That’s easy to say when your local team is one of 3 Dutch teams big enough to win the league. Would you feel the same way if your local team was a club that yo yoed between divisions? Maybe, maybe not. But in general, you should consider perspectives other than your own.
While there haven't been a ton of USL teams to MLS ... you're crazy if you think it's only a negotiating ploy. Most of these MLS teams would jump at the chance if given. They just mostly can't afford it.
It always drives me a bit nuts that people present this way as if it is a pyramid scheme. It's not. The Expansion fee is a payment for essentially stock. It's the price of a 1/30th share in all future shared cash flows in perpetuity. Which in MLS is more than most leagues -- all media rights are national, jerseys, there are a ton of national sponsorships. I'm probably going to screw up this math, but this value is about $2M per year per team assuming no growth rate (which is conservative). That's a bit high, but that's because it also inflates the franchise valuation, which is also increased because of the exclusivity. But in other words: the team coming in is essentially buying a share of the company from the other teams. It's not some scheme to bilk cash out anymore than investing in a company is.
Yep. There are nearly of non-MLS pro teams at this point, depending on how we feel about MLS 2, much more than when MLS started. There are also many more non-pro teams out there ... like hundreds. There are many more viable youth teams. Facts don't matter.
Sports in general are expensive to play. I think most sports in the Olympics are very expensive to excel in at a young age, especially the current winter Olympics. But, sports like American Football and Basketball were hope sports. Where athletes from all demographics have an almost equal chance to succeed. It is probably no longer the case with basketball, with AAU basketball, and skills trainers. Now, most top NBA prospects are the sons of NBA players and high-level college players. In most of the rest of the World soccer is their hope sport, so it will always be an uphill battle. When Ajax sells Ryan Gravenberch for 18 million, Jurrien Timber for 34 million, Jurrel Hato for 35 million, and Kenneth Taylor for 15 million it pays for everything. It pays for scouting all throughout the Netherlands. For the MLS it will never be as important because figures like that are nothing for MLS owners who are some of the richest owners in the World. And youth sports is a billion-dollar business in this country. So it makes sense for MLS clubs to just take the best players from the expensive club teams.
bascally in the soccer pyramid in the us is like a funnel with an extremely small opening at the end...because only 30 div 1 teams for a population of 400 million or whatever is comically small compared to other plces like europe for example....it doesnt really incentivize mls to scour every corner of the landscape for players they can just cherry pick the obvious ones and be lazy...which is what they do
This is how the model works, everywhere, really. The best teams poach players starting at the youth levels up to the senior levels. There's a reason England had to put in a rule about how close you have to live to your youth team. It''s just that (A) the ratio of club budgets to number of players and distances is extremely disadvantaged in the US and (B) the best non-MLS clubs that have the most exposure to MLS clubs charge a lot of money. Could MLS do a better job of scouting and evaluating? Sure, though there's always misses. The ROI on scouting is lower though, because it's fairly rare that there's a player that ends up great that almost NO ONE believes in in the ladder up to the top. The real issue is not the investment or scouting so much as the number of teams. There's just not enough volume of free professional instruction to allow for those missteps or late bloomers, etc. College helps. But we can go to an MLS success story to see that Inter Miami turned down Alex Freeman and so he went to Orlando. Each of these academies have hundreds of kids, but there's simply not enough local soccer demand to fund a ton of local academies. I find it ironic MLS gets shade for this for actually providing more or less the only free academies out there. They also have built a program in MLSN that is basically training compensation for the independent teams with USSF forcing it. You an argue it's not enough, and it isn't ... ... but the issue lies in the lack of overall fans, not in what MLS is doing. Some of that is culture, some of that is the absurd costs to run any team in the US because of expectations. But you can't fund a free academy that requires consistent annual costs from hopeful and erratic future payments. It has to come from a more consistent source with the sales providing upside. And that comes from paying customers, generally.
It is kinda impossible for them to scour every corner. And they can only sign so many players to contracts anyway. That's why its so important that we continue to develop our 2nd and 3rd division clubs throughout the country. There need to be a lot of different kinds of opportunities.
And it is about paying customers. In the US and Canada, much of the investment in soccer is parents paying club fees and taking their kids to tournaments all over the country. MLS did not create the problem and probably has little interest in fixing it. And US soccer probably believes there is more money in kids playing in tournaments all over the country than if suddenly every American soccer fan supported their local USL team. I am not blaming the MLS, but the issue US soccer will always have is that there is so much money in youth sports. You can not close Pandora's box. And the club sports system means many will never be involved, and many will leave because of burnout or lack of resources. In other sports, it is not a big issue because the US has such a huge built-in advantage. But, in something like soccer, it will limit how good we can become.
I don't actually think the barrier is the people making money off youth sports. I get why people are, but I don't think they are inhibiting anything here. In other countries, the free youth development is either funded by government, professional teams, or from extremely successful club or country tournaments.. Even in places where the federation is has a line item, that money is coming from government funding, or the Euros / Champions League. The US isn't going to fund youth sport outside of high school and college football, because that's communist (American football isn't communist). It just isn't. This isn't your local AYSO coach lobbying against it; it's just never going to be an acceptable use of taxes here. And we know CCC and the Gold Cup are not economic gold mines. I will never accuse MLS of not wanting profit, but the reality is that they are the ones funding free academies. They are the ones creating a youth system with trickle down funding and I think MLS would be more than happy to have free youth academies to draw from. Of course, they don't want to fund them all. There's 30 MLS teams. If they fund an academy, it'll be theirs. But if the US Government, CCC or the Gold Cup got massive and CONCACAF starts throwing money around, youth soccer coaches aren't going to push back. They will take it and move on. So we're left with MLS expansion into lower levels and hoping USL gets more economically viable. You can only fund youth soccer with the money in the system. I do agree there will always be parents who want to send their kids to a $70k residency or have the top coaches for more. But we shouldn't worry about that. We should be trying to find ways to fund more free academies for lower income kids. Bilk the rich kids. Who cares? We're never going to have enough for everyone to be free anyway. It's the gap based on income that presents a real issue.
