1. It would have to be voluntary. It would have to be in the interests of everyone involved, or at least the vast majority. Realistically it will only happen when owners can profit from it, or when US President Putin calls a Fatwa on anyone who doesn't support it. Or maybe when the soccer scene is so crowded that some people get their heads together to try and make sense of it 2. NASL, the spiritual home of the grass-roots fan owned, traditional soccer culture, and its long-term commitment to meritocracy through its fundamental belief in the sanctity of promotion and relegation* since day one, only tried to prevent clubs from leaving for their own good and the good of their legions of ordinary, common working class supporters. *the relegation part obviously didn't apply to the Cosmos or Miami FC. 3. Is that anything like what the Roughnecks did to Tulsa Athletic?
Well Portland finished 8th in the regular season and they're in the final but after their performances in Seattle and KC I don't think anyone can complain, unless they're from Seattle or KC.
Nice article in a Dutch paper about Atlanta: https://www.ad.nl/buitenlands-voetb...de-beste-en-populairste-van-amerika~a405583c/ Josef Martínez maakt een selfie met de fans van Atlanta United. © AP Atlanta United: vorig jaar begonnen, nu al de beste en populairste van Amerika MLSEen nieuwe club met een selectie met twaalf nationaliteiten in een stad zonder enige voetbalhistorie. Dat kon nooit een succes worden, dachten velen in de Verenigde Staten, maar kijk nu: Atlanta United is anderhalf jaar na haar eerste wedstrijd kampioen van de Eastern Conference in de MLS en trekt bij thuiswedstrijden gemiddeld 70.000 toeschouwers. Wat is het geheim van deze club? Minne Groenstege 29-11-18, 15:37 Laatste update: 30-11-18, 10:51
It will be interesting to see how things shake out in Chattanooga. Detroit's the only other place the lower division would be given much of a chance to hold on. Nothing against lower division fans from St. Louis to San Diego, but MLS would swamp anything currently existing anywhere else. But the AFL made a go of it in ignored markets, so another pro league has some room left. Although the AFL tried to take on the NFL in four markets, and got crushed. The Jets stayed as a loss leader, but are the junior tenants to this day; the Raiders were a success. The LA Chargers and Dallas Texans were plane crashes. And a potential pro soccer league has twenty-four existing MLS markets, instead of the ten or so NFL markets when the AFL came long. I just don't see it ever working for a pro/rel league in the US - in any sport. If it was a good idea, baseball would have done it over a hundred years ago.
You can right click on Chrome desktop to translate to English or on Android hit the English option at the bottom of the screen. I just think it's got to be more of a bottom up thing. It's already in place in UPSL where they have a lot of teams in a reasonably small market. But to listen to the whiners it's all about MLS and USSF. But blaming "the man" is just an excuse for inaction.
So it works in other countries all over the world but America is so different and exceptional that none of that counts?
To be perfectly frank, I think there's at least a large subset of those folks whose real beef is the idea of a US failing to be at the pinnacle of the sport they like. That's why we see so many supporting elite clubs. Then there's the "hipster"/"punk rock" mindset that sees soccer as the "underground", "antiestablishment" sport (which as I said before is ironic as the Brit equivalent shuns soccer due to its mainstream popularity). For these guys, the very idea of a mainstream US league is akin to their favourite band being commercialized - especially when they go with a traditional US format.
