Maybe said clubs and their owner should find a viable league and check their egos at the door. Or not and disappear.
Clearly if they selected NISA they believe it to be a viable league, with a business model they are more comfortable with than usl d3. Failure is always an possibility.
Bingo. MLS/USL present the first real chance at multi level stability in US Soccer in the last... well forever really. NASL and NISA are just more of the old self cannibalization trying to challenge that stability.
There's a lot of craziness in this thread, and most of it stems from so many soccer supporters in this country living off every myth MLS feeds into the media for the sake of its own growth. MLS and USL are "stable" because they're a monopoly. Soccer will never grow to its full potential in this country with the system existing in its current state. MLS is a huge barrier to soccer reaching its ceiling here. I don't know if people don't realize or are just OK with the second division in this country being a reserve team, but that is a major problem. With MLS controlling the entire pyramid, the reach of the sport at the pro level can only go so far, and youth development can only go so far. MLS is only interested in the depth of their own pockets, and cannot be allowed a total monopoly over the sport here. If we want the United States to reach the levels it needs to to compete in a serious way on the international level, promotion and relegation will have to exist in order to provide accountability to faltering clubs, and allow anyone with the resources the ability to build a division one infrastructure within their club, including an academy. With no straight path to professional soccer, so many youths either don't develop, aren't seen, or end up playing another sport. You think that in European countries, you have 50+ clubs top division minded, however many more that survive long term that provide necessary exposure to the pro game for supporters and youth players that we will never have here with MLS calling all the shots. The only ones who win without promotion and relegation in this country are MLS owners. Not fans, not players. But 90% of US soccer fans have been sufficiently brainwashed into standing up for the bottom line of MLS. NASL has plenty of issues, but they're trying to do things the right way. And no, it's not out of the goodness of their heart, they hope to provide a product that could compete with MLS long term. But, if NASL does survive, and NISA does get off the ground, they could change the conversation about soccer in this country.
The NASL has only NOW trying to do things the right way and honestly its a little late, very few here wish the NASL to fail but what I think people object to is the grand standing done by previous and current owners with regards division standards. I wouldn't have a problem with their push to D1 if they spent on stadia and training grounds and laying down some real life roots but that isn't the case hell Silva the Miami owner has gone on record stating he has no interest in building a stadium for the team (IMO that's a huge red flag) no these teams sign MLS castoffs and playing in college/minor league parks and say that it is just as good as MLS with international stars playing in stadia that are by and large either owned by the team or have sustainable agreement with the owners of the stadium (Sounders, Revs and NYCFC). That's what I think people object to its like the owners of Wrexham FC saying they are at the same level as Tottenham or West Ham, it simply does not pass the sniff test.
I've been around a long time. I've been around the discourse surrounding soccer in this country for a long time. I've been involved with the game in this country for a long time. But I'd love to hear what you think makes you qualified to talk about American soccer beyond your join date. Arguing the person over the point is logical fallacy, by the way. I'm not head over heels for NASL, but MLS cannot be allowed to monopolize the sport here. We're in serious trouble if that becomes the case.
Soccer will also never grow to its full potential in this country if the system is so unstable that it threatens to collapse under its own weight every winter. I can't tell exactly what you mean by this, but I can think of two meanings here. Either way you're wrong. If your issue is that the USL is made up of nothing but reserve teams, that's obviously not true...even if, as some NASL advocates are wont to do lately, you commit to the dishonesty of casting USL affiliates as reserve teams. If your issue is that the USL contains reserve teams, so can Spain's Segunda. Barcelona B is there right now, matter of fact. No one is saying that the state of soccer in Spain is suffering a major problem as a result. There is nothing stopping NASL teams from building their own academy and lower-team structure. My USL team has several affiliated youth sides. Why don't your teams do the same? Hold yourselves accountable. Make an investment in developing soccer locally. Start acting like the D1 league you claim you want to be. It's always easy to win an argument when you accept the foundational premise that your opponents are either blind, deluded, or arguing in bad faith.
This is a huge reason why I don't bother engaging pro/reg fanboys, they almost always default to "you're just an MLS bot!!" mode when you just want them to articulate their ideas of what should happen. I'm all for a better system to what we currently have here in the U.S with regards to soccer but a huge chunk of these people treat Pro/Reg like some mythical cure all that will make everything better but they'll be damned that they have to explain HOW its going to improve things in a real world way to anyone who doesn't agree with their view.
