trying to be "right" and there own little backyard..

Still trying to convince people the Rhinos are not playing in a lower league, well they are!! Get over it. Even if the NASL never plays a game it doesn't change the fact that their Rhinos will still be playing in a lower league, I mean come on the season finishes on August 13th, thats semi-pro stuff..

They don't give 2 shits about the fans or players in those 8 markets. All they care about is wanting to be able to say the Rhinos play in the next best level of soccer after MLS, and if it takes 8 teams to be eliminated then so be it!

They are not supporters of soccer in North America. All they care about is petty bullshit and trying to prove their supposed "point"..

Here here!


I did not listen to the show so I do not know if Diveronica is also involved but his "I told you so" bullshit was old the second he started it when TOA started breaking away to begin with.

Yeah i really want to stick it to those guys.

In the USOC don't all 32 non-MLS clubs enter in Round 1, play two rounds, and join 8 MLS clubs in the Round 3 (the Round of 16)? Was a change announced for 2011?

No, they're not. US Soccer has these requirements to stop the "revolving door" of franchises year in and year out. I am not a fan of the USL, to be sure (although it wasn't the USL's fault Miami couldn't draw flies; when the team doesn't advertise, market, or do anything else themselves, they shouldn't expect anybody but the wives and girlfriends of the players to show up), but the NASL more than asked for this. This whole debacle became a piss fight because the TOA and Jeff Cooper didn't get their way, and I think now we know why. The NASL is nothing more than a spoiled brat's temper tantrum, and they ended up breaking the living room lamp, so to speak, because of it.

The D2 landscape is littered, nay, buried, in defunct franchises, purchased by people who thought it would be cool to own a pro soccer team, and yet couldn't find their own butt without help. US Soccer's minimum standards were drafted to stop the bleeding, to ensure we don't have any more Lehigh Valley Steams, Maryland Manias, Virginia Beach Mariners (the latest version), Atlanta Ruckus' (?) (who almost never played a game), Houston Whoevers (who folded before their first game (1994? 1995?)), and a host of others.

These standards, as Draconian as you may think they are, will have more of a benefit than a liability, and will ensure that a D2 league will not be allowed to fly by the seat of their pants, with teams who operate on a wing and a prayer. And if the current roster of "teams" can't play by these rules, so what? Sooner or later, there will be teams who can and will, and will, in turn, stick around a while.

it is different each year and im not sure what this years format is going to be. The actual qualifing rounds for the USOC are happening now at the amatuer level. then typically the PDL teams enter. Im pretty sure the Battery, at D3 last year, were in the USOC playing a round before the 32 (playing a CASL Elite from NC)

I could be wrong ( and am alot of the time) but it would just stengthen the arguement on the lack of benifits of d2 v. d3.

That was in the Round of 40 which was the First Round of the competition proper which was the same round every club below MLS started the competition proper in. There really was no Round of 32 because the number of clubs alive after each round went 40-24-16-8-4-2-1. The USL-2 clubs including the Battery and the USSF-D2 clubs started in the same round.