So Hypothetical question ... What about pro/rel in Div 1 college football? You already have exactly the scenario that supposedly you need for pro/rel to work. Which is more teams wanting to be in the top level, in this case the power 5 conferences, then there are slots. So why not choose the limited number of slots by performance on the field rather than a secret and ever changing combination of factors including, legacy, location, tv network connections, market size, wealth of boosters, and willingness to pay players under the table and ignore academic standards. How the system could work? Well you actually already have the conferences in place. The five power 5 conferences would be the ad hoc Div 1. Each power 5 would be linked up with a mid major sharing the same geographic footprint. So the Pac-12 would be linked with the Mountain West, and so on. The winner of the mid major promotes to the Power 5 they are linked with, the last place team in the power 5 drops to the mid major. "Schools" could continue to self promote from 1-AA (FBS) to 1-A (FCS) like they do now. Now I know this is even less likely to happen then pro/rel in MLS to many powerful entrenched interests who would be nervous about such a drastic change (although I think most programs would benefit from it). But from a fans perspective this seems much better and just basically more fair then our current system. And how does this relate to pro/rel in MLS? Well I'd like to here why this wouldn't work? Kind of flesh out the specifics of Anti pro/rel arguments.
My knowledge on college sports is very limited. One potential issue - though it may not actually be one - is turnover of players. The idea of the pro/rel hierarchy is that you move up and down in line with your ability. With members of rosters graduating each year, wouldn't that mean that the team you're promoting or relegating is a much different group from the year before? With that in mind, perhaps this schools results last season, may be no indication of their quality this year. I'm making assumptions about the rate at which starting players change. If the turnaround tends to be a lot less dramatic then I'm imagining, pro/rel may well be a good fit.
Tell me what isn't working in the US? By 2021 the number of pro clubs will have tripled in a decade and we still won't be at critical mass where we have to think about practical ways to split teams up hierarchically rather than regionally. But it would be nice. Pro/rel systems in Europe developed when there was a very small difference on standards and finances between leagues. In 1961, the maximum wage for a professional soccer player in England was about $15 (at today's exchange rate). Even in 1993, after the Premier League was formed, the highest paid player was John Barnes at about $400k. Today a relegated team needs to be given $60 million plus just to survive the drop. We don't know what would happen to a team relegated from MLS but we do know that the gap in standards and finances is gargantuan by comparison to European leagues. And even if the US lower divisions develop to the point where they are much closer to the top-flight you'd still be a fool to invest money in a business with a very long-term and tenuous upside but an immediate risk of cataclysmic proportions. The simple reason pro-rel won't happen is that MLS owners won't allow it, and unless Eric Wynalda becomes head of FIFA, no-one is going to try and enforce it. So if you want pro-rel in the US anytime soon you have to workaround MLS.
"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money." -- Everett Dirksen I don't have much sympathy for the NASL (and didn't like how zombie-NASL treated NISA and NPSL as rivals/incubators), but I do have a certain amount of sympathy for Commisso and Silva as they were the ones left holding the bag in the end. If you don't think half a billion dollars and a ten year "hands-off" policy from USSF wouldn't be a game changer in lower division soccer, I think you're only kidding yourself. We both know that's not happening. And I don't think MLS will stop at 28 unless someone (or something) stops them from doing so. MLS derives its overinflated value both from SUM and from creating and maintaining a financial canyon between itself and any lower division league that isn't MLS.... in short, they want a major-league/minor-league dynamic while most American soccer fans prefer an upper division/lower division dynamic. NISA is brand new. NPSL will be around in some form in 2026, but without at least part of that $500 million dollar offer used to invest/connect NPSL Pro, they could be effectively put out of business by USL D3. It is not unreasonable to ask for a ten year "runway" but IMHO it is decidedly unreasonable to not seriously consider someone who offers a half a billion dollar commitment to lower division soccer. Team of rivals.... and I get to be Abe Lincoln with Scarlett Johansson as Mrs. Lincoln. What's not to love? Nobody's requiring Kingston Stockade or anybody else to move to NPSL Pro after winning in the NPSL, much less moving to a D3 or D2 league. Crowley wants to build something from the ground up and see how far he can get.
Dunno. Do their fans go to local basketball pubs that open early on Saturday and Sunday mornings to watch european teams? Would their fans fill a stadium in Ann Arbor to watch a meaningless offseason exhibition?