I think the accountability is a bit of red herring. It sounds good. For example, someone might say we should make principals more accountable so schools would improve. And who wouldn't want every school to have a good principal? But this notion doesn't really apply to soccer since even if every team had good management, three teams still need to get relegated. Nor is it really about on-field performance. I hope Brighton stays up (I like seagulls) but the reality is that Brighton is much more likely to be relegated than Man City or Chelsea because Brighton is poor and Man City and Chelsea are rich. That's what makes pro/rel work. The rich teams do not worry about relegation and the relatively poor teams in the first division swap places with their equivalent teams in the second division. It's the lack of parity that makes pro/rel function smoothly, but that lack of parity won't work in the US where the teams are new and there are so many other sporting options. With parity, any team might have a run of bad luck and get relegated which means that owners and cities will not be willing to make the long-run investments that the league will need. By the way, when you say that the NASL is doing things the right way, what did you mean? They are a closed league. Both the NISA and the NPSL have floated the idea of pro/rel to the NASL and were rebuffed. They mostly don't have academies, but to the extent they do, they are pay to play. They don't build much infrastructure. They don't spend much on players. They don't plan for the long run (SF is giving up after one year). They can't even do basic marketing (have you looked at Cal United's website?) What are they doing right besides criticizing MLS?
My sig describes still how I feel about MLS despite being a fan of one of its teams. Despite that though, 2 plus 2 will never equal five despite how that might change soccer in the US.
You know, I would love pro/rel in the US. I would love for my club to make it to MLS by promotion and not by application. If you had asked me five years ago, I would have said without hesitation that pro/rel is the way things need to be done here. But I've learned a lot since then, by reading and listening and lurking. And supporting my local team, of course -- four years strong, and in USL's last four, so they're doing a lot of good things. You're right. Pro/rel isn't a cure-all. The cure can happen right now. It can happen if current and future owners in every league actually invest in their own clubs, with an eye toward raising the standard of play in their league and the level of soccer passion in their own community. If that happened, and the lower leagues were able to build more MLS-caliber teams than MLS could absorb, then we might get a real pyramid and real pro/rel...at least at the lower levels. But doing it the other way around...saying pro/rel will make infrastructure development happen, which is what Thecoffeecake seems to be saying...is like investing all your money into fancy artwork and drapes and furnishings, and then trusting the house to build itself. I was flirting with making a point like this in my first post, but I couldn't get it to gel in my head. Thank you for making it so beautifully. Yup. Whereas in a closed league, parity is much more achievable. Not every team will be able to win the league in any given year. But within a brief span of time...a few years or less...any team can rise to the top of the table, or fall to the bottom. You can afford to wait through failure a year or two to build a team that can really do something special, instead of blowing your whole wad of cash to pick up the man you hope will keep you just out of the relegation zone. What pro/rel does better than a closed league...I will give its advocates this...is offer hope. Can a Sunday-league team rise all the way to the Premier League? Practically, no. But possibly, yes. And it can certainly rise a level or two, if they just get the right players combined with a little money and a little luck. That's a dynamic you won't find in any other sport. As I said earlier, I'd love to see my club get promoted. But I'd much rather have a local club in a stable league that I know I can support for years to come. If pro/rel ever happens, fantastic. If not, that's why Football Manager mods exist.
The system was under threat of collapse 20 years ago. Now, nothing threatens pro soccer in this country. It's here to stay, period. Yea, serious typo, my bad. The issue with the system of MLS and USL, is yes, half the teams are reserve teams, and most of the rest are affiliates. Having Barça B in Segunda doesn't made it a farm league like USL has quickly become. MLS now monopolizes the top two tiers of pro soccer here, and the entire pyramid is now being constructed to flow as many resources into MLS as possible while eliminating its competition. What's stopping NASL clubs from developing properly is the definite cap on the value of their product, same with USL clubs. Long term, you will only have a max of 30 serious academies in a country of 350 million spread out over an entire continent. You probably double that if you have a system that rewards clubs with strong infrastructures. NASL can't expect their clubs to dump MLS level money into clubs that will never generate the revenue MLS clubs do.
