Will the NASL Ever Compete head to head with MLS?

This is true. In an ideal world, the players would be locked in, but MLS probably wouldn't agree to that. I think that MLS would be more likely to loan out fringe or youth players in positions with depth, so I would imagine there would be little incentive to bring them back unless they show serious talent.

 

I have a feeling it will be some combination of the two. Like they will bring existing teams into a minor league that they oversee, kind of like the NHL's relationship with the AHL and ECHL. The minor league development model works for other sports here, who says it cannot work for soccer?
It also helps bridge the fan gap between small and midsize (aka minor league) markets and major league markets.

Agreed.

I have been saying this for years.

For most of us in minor league markets, we have grown accustomed to this practice in baseball, hockey, and basketball. Why would we react any differently when it happens in soccer?
Besides, how is it any different than the best player being sold or loaned midseason so the front office can make some bank? At least in this case, said player will be helping the organization and not a completely unrelated team.

 

Because soccer fans are different? Don't know if you've noticed.

And how often does this happen in America, honestly?

My point is this: If you're an MLS fan, you're probably not all geeked up about the minors and aren't going to be avidly following the fortunes of your lower-level affiliate. Some will, but those are the people who go to Reserve League games now. And if a player isn't good enough for your MLS team, he's out of sight, out of mind, and no different (really) than the other guys on your bench who are indistinguishable from one another (largely).

And if you're a lower-level team fan, you've just gotten to the point where you embrace your team for its own self and its league competition and the Open Cup as meaning something to you. You're not likely to take kindly to the notion of your best player being called up in the middle of a league season, hurting your team's chances. People expect that in baseball - being a fiefdom for a major league club - and, to a lesser extent, hockey. But minor league baseball has value in and of itself, and players come and go so much that it's less about that and more about the ballpark experience. Not a lot of people really care who wins the Pacific Coast League.

But we're getting to the point where fans do care about the league seasons their lower-level soccer teams are in. If we're going to progress as a soccer nation, those teams have to matter to people. They matter less - and become just sportainment - if you start a subservient relationship to an MLS team (which can change from year to year at the whims of whomever).

I just don't think it's an ideal situation. That was what I said originally. Not ideal.

 

Assuming this is straight and not sarcasm, I'm not sure I agree.

Sure, the average BigSoccer poster and to a lesser extent the supporters club member tends to be different, but most of the actual ticket buying public - from my experience - with minor league soccer isn't. They're out looking for a night's entertainment out of the house. Root, root, root for the home team. You can't tell the players without a scorecard. And so on.

Frankly, given the fly-by-night history of D2/D3/D4 in the U.S., I suspect most fans would be willing to exchange the independence of their club for the shackles of being a farm club if it can pretty much guarantee they'll have a club to support in 5 years.

 

Having been there when the relationship was straining to the point of breaking, I can tell you my recollection of the actual sticking point was not so much that USL teams weren't interested in letting their players go. It was a dispute over compensation for when MLS poached USL players. USL teams thought they weren't getting enough money, MLS thought they were paying too much.

The argument at one league meeting was that if a USL team expended resources "developing" a player to the point where MLS wanted him, they deserved to be compensated for that (given there wasn't a true multi-bidder "transfer" situation like you'd see overseas) and, in some cases, that they get a piece of any future transfer fees MLS might get from eventually selling that player to Europe.

There were even PDL teams who were trying to wet their beaks, claiming the same "resources spent on development" argument (and as a great many MLS draftees spent time in the PDL during their college careers, you can see how a lot of players would have been covered by this). My counter to that was that the resources PDL teams expended couldn't possibly approach the resources a professional (A-League at that time) organization had expended (in salaries, workman's comp, housing, visas, all that stuff) and that they were trying to get the same compensation, having expended much less in the process.

I mean, I could see a PDL team run on a shoestring seeing the potential to get paid making the argument, I just thought the argument was ridiculous on its face.

The other issue was the USL exhibition games, which MLS teams weren't really keen about having to play (USL facilities and MLS depth not being what they are now). The risk to MLS players, fixture congestion, PITA, all that, was stuff MLS would like to have avoided if they could. So they did. I don't know about exemptions and Doug Miller and players like that, though. I have no recollection of that. (I do know there were guys with guaranteed gigs in the A-League who opted to stay there rather than take the chance they'd be in MLS for two weeks or sit on the bench - there being no Reserve League at the time.)

 

That's fair enough.

I think the American soccer fan we've seen spring up more recently, the one who actually cares about his or her lower-level club (a point we need to reach to get to the actual "soccer nation" status we're always talking about) would not take kindly to such a system.

