Hi folks. Hope you don't mind me stepping in to ask quite a substantial question. I am an Englishman living in the USA (been there almost 9 years now). I grew up with the English game, promotion and relegation was a fact of life. I moved here and started following MLS. I've actually grown very passionate about the league. The promotion/relegation debate is something that comes up over and over again. Coming from a country where this was the norm in football, I was all for it being implemented in MLS. I was then persuaded by US fans that the situation wasn't right. In the UK, pro/rel was instituted to cope with a growing league and a large volume of clubs that already existed and were in a position to join in relatively short space of time. America doesn't have that. Today, it has 55 pro teams and plenty of those couldn't compete in MLS if we let them right now. However, I notice that not only has the J-League incorporated this system, it seems to be operating very well. Teams come up and compete, you don't get the yo-yoing we see in major Euro leagues, you've even had teams win J2 and J1 back to back. What I guess I'm asking here is why that is? Did pro/rel cause all this, or was it a mechanism that was adopted because the potential was already there? Are there other factors that contribute to such a competitive league? I know this is a lot to read. Just looking for some insight on the topic. Thanks in advance!
Interesting topic indeed. Among those 55 pro American teams, surely at least8-10 of them have the potential to be an MLS-club dont they? That´s basically all you need at first I think. Although given the big distances in USA, you might need two 2nd division conferences too, but even so, if you only had around 5 competitive teams in addition to 5 less competitive teams in each conference, that should be enough, shouldnt it? Then it would be similar to the top division, with 10 teams in total in each conference. And you could gradually increase the number of teams in the leagues as more teams turned pro, and even expand the top divisions to 12 or 14 teams in each conference as long as it wouldnt affect the level too much etc. J.League is working on a 100-year plan, and so far everything seems to have gone according to plans. J1 is very competitive, and probably one of the best run leagues in the world. J2 is also pretty high-standard for being a 2nd division, but for the overall level it might would have been an idea to reduce the number of teams by 3-4. J3 is also off to a good start as far as I can see. 4
not allowing relegation is just a mean to preserve a certain economic elite. It's basically an assurance to the richer clubs. It sucks, as some clubs might be less interested to build proper squads if their revenue is fine enough.
Thanks for the answer. That's the thing: of the 55, 20 are in MLS, another few are scheduled to join in the next couple of years and half a dozen are newly formed "second teams" (LA Galaxy II for example) in the lowest division. Of those that would have the resources and infrastructure to compete, you've maybe got the NY Cosmos, Sacramento Republic and maybe two or three others maybe could make a case. Beyond that, we're talking small outfits against a backdrop of defunct clubs. The league itself is doing a good job of managing a steadily growing and improving league. That's the biggest argument against pro/rel really: it's doing fine and the gains versus the risks in a nation not used to the system, are hard to see. However, the J-League results intrigue me. Is it that the teams were there to warrant a second and now third division, or has promotion and relegation created those teams?
Japan has been in very different position from the start. The J. League did not appear in a vacuum as MLS did—the country already had two-tier amateur league with more than 20-year history. Amateur clubs were used to promotion and relegation, and when they gradually started turning professional, pro/rel was an easy sell. And while J. League resembled MLS for some time—it did not relegate clubs, only promoted new ones from minor leagues—the amateur leagues that existed below never ceased promotion and relegation all the way down to regional and prefecture leagues. It was always matter of when, not if the promotion & relegation will be introduced to the top tier. This time came when the number of clubs ready for transition to professional level reached 10 (note that second division counted 16 teams at the moment), and J2 league was immediately born. Worth noticing that promotion & relegation has been introduced even before J2 kicked off: Kawasaki Frontale, JFL runners-up, were given a chance to participate in pro/rel playoffs with J1 clubs at the end of 1998 season. Same story happened two years ago when J2 reached its intended size and a third professional tier became inevitable. Again, the league spent a year or two 'nurturing' the right amount of semi-professional clubs in the amateur league, then absorbed them and created a new division with promotion and relegation to higher tier and promotion only from the lower tier. The answer to your question — Is it that the teams were there to warrant a second and now third division, or has promotion and relegation created those teams? — is actually both. The first wave of promotion & relegation could not have happened without a large existing base of amateur teams: As of 1999, when J2 has been created, every single one of 26 J. League member clubs have existed when the league started playing in 1993, with Shimizu S-Pulse being coeval with the league. But in order to maintain this growth, new blood has been necessary too—and from my POV pro/rel played a large part in this growth as an incentive for smaller clubs to develop into semi-professional institutions first and full J. League members later. This 'second wave' is represented by clubs such as V-Varen Nagasaki (2004), FC Ryukyu (2003), SC Sagamihara (2008), Fujieda MYFC (2004), Zweigen Kanazawa (2006), Grulla Morioka (2000), and there's more in JFL and Regional leagues. As you can see, all of them were conceived, and many more turned pro, shortly after J2 has been launched. This is hardly a coincidence. MLS has never been designed to develop like this. There is no an has never been a grassroots base that may slowly develop into professional clubs over time. If a second and third tier clubs expand enough and survive long enough to form such a base, then maybe pro/rel talks become viable. And judging by the current state of NASL and USL that moment is decades away.