NASL cries foul on proposed new USSF Division 1 mandates

To which I always say....is the MLS club going to get to be based in England and follow EPL rules of player acquisition and possession, or is it still going to be based in America and have our small rosters?

Because if it's going to be based in America and have our small rosters, those are a couple of pretty big disadvantages (there may very well be an advantage to be had from, say, Newcastle having to travel all the way to Los Angeles, but that advantage would be almost completely negated the other way).

And if you're going to let the MLS team be based somewhere in England and acquire and keep and pay players like an EPL team, then it's not really an MLS team anymore.

Interesting mental exercise, but this isn't APBA, where players react in a mathematical way. If a North American team competed in a European league, the distances and differences in player mechanisms makes it hard to say who'd do what.

 

All of which is either way overthinking the statement being made.

 

Sure but the quote is about current squads playing in its current format.

Yes in the long run a NYCFC in the EPL will eventually get rid of the budget and the DP limit.

Same with Mancity in MLS, in the long run if the move was permanent they would have to sell most of their current players to get within MLS budget rules and DP limits.

 

Or, as some of us call it, "a realistic approach to actually considering the issue "

There's your way, which is the guy who discovered soccer an hour and a half ago giving it two seconds thought. And then there's this way.

Some of us like to think realistically. We won't be dismissed by hicks.

 

Playing where, though?

Again, these are not sims.

Drop-shipping an MLS club into that environment is not realistic.

Could NYCFC play against the rest of the EPL once or twice a week...in London and Manchester and hold their own? Maybe. What if they played in Greenland?

You can't divorce the real-world concerns of the applications of the thought experiment. Else there's no point. (Not that there's much of one anyway.)

 

Yes, travel would be a bitch.

But just Imagine that NYCFC and ManCity were to swap every single player (or Pachuca and Valencia). That would make the scenario more imaginable (yes, still a crzy hypoterical, but this is Big Soccer after all).

 

Hankinson's "middle of MLS" quote is funny, just because of the parity. Vancouver is next to last in the West with 31 points. Portland is the last team in the playoffs with...35. The Crew are in 9th, and they're 6 points back of DC United, with a game in hand.

If your teams could hang in the middle of MLS, they're about an inch away from coming in 9th or 2nd in the division.

I always look at it this way.

Imagine that we pick a time of year, let's say early October, or mid April, that is fair to both leagues. Then imagine we randomly pick 10 MLS team to be hosts, and 10 EPL teams to be hosts. Then you randomly pair up MLS road teams with EPL hosts and vice versa. So you set aside a Saturday for 20 matches. (Then imagine that you find some way to get all 40 teams to take this seriously.)

How many points would the MLS teams get, and how many would the EPL teams get? Max would be 60, but of course draws reduce that. My WAG is that MLS would get 1-3 wins, 3-5 draws, and get around 10 points, while the EPL teams would get around 45 points.

IOW, if you start thinking about it as a season, that leads to the questions you're asking. But if you just make it a pro soccer version of the ACC-Big 10 challenge, that's a problem you can wrap your hands around.

 

Or you know some of us are actually smart enough to understand what the person is saying, and doesn't need to go into all of those thought experiments to figure out the irrelevant logistics of the statement.

 

Meh, I say leave it open until USSF makes their decision official. NASL, IIRC, has only said they will not seek litigation based on what that decision is...but they could still get D1 status (sure....)

 

Where was it said they gave up on it?

 

http://www.si.com/planet-futbol/201...tawa-fury-tampa-bay-rowdies-usl-bill-peterson

"The NASL has argued that being labeled ‘second division’ has hampered its ability to attract fans, sponsors and the political support required for venue upgrades. It threatened antitrust litigation last year, but in an interview this week NASL commissioner Bill Peterson told SI.com that the league no longer is considering legal action.

“We took a decision over the winter that we wanted to step back and try to re-engage with U.S. Soccer and discuss the [sanctioning] standards and where we fit in and our feelings about them … in a more productive manner than pulling the trigger on any sort of legal activities. And that’s what we’ve been doing,” Peterson said. “It’s incredibly important that the Federation and the NASL have a positive relationship because there are so many different aspects and facets to the game. It doesn’t mean we have to agree on everything, but it does mean we have a partnership … [A lawsuit is] not looming there as a threat, and it's not something we want to do.”"

Pretty umambiguous, no? Peterson has switched gears before, but for the moment his position seems pretty clear.

 

Right, I replied thinking the thread was about their applying for D1 status for 2017 which hasnt apparently been ruled on yet by USSF, my mistake, haven't been checking on BS as much lately and made a quick reply.

Lock away @SoccerPrime !