We already knew the divisions. East Division Chattanooga FC Detroit City FC Miami FC Miami United FC Milwaukee Torrent New York Cosmos. West Division ASC San Diego Cal FC California United Strikers FC FC Arizona Oakland Roots A new update on the start of the schedule and a bit on the playoffs: http://www.npsl.com/news/9946 The East Region will start games on August 10, the West Region on August 24. East opening week schedule: Chattanooga FC v. NY Cosmos Milwaukee Torrent v. Miami United FC Miami FC v. Detroit City FC The West opening week is TBA. There is also this odd statement: The "highest remaining seeds"? So more than 4 teams will make their playoffs? Has anyone seen any information about their playoff format?
It always costs more than they think. Hell, Detroit had a million dollar budget and only made a profit thanks to a home playoff run, not paying players and rarely having to leave the state of Michigan. In the NPSL. I don't know how the Oakland Whatevers are going to manage it.
Didn't Detroit spend a bunch of money expanding the business (indoor arena...). Not sure that's a valid data point. wrt Oakland, at least they will be able to take buses or vans to all their away games. The one I'd be most worried about is Milwaukee. No huge fan base or big money man that I"m aware of. Plane flights to most away games. The whole point of the Founders Cup is to get a longer season and yet Milwaukee has decided not to compete in the NPSL regular season???
Cal Utd did not even survive pre season https://www.frontrowsoccer.com/2019...-california-united-strikers-drop-out-of-npsl-
Chris Kivlehan @kivlehan Hearing that the #NPSLFoundersCup has a replacement for Cal United. @NapaValley1839 is understood to be the club that will step up giving the Cup two NorCal teams and bringing them back to 5 in the West and 11 overall teams.
Napa Valley has done some decent things in their short existence. (By that I mean they once drew 2,291 to a game, though the only two data points I have for them for 2018 were 350 each.) Though you'd think if they were really ready to be a professional team, that would have manifested itself before now. And I bet Cal United FC ends up in the NISA.
No, no. USL may have the magic of Pro/Rel eventually. NPSL/NISA will have the magic of another kind of pyramid.
"Mitchel Athletic Complex is a great venue that has hosted a number of high-quality international matches." It was used for the 1998 Goodwill Games, an alternative to the politicized Olympics invented by Ted Turner. Besides that it hosted a couple of Metrostars Open Cup games. It's a 50 minute drive or 2 hour transit trip on a Sunday afternoon from Times Square.
Oakland Roots my man they’ll manage just fine. Take a look at what they’ve been putting out. Their going to be making some noise. Their business model makes perfect sense too. Their gonna be grass roots and while their investors likely have deep pockets (you have to put money into something like this) time has shown with these leagues that grass roots are more sustainable then just flooding a team with cash.
Here’s the website... https://oaklandrootssc.com/ Their intro videos to their first players have been fire. Introducing our first-ever player, Oakland native Devante Dubose.https://t.co/hKHZgUXmvq pic.twitter.com/Aseg92LJvL— Oakland Roots (@oaklandrootssc) February 19, 2019 Have a look at what a brand new, semi-pro soccer club can do with creative output and simple storytelling. A lot of the big guys could take a nice lesson from what's going on with @oaklandrootssc. Again, totally biased, but am excited as hell by this org. https://t.co/lxKv42VenL— Jonah Freedman (@jonahfreedman) March 18, 2019 Their trying to really build community ties and their first few signings have been in that vein. The Bay Area is a very very diverse place and their going to be playing to the young urban brand not the stereotype soccer mom and upper middle class family. I suspect they’ll start making a couple of flashier signings soon. They actually just had some of their gear rocked in a G-Easy music video.
That’s precisely what this project is shaping out to be... https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ea...soccer-stadium-hotel-complex-for-concord/amp/
Well, good. If they can sell tickets as well as they can create videos, good for them. If they can't, it won't matter. History is not on their side, but good luck to them.
I have heard from several sources that @Cal_FC is out of the Founders Cup. The financial strain would be too much for the club at this time, without additional investor backing. #NPSLPro #FoundersCup— Chris Kivlehan (@kivlehan) April 29, 2019 That's two teams that have bowed out before the league is even close to getting off the ground... will this actually happen, or will they set the American lower division soccer league speedrun record? I hope this works out, I'd like to attend at least one Oakland Roots game... although perhaps my hat will gain additional soccer hipster cred if the team never plays! A question that was posted elsewhere: Wasn't the point of Rocco, Silva and Palmer's NASL/DZero explorations to help fund other teams until league popularity raised them up? hmmm...
I also saw that question, but I'm not sure its point or relevance. That offer was a (really bad) plan to help lift teams up into division 2. It was an unsustainable model then, it would be unsustainable now. The whole point of this whole NPSL Pro project is to provide a path for the independent amateur clubs to continue to grow more organically: basically if you need help making this jump, it's a pretty big red flag that you're not ready yet. It's sort of antithetical to mortgage the future on some moonshot of higher returns at a higher level, because the established clubs know there's no big payout coming. The goal is to keep growing enough to keep breaking even. Worth noting that the two Founder's Cup teams that have dropped out are both from UPSL.