Now you're just complaining that we've got a much larger population than any European country. This is getting ridiculous, even by your standards. Gotta ask, though: how many FIRST DIVISION teams does the largest FIRST DIVISION in the world have? I'm pretty sure I know the answer, and it's very relevant to what you're saying here.
How many teams are in the Champions league group/tournament stage? My opinion is that if we really want "professional" soccer to grow (ie lots of players who don't have to share a 3bedroom apartment wit 5 other teammates and take private training gigs to be able to afford chicken for more than 2 meals a week) USL-1 would be a collection of regional leagues. Spare them the nationwide travel etc until they get to USL-C. Apparently the Don didn't pass my email on to the NuRock guys when I asked him to...
The example I used to use with the "every ridiculously expensive youth club has scholarships or the parents pick up costs for a player tha can't afford it..." ...that's true. Until you have 11 kids from the underserved community that are all better than the kids on the A team. Suddenly the new B team parents don't want to pay for the undeserved kids anymore. A viable lower level pro team that could possibly convert those kids into first team players however... This gets back to the other post higher up in the thread about "hope" sports.
You're presuming that a local team exists. We don't have that many professional teams, or even high-level amateur teams. If your "local" team is 200 km away, it's not that much more connected to you than the MLS team 500 km away. Or, for that matter, a European team.
We're building everything up. It'll just take some time. More of this..................... NEWS: Former U.S. Soccer star @JozyAltidoreis investing in Oklahoma City USL team set to re-launch in 2028 with a new stadium as part of a $1B entertainment district. Joins Christian Kanady, Russell Westbrook, Nick Gross, Chickasaw Nation on cap table.… pic.twitter.com/uTrMiKWqEt— Kurt Badenhausen (@kbadenhausen) February 19, 2026
Well, in that case local indeed becomes a bit stretched to apply, but it doesnot need high level for a bond. If that was the case, over in Rotterdam here local amateur clubs wouldnot be able to have the support of their members, with 3 clubs playing in the Eredivisie within 7 km from each other. There's no competition between amateur club vs Feyenoord/Sparta/Excelsior. People are supportive of their amateur club, because friends/relatives are members too or people are for generations linked to that amateur club, but are fans of one of those Eredivisie clubs too. It's not a case "either/or", but an and/and matter.
For the 2025/26 season, there are approximately 714 first-division soccer clubs across the 55 national associations that make up UEFA and are eligible to feed the Champions League. The combined population of the 55 national associations that make up UEFA and are eligible to feed the Champions League is approximately 830 million people - russia = 700m approx so theres 1 champions league-eligible club for every 1 million europeans to play for not to mention very robust second even third divisions in some cases as well meanwhile in usa + canada = 389 million people and 30 MLS clubs = 1 MLS club for every 10 million people to play for the problem is MLS IS A CLOSED SYSTEM that literally cannot grow any bigger than it is because it refuses to subject itself to any form of competition from lower leagues....which is the only way to truly build a real soccer pyramid in the usa and stop letting so many players fall through the cracks. MLS is artificially small relative to the population that feeds it...its like a palm tree growing indoors...and the worst part is that americans' place in the league is getting less and less central and plentiful.... the mls architects model themselvs after closed us sports like NFL and dont realize soccer is a global game....and their closed models make no sense to real soccer fans....and basically guarantee a low ceiling on quality of play with built-in mediocrity as a cornerstone tenet
This is an utterly amusing thread 1) Good use of chatCPT/AI. The punctuation on the first 2 paragraphs is refreshing 2) The rest of it - Well done at moving the goalposts again. Word soup of nonsense
ok great feedback meanwhile more americans in USL moved to europe this window than american mlsers did FYI (which is INSANE)
That's good news isn't it ? The more players who get an opportunity in a US league the better right ? Which leagues did the players from USL move to ? The MLS players moved where?
MLS can and has grown bigger, both at the first and third division levels. The number of first division clubs will also increase through the USL if all goes according to plan. Also lol at again comparing MLS to all of Europe.
Now do the stadiums. How many stadiums are D1 in all of Europe compared to how many stadiums US (MLS and USL-C) has combined. After all, they all need a place to play, that they own that will make revenue to survive otherwise the expense of traveling will kill them as they move up. Just look at USL players still battling with USL for livable wages and they are about to become D1. So how many stadiums compared to Europe?
Right. So, the answer to the question is 30 teams are in the largest first division in the world. Which is MLS. The rest of your convoluted insanity I'll leave alone. I'm not sure how you could ever have 342 FIRST DIVISION clubs in one country, which is what you're suggesting would be appropriate.
That is another hurdle that American soccer has. When it comes to sports, building community while we sometimes see it in pro sports, culturally Americans use high school and college sports as the community sports. My crazy idea that has zero chance of ever happening is to make a level above varsity soccer where teams play the full school year. August/September have tryouts and pre-season and have the playoffs in May. Games are played with FIFA rules 90 minutes, and only 5 subs. Teams generally just play once a week. In cold-weather states, they have a winter break. Maybe have an indoor soccer or futsal tournament during the break. I feel that the craziness of club sports happens because school sports does not provide enough games. There is a whole bunch of things that would prevent this form ever happening but, it is a solution that works with what we already have.