MLS is here to stay. But the system is more than MLS. Last year, NASL's threatened collapse nearly caused a massive restructuring of D2, which would have been shock enough. This year, they're trying to stave off more of the same by launching a lawsuit that would, if successful, make divisional distinctions meaningless. You think that wouldn't collapse the whole system? tl;dr: I stand by my phrasing. Not to be a pedant, but: 1) 10 out of 30 is not half; 2) a couple of the B-teams will be leaving USL shortly; 3) there is a D3 league coming in 2019 which may well absorb several more; and 4) there are five new expansion teams announced for the next two years, none of which is a B-team, and none of which (to my knowledge) has announced an affiliation. So, to the extent that what you think is a problem actually is a problem, it is about to become less of a problem...which should make your problems with the problem more problematic. Also, people throw around that term "affiliate" without further qualification, as if USL teams operate like Triple-A baseball clubs. Since I follow OKC Energy FC, which has an affiliate relationship with FC Dallas, let me tell you about my observations of the on-the-pitch impact of that relationship. I stress before I start that other teams may do things differently. Transfermarkt currently lists 24 players on the Energy roster. 21 of those players are under contract to the club. Jose Angulo is on loan from Saint Louis FC, a fellow USL side. That leaves two players who are under contract to FC Dallas. One of them, Coy Craft, has logged 305 minutes for the Energy across seven matches, and has only made two appearances for OKC since May Day. The other guy is apparently our fourth keeper. I haven't even seen him on the bench, and I've watched every Energy game this year. Is this the sort of affiliate relationship you think is a real threat to the future potential of American soccer? Sounds like an Everton-to-Millwall loan to me. Yup. Seven appearances from one guy, and we haven't even seen him since the start of the school year. Sounds like we oughta be milkin' cows and plowin' furrows down here on this ol' farm. Forget dumping MLS-level money. How about dumping NASL-level money? Most of your teams don't even do that. I know of only one that really seems to try, and per revelations in court today, its owner is about to follow Bill Edwards' lead and jump ship to a stabler vessel. Also, given other revelations in court today about how much the average NASL team loses, I am...let's say, skeptical...of the idea that the situation you describe would improve with pro/rel. If I were a multimillionaire who wanted to own a team in the NASL/NISA/NPSL fantasy pyramid that so many have cooked up, I highly doubt I would be interested in investing the money to start both a club and a "serious academy" to feed it, thus increasing the short-term losses I have to absorb, in order to win a golden pro/rel ticket to (or remain in) a league whose future ROI outlook is questionable at best, and would be even more so in the Wild West of sanctioning-free American soccer. I mean, dude, it's not a perfect world. Okay? I get it. But that's no excuse for NASL not doing what it can now.
I disagree with everything you stated but especially the academy stuff. As much as I tell fans to temper expectations on the Canadian Premier League there will be 30 serious academies for a population of 33m people in Canada alone. It's the one thing I think our league will get right.
Lot's of opinions and ideas in this thread, but I agree with several others that right now is the chance to stabilize the soccer pyramid (finally) in this country. No more alphabet soup of leagues that have come and gone. I think a lot will depend on the NASL court case on which way we go, but i would start with the USSF needing to be FIRM & CLEAR going forward on the requirements of each level (MLS>USL2>USL3>PDL>NPSL) from stadiums, budgets, ownership groups, commitment to grow the game etc. I still contend, if you are a person that wants to own a team, one of these 5 levels will fit your needs. Do not see why we need competing leagues for the same levels (NASL>NISA>NPSL). Just have more teams in the 5 levels listed above. I see nothing wrong with having as many teams that want to play at a particular level (maybe with the exception of MLS and maybe USL2), as you are still going to create a workable schedule and probably have some kind of conference or division set up most likely geographically based. I also do not see how this is a monopoly if you have 5 levels with all teams individually owned and operated. The monopoly is USSF, which should have control over ALL soccer in the country. Without a structure, you have chaos and frankly, thats what we have now because USSF has let too much go on for a long time. My only other off the wall idea is to split the Professional structure away from the amateur structure so they can concentrate on what they should be doing. The professional structure should be in the business to produce quality professional players. The amateur side is to help build the interest in the game in the country, keep kids playing sports/soccer as a healthy lifestyle and work along the educational side of the game- such as kids who may play high school or college soccer and have no interest in playing professionally
In defense of USSF on this one....they really had no choice before MLS became truly stable, and for little kids that is only 5 to 6 years ago. Even if you are only 14 think about that. Really try. USSF let a lot go because so few wanted in on the game, and they had to pretty much take all comers and see how many would last. Few did of course. It is quite funny that NASL was the one that pushed for standards and helped create them....and now we have this. Oh hilarity. As far as pro/rel....it truly is the stupidest deabte ever...well that is disrespectful. Debate means rationally discussing, being open, explaining yourself and using facts. Pro/rel people overwhelmingly can't when pressed. This sums it up....Deloitte PR stunt by Silva comes out and folks rage....it gets analyzed and it is obvious it is a piece of toilet paper. Even pro/rel folks don't use it because it is that bad. Waldo then tweets something along the lines of .....who cares about money and structure, we should do pro/rel because it's cool and just right! Impossible to deal rationally with that. The fact that pro/rel people are trying to co-opt it as some sort of absurd social justice cause goes to show just how off the rails the whole social justice cause has become. Pretty much meaningless at this point. Reminds me of before 911 when everyone was calling themselves a hero...u remember...Mariah Cariah (however u spell it) was a hero because she was chubby and got up and sang in front of folks! If you are young and think I am using an over the top example I am not. Rampant, foolish and inane at that point. No different than what social justice is morphing into.
nope... NASL lawsuit denied; League vows appeal, further fight vs. USSF http://soccer.nbcsports.com/2017/11/04/nasl-lawsuit-denied-league-vows-appeal-further-fight-vs-ussf/
Didn't Peter Wilt say he was only going through with NISA if NASL was still around or at least stayed at D2?
He said something along the lines of needing a strong second division league to work with. I suspect he will backpeddle from that statement
I see. So, you're saying that all the NASL teams are joining NISA? Because that is what the twitter post said.