And I think the percentage of those people is far higher than in a minor-league baseball situation. I would guess (and it's just a guess, you have the Bulls there, you tell me) that a high nineties percentile of those who attend MiLB games don't know and couldn't care less who the particular players are (and for many, the ages-old tradition of seeing players pass through and feeling that charming bit of Rockwellian....well, not quite angst, but you know the feeling...is part of the charm of baseball).

If you're going to guarantee the lower-level club's survival for x number of years, that's a reasonable trade to make, but (a) I don't think there is such a thing as a guarantee, ( b ) the lower levels seem to be more stable now, with fewer fly-by-nights than in the past and ( c ) given the number of (at least USL) clubs that have been around for a decade or more, you might have a hard time convincing, say, Richmond Kicker fans that there's this menace out there that being a DC United fiefdom would guarantee would stay outside the gates.

 

Beat me to it.

 

So all the "Insert Club Here 'Til I Die" stuff has a limit?

I think you'd be killing the notion that the club - this thing we sell as being different than just another sporting concern - was worthy in its own right.

There's no guarantee of survival for five years or five months for almost anybody. I think the people we actually need to care about soccer in this country - and not just the out-for-a-fun-evening folks - would have a problem with this. Regardless of the deal with the devil.

 

Almost any agreement the lower divisions would have with MLS will favor MLS and will decrease competitive integrity. The question is whether it is worth it to gain some stability. I would love a system that protects the idea of the club, but I wouldn't expect it. Hopefully the MLS academies provide an influx of talent. If we want to help that talent develop when they get out of the academies, we need more than the reserve league setup. Lower divisions should be involved, whether they sign the players who don't make it with MLS or if they take loanees.

 

Okay, then, consider this:

1 - MLS is not in a position to expand its wage bill by another 350 or so players, especially not when the call is for them to spend more at the major league level (in hopes of either bringing the eurosnobs into the fold, increasing attendance or increasing TV ratings, or all three).
2 - The MLS team would, by right, determine who played, where and how much at the affiliate level, rather than the affiliate team's coaching staff (unless MLS paid for them, too, which adds another bunch of salaries).
3 - While it would be nice to have someone take a line item off your hands, the wage bill isn't the difference between profit and loss for most of these lower-level teams (if the LA Blues lost $800k last year, I can assure you they weren't spending $800k on player salaries, and FC Edmonton was reported at the high end of the NASL wage bill standings last year, with over a half million). So there is no guarantee of survival in this scenario.
4 - And before you say "The affiliate owner could take that money saved on wages and spend it on marketing, so they'd be profitable," ( a ) No, they probably wouldn't - they'd be no better off financially, they'd just move an expense from one line item to another because ( b ) they don't see the value of marketing now, they do it so poorly and so half-assed.
5 - The call is for MLS to operate exactly like Every Other League In The World*, and this is decidedly not that.

Also (and this probably doesn't deserve its own bullet point), there goes your Open Cup charm and beauty, especially when it's made logistically harder if USSF insists on keeping MLS teams and their affiliates separate - for the most part - and prefers they not meet in most rounds of the Cup.

Back to the beginning...not only are soccer fans different, soccer is different. If we're going to claim a connection to the World's Game and sell that to soccer fans (after years spent trying desperately to get fans of every other sport to like us, to really really like us), this is even farther from that.

Lower-level teams should be free and independent. And I don't think you can realistically make the case that "player development" (i.e. developing players who are already in their twenties by having them play against Antigua Barracuda or the Minnesota Stars) with this group of players is cost-effective when almost everybody seems to be of the opinion that you really develop players when they're young. Station-keeping isn't development.







*A misnomer, obviously, but for purposes of this discussion only...

 

Durham the A-Advanced years as a Braves farm club (81-96ish), I'd consider 90% of the overall fan base to be low. At the D4 level in baseball, most of the players (then) were 18 year-olds in the first or second pro season making less than 20k for the season. The incentive was to move up to AA or find another job. The highest number of players I ever remember seeing from opening day one year to the next was maybe 5. I remember one non-catcher (specialty position, not uncommon for career minor league catchers to groom young pitchers) who lasted three years.

Since the Devil Rays expansion (97?), the Bulls have been their AAA farm club. The team is different, many players last for several seasons, they're older, many have families. But still, I wouldn't dispute the 90%

As far as minor league baseball, the fans really are just rooting for the laundry.

But I'm not sure that's not a red herring with regards to minor league soccer. What's the difference between having a major league team pull your star out midseason, or a minor league team selling its star mid-season to maximize return on investment? I don't know. Kupono Low has been with the RailHawks since the beginning (he scored the first goal). And nobody else is even close. I'm pretty sure that most of the folks attending RailHawks games would have trouble coming up with more than a couple of names as well - and the RailHawks have many more players with local ties than the Bulls have ever had. The Bulls randomly wind up with the odd player from the area, but the RailHawks have numerous Atlantic Coast Conference products, and several more that grew up in the area playing for the local youth organizations.

