With the league looking to have 24 teams solidly in place I think it is time MLS looks into building an MLS2. I am not talking about Relegation. I think MLS should concentrate on Building up a strong 2nd Tier with the possibility of movement in the far out future. Seems like the USA still has alot of strong City Candidates. I know that the league wants the money. They can still run the league and hence take the expansion fees. Who would you place, besides the 24 teams already in MLS, into MLS2. These teams would have to play in stadiums no smaller then 12 to 15K. No Baseball Stadiums My Thoughts are below: East: Louisville (USL) Cincinatti (USL) Detroit (NPSL) Charlotte (Carolina Railhawks) (NASL) Indianapolis (NASL) Rochester (USL) NY Cosmos (NASL) Charlston (USL) Ottawa (NASL) Tampa Bay (NASL) Charlston (USL) West: San Antonio (USL) Sacramento (USL) Las Vegas San Diego (NPSL) Edmonton (NASL) OKC (USL) Arizona (USL) Tulsa (USL) Austin (NASL) St Louis (USL) Any Team not mentioned on the above that is in USL or NASL can form a DIV III tier. One last thing. Lets get rid of MLS CUP. do a single ladder. 38 games. Make US Open Cup the big tournament!
1 - in before lock 2 - this belongs in YBTD 3 - why limit the top flight "just because" 4 - USL is already D3 5 - We already have the USOC
Would be nice. Eventually. I guess. MLS will have be having logistical issues with so many teams at some point. Maybe two parallel leagues - East and West - than only meet for playoffs and a league cup.
Why? MLS is going to have divisions within conferences just like the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB. That's the best way to organize a continent-wide league.
I think that MLS has three conferences for a couple of years before Miami and Tampa Bay were contracted. A three conference league of 27 teams would make a lot of sense because it would ensure a relatively balanced schedule of a home and away series against conference rivals while playing everyone else once, but Garber has already announced that MLS is expanding to 28 teams - so that option is out.
My guess is you'll see three conferences (maybe four) even with one, or two, conferences having more teams. As you said MLS has had three in the past, but they've also had conferences with more teams then the other (see 2012-14). I believe it will remain at two with 24-26 teams. Once you get to 27 three conference might make more sense. I will like to see more of team's games vs. conference foes. If you're playing a balanced, league-wide schedule might as well have one table. Don't even need a balanced conference schedule. Playoffs help rectify any in-balance in the schedules.
Essentially, you're saying MLS should work with the top (all) NASL clubs and top USL Pro clubs to form a USSF sanctioned MLS/D2 league. Secondly, those clubs not making the cut will form a USSF sanctioned D3 league under some other league umbrella (USL still?). The only difference to what we have now would be MLS running the D2 league instead of the NASL.
The people who talk about stopping expansion at 20 do not see the big picture. If we go to NFL size (32) and these 12 new teams are paying massive expansion fees (that go back to original clubs that then get re-invested), stadiums, training facilities, and free academies. These 12 teams could be investing 300M each into our most successful soccer league in American history. We are talking BILLIONS to help build the sport in this country. All while expanding the reach of the league to new markets and creating new soccer fans. Does anyone really think Orlando City staying in USL indefinitely would be a good thing for soccer in Central Florida? Expansion is growing the game while also encouraging filthy rich people to spend billions on American soccer. How on earth can someone who is a soccer fan think this is a bad idea? MLS is not a D2 league or a D3 league. Let those leagues build themselves up, its not the duty of MLS to build another league. I'd love a strong D2 and D3. We have tons of markets and even tiny markets like Chattanooga has shown that they can support local teams. Great. 30+ teams in D1, D2, & D3. Lets get up to 100 fully pro teams (with stadiums, training grounds, and academies) in the US/Canada! The way to do that is more expansion, not caping it.
MLS - 28 teams ------------------- USL National Premier - 20 independent teams ʌ Pro/rel v USL League 1 West / East - minimum 40 teams including B teams and affiliates which cannot be promoted (like in Germany) ʌ Pro/rel v USL League 2 East/West/Central/North - minimum 40 teams, pro/am, shorter seasons ------------------- USASA leagues
Is it the best way? Consider at 24 clubs, two conferences, playing home and away inside your conference and either/or against the others for 34. That's kind of a great solution, IMO. You could accomplish the same thing with four six team divisions (home and away against yours and one other, home or away against the others), and for the year or two that MLS stays at 24 it would be interesting. What MLS has done to date is try to figure out which Euro soccer notions to pick and which to discard/update. They've been quite good at that, really. The clock, for instance. they tried a couple tweeks to the time keeping and they didn't work, so they changed. Now, their decisions on the clock aren't that different from what we're talking about here with setup (btw, sorry but I'm discarding the notion of a first and second MLS. MLS is a first division and will only have any interest in developing a first division, as is their right. The league will expand until they are done. I'm talking about within that reality). Separating the league by conferences, which act as single tables, and then adding in inter-conference play, is a nice tweener (well, it's baseball really. Baseball has divisions, but is really about conferences). It gets more complicated to provide inter conference games once MLS approaches and passes 36, and maybe then you can go into divisions of 9 that provide a semblance of single table-ism.