The problem is, we're expected to trust Commisso and mistrust the USSF. It seems that at every turn, he proposes something, USSF pushes back on certain elements and/or asks for clarification and suddenly he points the finger and walks away. To the best of my knowledge, the USSF hasn't actually rejected any plan of his, while he, Silva and the NASL have a track record of politicking and grandstanding to make MLS and USSF look bad. Come on Dude. This is weak and lazy. You know full well that the NFL, despite having a relatively modest following in the UK, fills Wembley Stadium on an annual basis. This season, those games came immediately before the reigning EPL champions Man City, took on local side and title dark-horses, Spurs in a league game. Aside from this seeing the EPL playing with football lines and an NFL logo on the turf - something held up by MLS detractors as indicative of "bush league" status, it was also far from a sellout. I know, I know, "that was a competitive game, not a friendly" but do you really think the same NFL fans would decide it wasn't worth their time if it was their only chance to see those teams live? Meanwhile, I attended a Man United vs AC Milan game at the StubHub this summer, that had been moved from the Rose Bowl due to meagre ticket sales and didn't come close to filling even the 27k venue. Americans demand the REAL version of soccer! #ProRelforUSA pic.twitter.com/9xhyIFn7Ck— Harry (@barroldinho1) July 26, 2018
A ten year hands off policy is more important than the money because it allows for the lower leagues to grow organically. I'm all in favor of a hard stop for MLS, I just can't see Garber letting it happen. $25 million a year from Commisso, and $25 million from other sources sounds cool but we never saw a plan (did we?). Would that include his investment in the Cosmos? Would it go towards travel expenses? Player salaries? Expansion teams? Stadiums? Subsidising already wealthy owners? What's the rationale? Also is one or two people bankrolling a league the sort of situation we want to get into. Isn't that how the single-entity happened? I think the benefit of a hard stop, allowing teams in Indy, Louisville, Sacramento, St Louis, Phoenix, Detroit, San Diego, San Antonio, Las Vegas, West Texas, etc to build a strong, financially independent second division, would make that $ half billion almost insignificant. And I agree that a lot amateur teams would decline promotion of it were an option and that wouldn't imply that the model wasn't working. So there's a couple of things we agree on If you leave MLS out of the pro-rel scenario for now it becomes a lot more viable. And whether you feel that MLS has some sort of moral obligation to invoke the system, it doesn't matter, because the owners won't vote for it, and judging by the 2026 World Cup location, FIFA doesn't care.
I think the ICC is suffering from over-saturation in the US. Fans are realizing that the games are worthless but many are still showing up just to see their stars. I'm sure the Oscars would fill the Big House too. Also comparing ICC to NFL, pre-season American Bowl games used to sell out too. Regarding the NFL lines, the same weekend there was a Premier League match with barely disguised rugby markings on the pitch. And the Galaxy didn't make much of an attempt to remove soccer lines before Chargers games.
I don't really see that as a bigger issue than it is in other sports that have successfully done pro/rel. One reason is there are so many players involved in a teams season. You have 44 players between your starters and second stringers playing offense and defense, and because of the injury rate in American Football your second stringers almost always end up playing at least some. So it's not outrageous to have 50+ guys playing over the course of 12 game season. Plus it's a lot like European soccer (I actually think college football is the most similar to European soccer in terms of sports culture) in that certain programs have massive built in advantages built up over generations. Because every program is theoretically offering the same thing, a free college education, other non monetary factors end up playing a large role in attracting players like, opportunity to win titles, prestige, playing in front of passionate fans, being part of a historical program etc. So the top programs don't so much rebuild as reload. While there is movement and teams do rise and fall generally they stay within the same band of performance. An example is Kentucky this year, they had had one of their best seasons ever at 9-3, if Alabama goes 9-3 their coach is in serious trouble. So I don't think that the differences in teams from year to year is that big of a factor. But to be fair I haven't done a detailed analysis or anything.
