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

Obviously it's a small fraction of the world's players, and not just British, but international players who came up through academies and then ended up 18-19 without a pro contract are an increasingly significant pool of talent for NCAA soccer. The 2023 All-American first team (basically a Best XI but for some reason they name 12 players) had five US players and then players from Denmark, Germany, England, Jamaica, Trinidad, Senegal, and Italy. The second team adds Ghana, Northern Ireland, England and Germany again. On the third team: Spain twice, Japan twice, Brazil, France, Ghana, Jamaica. These players end up using the NCAA as a second chance path to a late-blooming pro career.

 

Can you play NCAA if you've played professionally? Guess I can look that up.

 

Generally no, but the in the last 20 years or so the NCAA loosened the rules for international players who might have been paid something as teens in the youth/reserve setup of a pro club but didn't get to the level of fully pro. I don't know exactly how they draw the line on it, but they had to recognize that people from other countries are going to come up in systems that don't resemble US youth and high school sports. This was an issue across the board, not just in soccer.

 

Perhaps you can show me some pictorial evidence?

 

Why should he do that? You’ve already proven you don’t care about evidence or objective reality. He’s proven you wrong and you just move the goalposts.

You should take some time for self care. Unless your online persona is 180 from your real life persona, I worry about you.

 

With respect to Jamaica it was definitely possible, since the NCAA created an interesting loophole. The Jamaican top-tier is considered semi-professional, with some guys getting paid meagre per game wages that usually require a second job. The NCAA basically put the Jamaican top tier in the same class as the USL PDL (now USL League 2). That opened the door for Jamaicans with experience in the Jamaican top tier to play in the NCAA without any real issues.

This is why guys like Andre Blake, Darren Mattocks, Javain Brown and many others were able to seamlessly transition to NCAA football despite having had a number of full league appearances in Jamaica's senior top tier. Most Caribbean leagues are classed in the same tier as the Jamaican top tier, so the door is open for them as well.

 

For informational context, in 2018, 34 percent of NCAA soccer athletes were international. Soccer led all NCAA sports in the number of college athletes at the Division 1 level, with 321 first year athletes. The UK averaged around 50-60 new athletes playing men’s NCAA Division 1 soccer each year. (The most of any country, including Canada). 321 first-year international players equaled approximately 34 percent of men’s NCAA Division one athletes. As the UK was around 50-60 of those, the percentage would be around 7 percent. Again, not huge, but also not insignificant.

 

You are being extremely patient.

 

Nobody has 'proved me wrong' because they can't! I am still waiting for somebody to show me these 15'000 empty seats, its pretty telling that nobody can. I've posted the actual game footage of the games put forward and its plain to see the stadium is full............its always full for Premier League games at Old Trafford - NO Premier League team ever gets 15'000 empty seats for ANY Premier League game, tickets are notoriously hard to get for the Premier League - how do I know? Because I am the horses mouth - an English punter always on the look out for tickets. The only way I get a ticket for Stamford Bridge is for the occasional cup game or by becoming a club member (which I used to be before my Mrs fell ill).

Fact is people that side of 'the pond' claiming that Premier League games don't sell out because people 'prefer' to be in lower divisions are WAY WIDE OF THE MARK. That is the point I was making and its a valid point - anybody claiming that Sheffield United fans 'prefer' to be lower league are, with all due respect, wrong. And attendance figures across the board, across the years are testament to the fact.

 

This forum is about pro/rel in the US, not about who shows up or doesn't show up to Manchester United matches.

 

Kinda murky. There was a person on xitter jogonobonito who was going in on the NCAA tourney teams with 22-27 year olds playing for them who also had been on pro teams - serie C, etc.

It's not that they played pro that bothers me, it's that we're telling parents of HS kids "spend $10K a year on travel soccer in the ECNLDANext64 league for a shot at scholarships" and their competition isn't other 18 year olds, it's men.

Which is what I'd expect in a true open pro/rel environment so I have a little bit of guy in a red suit with two buttons meme going on , not gonna lie...

 

Step 1: Figure out how many empty seats there are at Manchester United.
Step 2: ?????????
Step 3: Pro/Rel in the USA!

 

American colleges tend to have a high focus on sports. Sports at universities here are purely recreational activities.

There are no university championships* or anything like that here. There are a few educated footballers. Lawrie Sanchez, scorer of the winning goal for Wimbledon in the '88 cup final v Liverpool, had a degree that he studied for while still a player at Reading.

Nearest to that for us now would be youth player Basil Tuma, who went to school at Eton.

* the one curious exception is the Oxford v Cambridge boat race

 

Right, people who wash out of British academies often go to American colleges and universities, like Dom Dwyer and Cameron Lancaster.

 

Jack Elliott, Jack Harrison....

 

Jack Harrison moved to the US when he was 14. Elliott left Fulham when he was 13 and was playing amateur soccer when he was scouted by West Virginia. Dom Dwyer was rejected by Norwich and played for a semi-pro team before getting injured and heading to the US.