I do dislike the option of having a lot of divisions (like the NFL) in a league that's going to allow half of its teams to make the plaooffs.
Remember MLS use to have 3 conferences at one point. That was with 12 teams. If they wanted to divided it up with more conferences they would have continued to do it. Its clear to me that the end game is to make the East and West basically leagues onto themselves. The way the NFC/AFC American/National leagues work. This way MLS could in theory have 2 european size leagues operating in the US/Canadian D1. Once you expand enough, much of the problems go away. Quality of play is the only one you introduce, but that can be handled with more money/development. Imagine a 36 team MLS in maybe 30 years. * East/West can operate like independent leagues of 18 teams, playing single tables of 34 home/away. * Because there are more teams in your region, and the regular season is played on one one side of the country, travel issues get drastically reduced. * When almost every 'major league' market has an MLS team, the league can become relevant nation wide. It solves much of the need for a 2nd division because we'd basically have 2 D1 leagues. * With more teams we will see more professional academies and more D1 roster spots for Americans to play for. The 2 major arguments against drastic expansion are.... 1. It won't look like Europe. Europe is good, if we want to be good we should look like Europe. I disagree. MLS is D1 for 2 countries. Having 2 conferences that act like leagues means that each conference can operate much like European leagues. The playoffs becomes a kinda 'champions league' of MLS where the best of the two league play in. 2. The quality of play will suck. Yes if you added a bunch of teams tomorrow, yes it will suck. But we have 2X as many teams as we started in MLS and we got better. That came from investment. If expansion can motivate rich people to invest billions into soccer, then we can continue to improve. We CAN be both much bigger and much better. But if we don't get those billions invested, I don't think it will be as easy to get better. Getting bigger is a key component.
Top 20 in attendance Cincinnati - USL 16204 Sacramento - USL 11569 Minnesota - NASL 8726 Indianapolis - NASL 8666 Louisville - USL 6608 San Antonio - USL 6601 Tampa Bay - NASL 5779 Oklahoma CE - USL 5481 Ottawa - NASL 5481 Carolina - NASL 5295 Saint Louis - USL 5004 Rayo OKC - NASL 4965 Ft Lauderdale - NASL 4906 Jacksonville - NASL 4589 Tulsa - USL 4482 Charleston - USL 4403 NY Cosmos - NASL 4302 Richmond - USL 4295 Miami - NASL - 3764 Rochester - USL - 3561 Top 20 by % change where available Saint Louis - USL - 5004 +84% Louisville - USL - 6608 +43% Charleston - USL - 4403 +41% Tulsa FC - USL - 4482 +36% Carolina - NASL - 5295 +17% Ottawa - NASL - 5481 +6% Tampa Bay - NASL - 5779 +2% Sacramento - USL - 11569 +2% Minnesota - NASL - 8726 -1% Indianapolis - NASL - 8666 -12% NY Cosmos - NASL - 4302 -15% Jacksonville - NASL - 4589 -42% Ft Lauderdale - NASL - 4906 -70%
If you invest $billions in grass roots soccer today, the benefits will not be seen until at least 2028. You can import more players but the roster is currently 49% domestic and 51% foreign, and that's a healthy ratio to maintain as MLS expands. Otherwise you end up like the original NASL, an expensive retirement league for aging foreigners.
It would seem. But is that the case? Amazing piece on Iceland from the Guardian. Now, true they kicked up the full scale devo 16 years ago, but they were essentially building from scratch. The US is above that. The lesson, for a nation as large as the US, is it doesn't take 320 million to build a successful program. In fact, it would seem to me that it point out what matters most is that when and where you go in, you go all in. Population ~350k, but 600 with UEFA A or B licenses (most amazing notion is that coaching under anyone older than 10 falls to those with B or above). The US is too big to make a single Clarefontaine work as smoothly as a smaller nation, but they can manage to go all in at each MLS club, along these lines, with which expansion would eventually cover a pretty good piece of the country (essentially devo by being 28 Icelands).
Here's the thing: there's a good chance homegrown player signings are about to explode in the next 5 years. MLS academies only fielded U-16 and U-18 teams when the academy system started in 2008. It wasn't until 2012 that the USSDA added U-14 teams. What that means is: the very first players to enter MLS academies at 12 or 13, and the first to have the majority of their meaningful development in academies, are 17-18 today. That is likely to represent a giant expansion of the American professional-level player pool. That's why I'm not worried about dilution in the near future. In the longer term, as MLS expands to 28 or more, there may be some initial dilution, but MLS is already moving toward a system where the academy is the primary source of rookies and the draft catches players who didn't go through academies or players who weren't offered HG contracts. The reason so many of the top picks in recent drafts have been foreign is likely that the top American prospects have already signed HG contracts ahead of the draft.
The under 17s finished bottom of their group in the World Cup, although England didn't do much better. The U-20s did well to beat Colombia and draw with Serbia after beating Myanmar and New Zealand in the group stage.