They do. It's a great discussion on other social media platforms. IMHO, without basic changes in how they do business and the USSF PLS for D2 and D3 and the additional recognition of a D4, USL changes in nomenclature for their leagues are little more than window dressing.
Is it? It seems about 90% virtue signaling, 5% victimhood, and 5% playing imaginary USSF president setting up leagues and divisions and regions and tiers and cups and scarves.
I mean if you’re going to be pedantic then yes. Many D2-NAIA programs don’t offer as many scholarships as D1 schools and there’s the prestige level too. Every Power 5 school can and should offer men’s soccer but they don’t and many use Title IX as an excuse when they can easily offer more opportunities for women as well.
Yes we've been discussing that. PLS would need liberalizing but I'd still expect pretty strict standards for a national top-flight. I'm not sure that nomenclature makes much difference. USSF does apparently.
There were a lot of strange ideas being circulated back then. https://amp-theguardian-com.cdn.amp.../league-1-america-soccer-revolution-never-was
I've been aware of prozone soccer (or at least its concept ) since I was a teenager and a friend was inaccurately informing me that these were rules that America wanted FIFA to adopt! Obviously that was wrong and this was actually one of the proposals for the league that FIFA had mandated as a condition for the US hosting WC94. It does illustrate the status of soccer in the US at the time and pours some cold water on the claim by certain pro/rel fundamentalists that soccer is in fact the biggest sport in America and that it's unpopularity is an NFL conspiracy. However, it's pretty clear from not only this proposal but also the fact that MLS came with some quirky features initially, that there was a perceived need to make some adjustments to appeal to mainstream America. The original NASL actually used slightly different rules (such as the offside line, which I understand remained in college soccer for sometime afterwards), so we've got over 50 years of evidence that soccer was recognized as a niche sport. Is it any wonder then with the challenges that the game has faced, that something as fundamentally different and potentially risky as pro/rel was not adopted as a feature? Yes, Werner Fricker proposed pro/rel and got virtually nowhere with it. Most notably, none of the three major bids to be the "major league" mandated by FIFA in 1988 included pro/rel as a feature. I'm not sure why pro/rel fundamentalists see fit to keep producing this document as some kind of "Aha!" moment.
Fricker proposed three levels: Level 3 - amateur teams within a single metropolitan area or state. Level 2 - semi-pro teams competing on a regional basis. Level 1 - national professional league Standards to determine placement level would be established by the U.S. Soccer Federation. Those standards were to include competitiveness, size of playing site, financing and marketability. Promotion and relegation was a long term goal. In terms of progress I think we're a long way off developing a consistent regional, state or municipal system.
I love that in Jeffy's lame duck attempt at an AHA! he actually exposes one of the martyr documents they constantly post as a complete farce for their cause. Pro/rel eventually AFTER a set up that qualifies by measures the current system is doing. AHA indeed
Extracts: "The new league system, the basic framework of which is expected to be approved at the USSF National Council meeting July 30 in Philadelphia, is designed to produce a world-class national team by 1994. The United States, which has not qualified for the World Cup finals since 1950, automatically qualified for the 1994 finals Monday when FIFA, soccer's world governing body, named it the event's host nation." "The setup likely will resemble closely the NCAA's Division I, II and III. As with that system, teams would not be subject to promotion or relegation based on year-to-year performance. Most multi-tiered league systems around the world are comprised entirely of professional and semiprofessional teams, with the best teams in a lower division moving up and the worst teams in a higher division moving down after each season."
“Promotion and relegation is the biggest idiocy in soccer,” De Laurentiis says. “Especially when you also have UEFA trying to force clubs to comply with financial fair play rules. Clubs should be structured geographically, so they can all be self-sufficient." So the owner of Napoli just said that pro/rel is the biggest idiocy in soccer. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/sports/napoli-aurelio-de-laurentiis.html
Interesting POV. Napoli, seems to me, is one of those "second-tier" clubs JUST below the elite. Big enough to compete in their domestic leagues and make the occasional run in the UCL but lack the resources of the truly big clubs.