If an open Pro/Rel system existed, a deserving Roughnecks team that expands its fanbase by winning as often as Louisville's USL franchise would have sentenced my Tulsa Athletics to relative irrelevance and obscurity based on results on the field, rather than enjoy exclusive territorial rights to the only D3 league in America at the time and now the only D2 league, despite sucking. If an open Pro/Rel system existed, independent clubs with solid ownership like the New York Cosmos and Miami FC wouldn't be relegated to NPSL obscurity by USSF while the worst team in the USL for two of the past three seasons a promotion from D3 to D2 based on the league in which they paid for territorial exclusivity... We need to move towards Pro/Rel because Louisville and Indianapolis and Tampa and Jacksonville and San Diego and Sacramento should enjoy the same opportunities for relevance in the soccer marketplace as does Columbus and Cincinnati and Orlando and Miami and LA and San Jose. We need Pro/Rel because building soccer specific stadiums is not advisable in all American soccer markets (see Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver). We need Pro/Rel because, without it, MLS will eventually overexpand to 32 teams and beyond. We need significant and methodical movement towards a fully open Pro/Rel system in order to lessen the stratification that is only getting worse between D1, D2, D3, etc etc. We need Pro/Rel to propel the US Open Cup to its full potential/relevance. We need Pro/Rel because $500 million dollars would be far better spent on lower division soccer than paying overpriced MLS expansion fees for USSF D1 teams #25, #26, and #27. We need Pro/Rel because MLS needs to have some underpinning of relevance and widespread popularity in non-MLS markets, and I don't ever see NCAA college men's soccer or an MLS version of minor league baseball's farm club system filling the gap and/or developing into a suitable alternative to what England and Germany have. We need Pro/Rel as a differentiator to what other sports in this country do. A hundred years ago?... the era of World War I, World War II, the Great Depression? The soccer-novice baseball team owners of the fourth incarnation of the Tulsa Roughnecks (here's the third one) won the AA Texas League Championship this year. The home playoff games they hosted didn't draw any more fans than a typical Bark-in-the-Park night. I mean, if promotion to AAA were at stake to play against hated turnpike rivals in OKC, do you think the ballpark might be filled? I think so. But the only benefit for a AA baseball team in winning a championship is seeing its best players shipped off to the AAA affiliate, which in Tulsa's case, would be the Dodgers farm club in OKC... Saturday afternoon musings...If baseball had soccer-style promotion and relegation, we'd be playing in @MLB next season!https://t.co/IRaoJVFVkU pic.twitter.com/NdyBC5nkut— Memphis Redbirds (@memphisredbirds) October 13, 2018
To use a local phrase from Southern California that you may be aware of ... DUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Yeah that was kind of the point and I actually literally said that in my post. But if you haven't noticed you are in the ALL-ENCOMPASSING pro/rel thread, if you don't want to read about crazy pro/rel ideas then well you should probably press the back button on your browser. For the record the reason I made the post wasn't to start a revolution and bring pro/rel to college football. Honestly I would just be happy for them to expand the playoff to 8 teams and guarantee a spot for the highest ranked non power 5 team. I posted it to try and examine one aspect of the pro/rel debate. The idea that there aren't enough teams to make it worth it. So I offered up a an American sport that had enough teams to kind of have the debate from a different perspective. But actually you are right this is really all meaningless and in the grand scheme generally a waste of time... so if that really annoys you that much why are you here?
I'm not proposing we fully trust Commisso or completely mistrust the USSF when addressing potential conflicts of interest. False equivalency. Would American basketball or hockey fans fill huge indoor arenas (much less a 100k capacity stadium) consistently for exhibition games between top european teams in those two sports? Maybe American soccer fans are becoming savvier than the way they have been consistently maligned and stereotyped on this forum? Manchester United will be depleted of star power for friendly against A.C. Milan at StubHub Center By Daniel O'Boyle Jul 24, 2018
Not sure anybody here has argued that American soccer fans are really into the idea of paying money to see reserve teams from Europe play a friendly.