 

This poster has been proven wrong multiple times by both pictorial evidence as well as data from the Manchester Police.

Several pictures have been posted across multiple competitions and multiple years that CLEARLY show the empty seats at Old Trafford. This poster has to toss justification after justification at the wall in hilarious attempts to try and discredit the literal pictures that show what this poster claims doesn't happen.

Also, this poster has gone full on "fake news" in regard to AN FOI REQUEST BY A MANCHESTER UNITED FAN GROUP THAT OBTAINED OFFICIAL DATA FROM THE MANCHESTER POLICE

I mean ... that right there says it all.

Goal compilations that show the lowest levels of the stadium and some random cuts to others. It's this type of thing that shows one of two things about this poster.

1- He's flat wrong, knows it, but is purposefully trying to subvert obvious proof against his claim because again, he knows he's flat wrong. Using purposefully framed highlights ... come on.

2- Seriously doesn't understand that 15000 (or 1000 or 5000) seats won't necessarily be all together or closely clumped. In a stadium that seats over 70K it is QUITE EASY for it to look full even if 10K folks are missing.

Except it isn't ... and that's a fact supported by provided pictorial evidence as well as official data from the Manchester Police.

Well, by way of official data from the Manchester Police we know that ManU has before. NO PL team though? Holy hell this poster would lose his mind if he googled "empty seats West Ham"

And this is all fine and good, but irrelevant to the point about empty seats. Literally everyone that can think logically knows that selling a ticket doesn't necessarily produce an ass in the seat it belongs too.

Fact is, nobody claimed this at all. Nobody said PL games don't sell out. Just another weakly constructed and attempted strawman.

All well and good for this poster, but completely unrelated to the claims/points I and others were making. Nothing to do with it at all.

Is BUCS not a thing anymore?
There used to be systems and championships for Soccer/Rugby under that ...

 

Pro/rel basicly gets rid of leaches and bring inovation

 

Now you're just misspelling random words.

 

If ProRel suddenly vanished in the leagues around the world would the people who love the sport stop watching it? Nope! It isn't ProRel that makes soccer the best sport in the world, it's the game itself. Soccer just has different formats but the game doesn't change.

We can add ProRel to the NBA, MLB and NFL that doesn't mean those sports will replace soccer as the most watched sports in the world. We can have a basketball World Cup or a baseball World Cup (I think there is one already) it still won't be more popular than the FIFA World Cup. Why? Because soccer is the preferred sport of the world regardless of format. People watch soccer because they like the game. It has nothing to do with ProRel.

 

Can you do me a favor? He clearly has some mental health challenges. Just stop arguing with him. You won the argument hands down. You brought the facts. What’s the point in beating a dead horse?

 

That’s true! Especially the first part!

In most of the US pro leagues there are 1 or 2 shitty worthless franchises that the league would be better without. But then those leagues have 30-32 teams so it’s really not that bad of a situation.

Conversely, the threat of relegation VERY VERY obviously does more to hinder innovation by causing teams threatened with relegation to employ the lows conservative mentality possible. Yes there are clubs that innovate their way up the ladder. My sense is Brighton is an example of this but I don’t follow English clubs without Yanks much so maybe that is a bad choice by me.

As someone who has followed both models, cartel leagues on balance are more innovative IMO.

TBH the model that might best suit America is the old system of election to the league. I’ll bet if the Detroit Lions could have been voted out of the NFL and replaced by the St. Louis Somebodies, the ownership long ago would have gotten its shit together. And if they couldn’t, well, hello St. Louis Somebodies!

 

Yes! I’m sure at the margins soccer would lose some fans…but it also might gain fans. The threat of relegation forces clubs to think on a 2 year at most schedule. The security of a cartel might allow real innovation and upset the established order. And that would be fun to watch too.

 

Too true. I would prefer pro-rel but we're decades away from a scenario where it could happen in MLS.

The only way its going to happen is if/when there are a dozen or so teams in the lower leagues as competitive on and off the pitch as existing teams in MLS.

If you look at the history of soccer in Europe, pro/rel pretty much only happened when there were more competitive teams than could practically fit into a single division.

 

15'000 is 20% of the stadium - you would easily find the space when 1 in every 5 seats are empty. I am yet to find ANY clip of ANY United league game with 20% empty seats and again............nobody has managed to provide any visual proof either! Funny that!

Of course they haven't because NO Manchester United league game has anything close to 15'000 no shows.

I know for a FACT that Manchester United sell out EVERY ticket for EVERY home league game and they have done for years............alternatively of course you can show me when there are tickets left on their website? Unless of course you think that they 'pretend' to sell out and don't want the extra 3/4 million or so quid?

1 in every 5 supporters not turning up after spending 60 quid or so for their ticket? I don't see it myself.