The weather was still one issue the rest of is dealing with competition with the other sports which would have major events going on.
It’s official, if NASL survives they’ll switch to the “international calendar”. http://www.nasl.com/news/2018/01/08...ague-announces-move-to-international-calendar
No details given in that article about whether its a split season, or exactly how the season lines up. Therefore, like others have said, it's really spin because they are losing spring 2018 due to the current uncertainty of how many teams will be available, and sponsorships, etc. I find it an ingenious spin, but in reality, it won't matter.
They already compete with those sports in their fall season.. the challenge for them may be their playoffs, which, depending on scheduling, may happen at the same time as the NHL and NBA playoffs.
I'm sure it's nothing more than spin, but it would be easy enough to do some thing like this: Fall 2018: 18 games (I'm assuming a 10 team league here), starting Aug 4, with 1 mid-week match day. That's a 17 week schedule ending Thanksgiving. Spring 2019: 9 games, beginning March 2 again with 1 mid-week match day. That's an 8-week schedule, ending April 20. 2 weeks playoffs (same system as now, with Fall and Spring champs + 2 more teams), and it's finished on the 1st weekend of May, which is very close to the end of the Premier League, and before NHL and NBA playoffs really start rolling. That's in no way a BAD schedule, even for northern teams. It's weird to have 3 months off, but for the sake of NY, it will about have to be something like that.
Re the NASL Schedule moving to the international FIFA schedule, I like the idea and I think it is a good market test to gauge US soccer interest during that time period. Even MLS would be mildly curious at the results. I'm sure the NASL will probably have a winter break. Who in their right mind will go to to MCU park in December? That being said, all of this doesn't really matter as the NASL is on life-support. If the NASL had more teams in its stable this schedule move would be more meaningful.
That just buys them time to prolong the inevitable. They won't play a Spring season, we know they were not going to any ways. So now they can "plan" to start the season in July 2018. I am sure that come July they will fold or say the season will start in March 2019.
It would be interesting if the Cosmos were not the only team in a cold weather climate. Mid November to Mid February is pretty brutal. The average temps are colder in NYC than Aberdeen Scotland in the winter by a few degrees. The NFL struggles with getting people to watch in the cold weather games if their team is not in the playoffs or in the playoff hunt. It's not going to be easy, unless you barely have any northern teams.
Mark Fishkin @MarkFishkin 13m13 minutes ago As per team owner Robert Palmer, the NASL's @JaxArmadaFC is talking to other leagues (some below D2), in case the NASL doesn't win the lawsuit. Plans to move forward with a soccer-specific stadium.
#NASL calendar change screams time-buying and attention-grabbing, but with very little evidence to back this up as a good decision. The NASL players and coaches I’ve spoken with are incredibly opposed.— Jeff Rueter (@jeffrueter) January 8, 2018
It would be more interesting of NASL actually played during the winter months instead of the most likely change, which is to keep their split schedule with the Fall running August to October, then Spring running March to June.
Agreed. Their announcement says they'll start Aug. 11 and finish June 1, 2019. This means a 2 month off-season. So unless they find a way to expand last season's eight month schedule to a ten month schedule, there will probably be a winter break longer than the off-season.
Which is frankly ridiculous. Why not just call it what it is... 2 separate seasons annually. You can't have a mid season break that is longer than the off season and be taken seriously... Not that anyone has taken NASL seriously in recent years.
So of the "6" remaining. Two are actively working to find another league (JAX and SD). One has fallen off the face of the Earth (Orange County), and one seems a stretch that they'd even play given the dire situation in their Commonwealth (PR). So it's as most expected, NY and Miami are holding out til the bitter end namely because they're the driving force behind the lawsuit and always were.
This change might line up better with some of the bigger leagues and transfer windows outside the U.S. but for most of the NASL players and coaches it might make things harder to move around domestically. Very few players are getting transfers out of NASL to the USL or MLS. Those leagues might sign guys who are out of contract but they won't be out of contract in the winter which is when the teams would be looking for new players. Same thing for coaches.
Also known as "Liga MX". Problem with this is that instead of having virtually two separate seasons, they want to have one long as hell season with a seasonal vacation.
Liga MX only has a less than 4 week break between the end of the Fall and beginning of the Spring season, and their off season is 2 months long... so not really comparable to what NASL will have to propose unless they're planning to put NYC on a 4 month road trip from December to March.
NASL isn't proposing anything. Their league is evaporating from under them (Them here means Miami and NYC). In order to keep any relevance at all, they have to act as if something is actually happening. Since they can't play a spring season in '18, due to not having any sanctioning and too few teams for a meaningful season even if they do win in court, they have to say something to preserve the fantasy that they will survive. Since they can't really take a whole year off without everyone writing them off (which we all are anyway), they decide to spin the matter as if it's a large plan to change to a fall - to - spring season. That's all this is. No details actually mean anything. They don't even have a league, really. They are down to 2 teams, in reality. At this point, even with no court issued decision, NISA might actually be ahead of them.
I was thinking about that on the bus ride home. They'd likely have the Cosmos play 9 games at home or 8 out of 10 for the beginning & then stick the team in a trailer, drive all around the South, and charge two bits a gander. Anything at this point will not surprise me at all.
Yeah, most of the euro-wannabees don't have any idea that much of Europe doesn't get anywhere as cold and the northern US and Canada in the winter. The countries in Europe that do get that cold actually also follow a spring-to-fall schedule. Norway's Eliteserien, for example, runs April to November. So, for that matter does Ireland's top league. Wynalda is just being a damn europoser.
I went to Tromso in 2015. In January. I was there for three days, and the sun never rose. It was 20 degrees warmer in Tromso than it was in Chicago.
I am pretty sure that this is true in the top division in Poland. They have a long winter break and a short summer off season in order to have a season as similar as possible to some of the other euro leagues. It gets too cold there to play through the winter though.