 

Fair point. Franchise relocations at the minor league level in baseball happen more and more frequently (or so it appears to me) all the time.

There definitely are no guarantees.

 

I would guess the former would happen far more often than the latter, if history is a guide.

Players in the lower-levels of (North) American soccer aren't exactly in high demand around the world, are they? I mean, we mentioned Mac Kandji, who else has gotten sold mid-season out of an NASL or USL club?

So the day before an important league match, your MLS sugar daddy pulls your best player because they might need him to go 15 minutes in their match because they have a guy with a dodgy hamstring. I know we can say that minor league anything doesn't really matter, but, again, I would posit that soccer's different. We've been trying to sell this notion that your local club, this match, this cup, this competition matters more than the PCL championship or the Ray Miron Cup.

 

1.-I agree, and I'm just looking at how an MLS affiliation would be like. I don't expect MLS to fund the whole minors, but their current fringe players could use playing time. Right now they tend to release them and some of them get back there through the minors. 2.-In a loan setup, they wouldn't have enough invested to control the lineups. In a setup where they provide the players, they probably would provide the coach. 3 and 4.-I don't think any setup will help teams like the LA Blues. Marketing and smart budgeting is the only way to do that. Any setup with MLS paying some players would be helpful to saving money. Is it enough to make it worth it? I don't know. 5.-It isn't every other league. However, we are hoping that they have the "problem" of too much talent that many others have. If they do, we know how others have handled it.

 

MLS Fringe Level Players are already getting playing time. Under the current system.

MLS Bench Players (or Depth Players, if you will) may be better served playing against other MLS Bench Players in the Reserve League (if you presume that members of the MLSBPPA are of a higher quality than those in the NASL, for instance) than they would be playing against whoever the Atlanta Silverbacks throw out on a given night, I don't know. I don't know if it's environment or quality of opposition that makes the real development difference.

I would think that training with MLS-level players and coaches and playing games (albeit with very few people watching unless you're in Portland) against other MLS Bench Players might be as good or better a scenario for actual development than training with NASL-level players and coaches and playing games with more people watching against other NASL-level players. And from a logistical standpoint (getting players from here to there), it's far easier to get them from your reserve team to your first team than from your NASL affiliate to your first team.

 

The problem is that MLS hasn't figured out how to run a reserve league. Most teams have only played a half dozen matches so far and DCU has only played two. Not much of a developmental tool. I am sure the reason for this breakdown is multiple sources. I agree that having a reserve team is the best way to develop talent for a MLS club. You are able to control the coaching, training, and have easy access to send players back and forth between first and second team. Also, it is no doubt cheaper than replicating all of this in a farm team at a remote site.

I think meaningful match competition is necessary to develop young players (and get injured players back to form) and the MLS reserves are just not doing that. Would be nice if the MLS reserve teams could compete in the USL Pro or NASL. I know that has its own set of problems, but I am for the independence of minor league clubs, not for a farm system.

 

I think that's only an issue if you look at the Reserve Division standings. Reserve "teams" for most MLS teams play a steady stream of games and scrimmages against non-Reserve Division opponents. It is my understanding that when the Reserve Division was restored the original league plans were for a longer season, but the teams themselves wanted fewer set fixtures. During the first run of the Reserve Division, teams in the middle of the summer found themselves struggling with call-ups and injuries along with the load of 990 player minutes for each Reserve Division game. With 30 players instead of 28 and the ability to call in Academy players, that's less of an issue, but the perception remains strong.

Which is also why having a full "Reserve Divison" league doesn't really make sense. The focus of the "first team" is the "first team". Having 30 players on hand to dress 18 to play 11-14 is where we're at.

If you've got players you want to get development for, loan that player out where they can play week in and week out in a competitive environment.

Reserve team play is always going to be within the confines of the immediate needs of actual competitive games by the "first team."

 

And lose direct observation and control of that player's development. Send them off to camp for the summer and check in with them from time to time.

 

It happens all the world around. Sometimes, young players need experience, the more the better. Training with the first team doesn't substitute for playing in games. We see players loaned out all over the world for precisely that reason. For a variety of reasons, but one of them is to get players experience that they're not going to get with the team that owns their contract.

 

Oh, I didn't say it was a deal-breaker. If you don't intend to see the guy until next season, send him off to play games, have him send postcards and all that. Just saying if you want to really see a guy's development day-by-day, you'd prefer to have him closer by. A guy you farm out to the NASL or USL Pro is a guy you're saying "Get that together, come back and see me." Which is fine.

