The concept of relegation is pretty foreign to us Yanks. Obviously it's not something that exists here on any professional or collegiate level (though I think it probably should). I was just wondering where the concept of relegation came from and how long it's existed in England and throughout Europe.
England has had it since the late 19th century (I would have to check the date) from the time that the Football League expanded into two divisions. At first, relegation and promotion was decided by "test matches", in which the bottom teams in the first division played against the top teams in the second, with the winners playing in the first division the next season. "Automatic" relegation came in some time later.
So let's all do our best to make sure West Ham stays up and is NOT(!!!) a relegation victim!!! Vive le AFC! OPArsenal
Relegation is necessary in european football because there are so many teams in each country and they all want to play in the top leagues. Play good - go up Play bad - go down
The league expanded to two divisions for 1892-3. Test matches played for six seasons and automatic promotion for ever year after that. Something perhaps unique to the English game was re-election. At the bottom of the football league was a re-election zone where the worst clubs in the league (typically worst 4, although it might have been less in the early years) would have to apply to the league board at its AGM to retain their league place. Semi-pro clubs from outside the league were also able to apply for election. The 4 clubs who polled the most votes would play in the league the following season. Barrow, Southport, Workington, Bradford Park Avenue, Gateshead, New Brighton, Merthyr Tydfil, Abadare, Ashington, Durham City & Nelson all lost their league place through re-election (several other clubs just resigned). Re-election was scrapped in 1986, when one up-one down promotion between (pro) Div 4 and the (semi-pro) conference, the top division of football outside the league.
It would kill the MLS if they went to relegation right now because the lukewarm soccer fans the league attracts from various cities would not want to watch a "minor league" team, which is what they would believe a second division to be. It may also pose the problem that if New York (which would lose the #1 market, and it is very important right now) and Colorado were relegated and Seattle and Vancouver were promoted, how would they choose what division the two extremely western teams would play in? If so though, I would like to know how they could go about it. The country is very big so would they need to keep two divisions? Would they relegate the worst in the division, or the two worst in the league? I'm just saying, that in this point in MLS time, there are too many problems to promotion/relegation. I'm sure everyone agrees that when the MLS can handle it, we would want to have relegation, but at this point it would kill the league. Why fix something if it ain't broke?
Rugby Union in England faces similar problems. Rugby has had a pro/rel system for years but is having problems now that the game turned pro (it was amateur until a few years ago). There are only 12 pro teams and all 12 are in the top division. In theory the bottom club is relegated every year, but in recent years no team had been promoted as the champions of the second tier haven't had a stadium good enough. It is also seen by many within the game as madness to relegate a club from the Zurich Premiership to national division 1 as such an action could kill the club, and the game needs every pro club it can get. It would in this case make far more sense to expand as an when clubs become viable (to get some sort of perspective, last year my home town of Bracknell's rugby club played in national division 1, one division below the pro league. Bracknell Rugby club's ground is an open field behind a pub, without so much as fence surrounding it.) English football has something of an opposite problem, perhaps unique in Europe, whereby it has far more potentially viable clubs than there are places in the top division. Even Italy, Germany, and to a lesser extent, Spain, have regular top flight teams who, from a financial/crowd pulling point of view would struggle to ever get beyond mid-table Div 1 in England.
Pro/rel is all over the place in American Youth soccer. A lot of leagues at various levels have it. For example, three Western & Central Michigan leagues have formed an elite division in each age group. They started out with the top 3 teams in each age group from each league. Each season, the bottom 3 teams drop from the Elite divisions back into their home league and the league winners move up into the Elite divisions. Many age groups in the home leagues have more than 1 division and bottom 1 or 2 A division teams will drop down to B with the top 1 or 2 B division teams moving up each season. Also, the Michigan State Premier League has at least 3 divisions in each age group. Again bottom 2 and top 2 get relegated / promoted each season. The top 2 team from the Premier Division 1 get nominated to particapate in the National League. So it's only at the professional ranks that pro/rel is unheard of in the US.
Here in the US we promote/relegate individuals, not teams. It's not just pro soccer where we have no history with pro/rel. It's all our major sports. Some sports, such as baseball and hockey, have "farm clubs" - the minor leagues, with teams affiliated with major league teams. Players move up and down the ladder. You won't see the Toledo Mudhens move up to Major League Baseball. You will see individual Mudhens players called up. Other sports don't have a formal relationship of teams, but use colleges and amateur or semi-pro leagues as their training grounds.
I think the most interesting example is Feyenoord and Excelsior, who both play in the top Dutch division. I believe most top Bundesliga clubs have reserve sides playing in the lower divisions.