The All-Encompassing Pro/Rel Thread on Soccer in the USA

No one has ever had the finances and infrastructure to move up in a single offseason. Only FC Cincinnati has moved up without at least a full year of lead time to get the organizational and physical infrastructure in place, and even they needed 10 months.

The only other club that ever looked close, the Rochester Rhinos, turned out to be built on a nonexistent foundation, and were hemorrhaging money and generating big crowd numbers by giving out scads of free tickets. So many free tickets that, as their reported attendance plummeted by half between 2006 and 2011, their paid attendance actually increased.

 

No, however they do celebrate finishing in 17th place..............

 

Indeed, celebrating failure being rewarded with the best draft choices... yeah! And the reverse of being pissed off because your team won a game and didn't get the best draft choices... yeah!

https://www.insider.com/jets-win-fans-mad-draft-order-trevor-lawrence-2020-12

 

I'm guessing that league doesn't reward failure with better draft choices and there's a consequence for finishing lower... am I right?

 

Gets funnier every time I see that.

 

I'm guessing they're celebrating the fact that finishing in 17th place earns them more money. Last time I checked 17th place isn't "winning."

 

The teams who finished 18th, 19th and 20th were not celebrating though were they?

Everton were celebrating exactly because the consequences of finishing in the bottom three are dire. When a team is having a poor season due to poor or lack of investment, injuries etc escaping relegation is like winning. I think the point is teams don't deliberately play crap and lose over here because being the most rubbish team(s) in the league is penalised heavily and not rewarded.

Don't get me wrong English football has its problems, namely things have got well out of hand financially and poor clubs can't compete against rich clubs but at the other end of the spectrum American sports are like a socialists dream, perhaps there needs to be some sort of middle ground I'm a big believer in balance rather than going to the extremes.

 

I could accept this back when USL was allowing teams to trade players for travel accomodations and rolls of trainers tape...but USL-C has been playing with nationwide travel for a while now.

I'm good with the acess to a 15000 seat stadium requirement, but other than that, what other infrastructure separates MLS from USL-C beyond the 700 million dollar buy-in that gets you access to the cart..single entity

Note, I'm talking actual infrastructure, not "if your stacks of millions are not this high you can't get on this ride". So stadium, front office personnel, etc. I agree the MLS player pool is better than the USL player pool but that's mainly because the pooled SUM cash can buy a better quality of South American vs Central American or NCAA product. So if everyone wsa playing iwth house money, or, everyone was using just their own money, what would be the differentiator?

Honest question, I've pored over the PLS but don't know what makes MLS MLS beyond the buy-in as my city doesn't have it and most likely never will.

 

In a bit of irony the PLS were created/changed in order to prevent the USL from overtaking the New NASL When the former A-League split and the USL and NASL formed in its aftermath, the owners in the NASL wanted to prevent the USL from competing with it. Then the NASL's leadership structure changed when the Cosmos entered the fray. Suddenly the PLS that the NASL not only agreed with, but also played a large part in formulating were an issue.

To answer your question: Most, if not every MLS ownership group has at least one Billionaire in their ranks. MLS has a lot more money behind it currently then USL does. The money backing USL is growing steadily. It's just not close to the level of investment in and behind MLS currently.

 

So the only consequence of finishing 18th rather than 17th is less merit money. No other consequences at all? If they'd finished 18th they'd still be playing local derbies against Liverpool this season, for example?

 

A share in MLS is worth somewhere between $300 and $500 million. Why give that away for free?

USL Championship owners get to give a real estate company $20 million and get nothing in return.

 

Some would argue/say that they'll still be in the same league..... so outside of money and games what are they losing? In the end it's all about Sporting Merit after all. So why would losing money matter?

 

Good point, it's all one league allegedly.

 

Yep it is, split into levels though isn't it? For obvious reasons too isn't it? M has a point, if Everton get relegated then they won't play in the Merseyside derby........not unless they get drawn together in one of the cups anyway.

Both Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield United operate quite happily without the steel derby every year.

 

Well what does MLS get you that USL doesn't have?

 

One person would argue that... so for every single other person on this thread, care to answer the question I posited? If they'd finished 18th would they still be playing local derbies against Liverpool this season, for example?

 

To be fair, a lot of the infrastructure requirements (academies, media facilities, etc.) are imposed by MLS as a condition of entry into the league, rather than by the PLS.

That said: 2023 is the first year the USL-C has had a true national schedule, with teams playing every other team in the league at least once, since its big expansion in 2014-15. 2022 saw an increase in the number of interconference games from past seasons, but it was still a limited interconference schedule.

 

You could argue that Sacramento Republic is being unfairly excluded, though I don't agree with it.

 

And Phoenix who allegedly had all the necessary financing in place.

 

I’ve often made a point that is pretty obvious and probably unoriginal, namely, that the best comparison to Euro soccer is US college sports.

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/38491515/what-relegation-college-football-look-like

The Western schools that lost out on the last round of realignment are considering creating a multi tiered league with pro/rel.

 

Sacramento is probably closest from a pure infrastructure and organizational perspective, but would probably need a year of lead time. That may change in the near future, now that the club has announced that the Railyards stadium will be built, MLS or no MLS.

When I suggested in the past that Sacramento could potentially move up in an offseason, it was on the basis of having a better stadium than some that MLS had approved as temporary venues, and under the assumption that the club would only continue to play there for a year or two. But MLS probably wouldn't approve Buck Shaw type situations today.

 

So the Premier League is offering EFL an extra $436 million with conditions.

The EFL wants nearly double that.

Conditions include:

• under-21 clubs invited to play in the EFL Trophy must be guaranteed more matches (EFL clubs lose money on these games just by turning on the floodlights)
• League One and Two clubs must set aside part of their allocation for facilities, meaning it could not all be used for transfer fees or player wages (which is well intentioned but in Notts case we don't need them)
• parachute payments must continue in the face of EFL opposition

 

I am surprised that Northwest Arkansas is joining the second tier, instead of the third tier, like in baseball.

 

Small markets are eligible for USL League One.

 

USL attendance grows in 2023, and could break record

https://worldsoccertalk.com/news/us...d-could-break-record-20230928-WST-458957.html

Speaking of lower division soccer.... despite no promotion/relegation system in the US, the USL is set to break attendance records for D2 and D3 in the US.