Interesting. He sees an element of "rewarding failure" even in a pro/rel system. Doesn't like the MLS model but not too keen on UEFA's brand of control either. I'll give him points for originality.
Really it only seemed as though the buy in is what he didn't like about the MLS structure. To me it seems a good representative of the "realistic to talk about" clubs in world soccer. The ELITE you mention are outliers in everything except a 1% conversation. There's a good several dozen Napoli's across world soccer IMO. To see someone at that level a club to think this way is pretty eye opening.
He was at least partially right. That was our mentality back then. After the collapse of the old NASL, the future was indoors and conventional wisdom at the time dictated that the only way forward for professional outdoor soccer in the states would be to make it as gimmicky and high scoring as possible. The fact that the idea got so far is proof of the uphill battle for the future of outdoor soccer in this country. We had bigger fish to fry than to concentrate on an open system including promotion and relegation. The folks you malign as "certain pro/rel fundamentalists" are but a handful of online activists, and even then, apart from one known pro-rel activist Trump supporter, most have views far more nuanced than what you characterize. I still prefer the shootout over PK's if you have to break a tie. College soccer still has game clocks that count down with no injury time. The 35-yardline offside rule was a FIFA approved experiment, but I never saw a college soccer game in the mid/late 1980s that had that extra line with that rule still in place... could be wrong though. Who are you arguing with? Twitter people who never post on Bigsoccer? I was surprised to see it even existed. I'm glad there was a voice of reason back in the dark days of 1988, even if there was little chance his ideas were going to be fully adopted in the 1990s. I would add that there were attempts to create a minor league soccer pyramid dating back to a time when MLS was having trouble getting ownership/investor money lined up and so they offered membership to APSL owners. Proposed League Dealt Blow : Soccer: APSL unanimously rejects new proposed "single entity" league, but could pay price if MLS takes off. October 06, 1994|GRAHAME L. JONES | TIMES STAFF WRITER And, in the hands of a certain Mr. Marcos, the future of lower division soccer was destined to be one of an unstable minor league plagued with volatility and incompetence... USISL Unveils Changes, Plans For New Outdoor Soccer League Nov 24, 1995 I posted it as a bit of an afterthought without context. Typical of Bigsoccer's usual suspects to use it to mischaracterize an entire movement. #ProRelForUSA #OpenSoccer https://www.fourfourtwo.com/us/features/major-indoor-soccer-hype-us-one-time-biggest-league-remembered?page=0,1
When I say "pro/rel fundamentalists", I do so to specifically differentiate a particular subset from pro/rel advocates in general. A broad definition would be those who believe: Pro/rel is absolutely essential to domestic US soccer The above point is beyond discussion
That hasn't changed. Ironic. Were you to actually try, you'd see the same looking back "this way" Meh, play the game. Silver goal OT period then Golden goal OT period. Odd way to say "read all of it and didn't cherry pick to fit narrative"
I think Napoli fans regard them as a sleeping giant. They also represent an entire culture which is to the rest of Italy what Mexico is to the US and Canada. They've spent time in the lower divisions and SSC Napoli is a phoenix the owner acquired when they were the C1 regional league. Interesting quotes. Clubs like Frosinone do not draw fans, or interest, or broadcasters to the league", De Laurentiis says. They come up, they do not try to compete, and they go back down, except with their coffers stuffed by what he sees as an unwarranted share of the division’s television revenue. “The problem is the small teams have the same rights as the big ones,” he said, adding, with a reference to a type of bread: “Why should Frosinone have a season in Serie A, be given a slice of the pagnotta and then be relegated back to the third division? If they cannot compete, if they finish last, they should have to pay a fine. They shouldn’t be given money for failing.” I could imagine Mike Ashley saying something similar. He's desperately trying to offload Newcastle at a Premier League premium, before they head back to the EFL.
I hope you don't mean me. I provided a direct quote from Chuck Blazer at the presentation of the plan you posted where he specifically said that there would not be a promotion and relegation system based on one season of play. I'm in England and the LA Times has blanked the story. It's interesting though that the regular season and overall Champions were the Seattle Sounders, owned by their MLS head, Adrian Hanauer, and a Montreal Impact team owned by Joey Saputo.