 

Back on topic, the NASL will almost certainly never challenge to be a D1 league. However, MLS and NASL teams should continue to " compete head to head" in the Canadian championship, the U.S. Open Cup, and occasionally the CONCACAF Champions League.

 

Actually "competing" head to head with a D1 league would require two things that are in short supply: tons of money and tons of patience.

Even doing a late-1990s IHL type of deal, putting teams in MLS markets and sending shots across the bow, would require more resources than I think currently exist.

 

Not only do those resources not currently exist, they probably never will. MLS's only competition in America will forever be global soccer for the eyeballs of soccer fans. Even certified crazy person and anti-MLS zealot Ted Westervelt, can only dream of some mythical cabal of billionaires forming a competing league D1 to MLS. He and his ilk pretty much ignore the NASL and USL since they lack the resources. In his world, the NASL and USL are merely collaborators to MLS.

It is very interesting to read about how the IHL was trying to take on the NHL. It seems most of their strategy was based on expanding into NHL markets and taking advantage of the 1994 strike wiping out the season. And they had backers like Ted Turner. All they did was tick off the NHL which swatted them like flies by moving their club affiliations to the AHL. A few years later, the IHL was out of business and most of their former clubs joined the AHL. The lesson? Don't tug on Superman's cape unless you have a ton of kryptonite.

 

Some decent points floating around here, but I'm still firmly on the side of preferring my lower level soccer to have heart and soul and passionate supporters, even if that meant lower division soccer never being more stable than it is now.

Which it doesn't have to.

Who gives a rip about stability in the lower divisions if it means the games are just shy of meaningless and nothing more than a passing curiosity for the "average" sports fan?

no.thank.you.

 

The absolute minority of American soccer fans maybe. Like the diehard supporter group members may be that way. Supporters group members may the "true fans" but they far from the bulk of the ticket buying and tv watching public. Supporters group members make up, what 15% of the home crowd? How many of them are die hard enough to be against a farm system?
I would guess that the bulk of American soccer fans are also fans of other sports, so a minor league system would not be an alien concept to them. Especially casual and potential fans outside of MLS markets. You may realize there are more of people outside of MLS markets than in...

Not very, most likely due to our current lack of direction when it comes to development.

True. And it's the same for every other sport. From the owners' standpoint, it is not about making the major league fans care about the minor league team. It's about the opposite. It's about creating a larger fan base through affiliation and tapping a previously untapped market.
Only the absolute diehards in any sport truly care about the successes and failures of each minor league affiliate.

Bullshit. Maybe for a handful of people. That may be your perception or the attitude of the minority. That is not the reality in minor league towns. In all honesty, the majority probably do not care if there is an affiliation or not. They care if the team receives support from the local media and if the team performs well in the league, regardless of sport.

You are assuming that a farm system would create teams that do not matter to people. I've got news for you, the current system continues to produce teams that do not matter to people. Sure some teams have really taken hold in some markets, but that is due to marketing, not due to the sport's operations being different from other American sports. You assume that affiliating the Silverbacks with DC United would suddenly make the team worthless to residents. Maybe you're right. But you could also be wrong. The fact is that we do not know.
What we do know is that people are not really lining up in waves to watch lower division soccer in most markets at the moment... Some markets do better than others, but like die hard supporter group members, they are the minority.

That is your opinion. Maybe it is not ideal. Maybe it is. Regardless, it makes sense from a marketing standpoint when you consider soccer is a sport and that we are talking about the US (and Canada). If owners see a farm system as more financially viable and marketable than the current reserve (no money to be paid there) and independent lower division set up, then they will pursue it. We really have no say, other than refusing to buy tickets.
But if the Menace went from being an independent PDL squad to being SKC's AAA affiliate, I would still go to games. I imagine others would too as the team's legitimacy can now be mapped and placed on par with the I-Cubs and Energy.

Agreed.

And would be league suicide, if your IHL example is anything to go by... For those that don't follow hockey, trying to compete with the NHL drove the IHL out of business. Though a handful of teams joined the AHL (fully affiliated with the NHL) and have been very successful while retaining their identities and fan bases.

As a lifelong minor league sports fan, living in a minor league city, I take exception to this. Minor league games are just as meaningful as major league games, just on a smaller scale and to a more specific audience. Hell, junior league games are as meaningful. Local fans support the team no matter what the league or level, whether there is an affiliation or not. We live and die by our teams the same way that major league fans do. We care about the name on the front more than the name on the back.

For the record, I am not 100% sold on an affiliated farm system. I see it as logical and sustainable, but not the end-all-be-all of American soccer. To me it is just an option that has not been explored. It is an option that seems more sustainable and suitable than other options, like those championed by Teddy and his ilk.