promotion/relegation would never work in north american soccer, the fans want to see thier team playing in the best league possible and the USL is not it. Just ask the Toronto Lynx fans.
I revived a 6.5 year old thread just to quote this post. We now have three MLS teams in Canada, all of whom will average over 20,000 per game this year. DoyleG is nowhere to be found after railing on the idea of MLS for years. I'd say Canadian soccer is on the right track.
The thing that really tipped it into the ridiculous is the youth development initiative. Now each MLS team is doing more for Canadian soccer by itself than an entire semipro CSL could have combined. Interestingly, Doyle still posts (and will be confronted by this thread, unless he's unsubscribed from it), he just sticks to the Politics forums now.
The CSL has held itself back for a long time now and it seems will continue to ignore potential growth for various unseemly reasons. Unfortunate. Now more than ever the CSL could replace USL at the lower level.
The CSL is in big, big trouble with the CSA seeming to be on the verge of removing their sanctioning and deservedly so it seems. http://www.canadiansoccernews.com/c...and-what-it-could-mean-for-Toronto-FC-Academy Ben Rycroft writes: Last month, Canadian Soccer News reported that only two of the current 14 Canadian Soccer League teams were meeting the standards for Division 3 sanctioning in Canada. The most glaring of which, a Canadian Soccer Association audit revealed, was a lack of compliance on player's salaries. Only the York Region Shooters and the Montreal Impact Academy were deemed to be in compliance. Toronto FC's Academy was not included in the audit findings because of its unique association with MLS. Since that article was published last month, a number of players, past and present, have come forward to speak to CSN about their lack of pay. Those who were receiving salaries told stories of excessive fines - levied against players for trivial infractions such as being late for practice - which essentially, when accumulated, negated much of their pay. Those players, who have asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, stated simply that this practice was common among a number of teams in the league (but not all) and that it was a way for some of those teams who were losing money, to help recoup part of their costs.
It's not the end, but the OSA is launching League One Ontario this year, and QSF is launching the Lige Elite de Soccer du Québec, so the CSL is definitely either going to get serious and succeed, or fall by the wayside and into bankruptcy.