By FRANCO PANIZO
The past couple of weeks presented an unprecedented period of media attention for NASL, with high-profile moves such as Eric Wynalda becoming the head coach of the Atlanta Silverbacks and the New York Cosmos joining the league for the 2013 season being announced.
Those are just some of the news items that have kept NASL commissioner David Downs extremely busy. From having to travel from NASL headquarters in Miami to New York for a string of meetings with the Cosmos' ownership group, to receiving more than 600 emails in a span of few days, Downs has had his plate more than full in recent days.
Downs recently took some time away from his busy schedule to take part in an in-depth interview with SBI. The NASL commissioner touched on a wide range of topics, from the addition of the Cosmos, to further expansion, to the possibility of acquiring more MLS players on loan, and even the chances of seeing promotion and relegation between NASL and third division league USL Pro.
Here is SBI's interview with David Downs (edited for clarity and brevity):
DD: It's fair to say we've sort of been slowly but surely building our credibility and our brand image, step by step, from literally kickoff of last season to [Thursday's] great announcement. Some of the bits of news are obviously bigger than other bits, but virtually everything that's come out about our league over the last year and a half has been incredibly positive and I think that's one of the reasons why the Cosmos are so comfortable and eager, frankly, to join our league. They've been sitting on the sidelines for the last year and a half and observing what we've managed to put together and while we may be small, I think we're doing it in a very solid way and just about everything that's happening, whether it's Wynalda coming into the league, whether it's the fact that at the end of last season we put an entire team (Montreal Impact), a head coach from Carolina and nine percent of our players into MLS, or whatever the news is. But it always seems that we're doing it right even if we're doing it slowly and steadily and cautiously.
It's really obvious to me not only is it flattering to us to have them want to be part of our league, but they are going to bring so much to our league. Whether it's their recognition globally of their fantastic brand to just having another real rock-solid, deep-pockets ownership group that can kind of steer us on the steady course if there are tough times ahead to the tremendous vision that they have as a sports management company. A lot of those things are real positives for the league, not just the name being in the league, not just another question.
SBI: The league has a more firm footing now than a couple of years ago when things were a bit shaky. What has changed over the past two years?
DD: I think our model is slowly but surely starting to work. Even though we lost a team, Montreal, up to MLS, and they were averaging over 11,000 fans a game, our attendance is fractionally up because San Antonio has done such a marvelous job filling Montreal's shoes and our individual teams are generally up, the seven returning teams are up against last season, so that's been solid. I think our sanctioning has been solid and every day that goes by, it becomes more and more evident what it means to be a second division in the United States versus a first or a third or whatever, but I think there's less confusion out there.
As you alluded to, there was a bit of a rocky start with the on and off again sanctioning, with some of the back and forth comments between the teams that broke away from USL and the USL administration, so it's good to get that behind us. And every day that we produce plays of the week and players of the month and standings and goals and so on, is another week where we become more and more of a fixture in the American soccer landscape and that's what it's all about. The more that we can provide that environment of legitimacy and solidity to this level of soccer, the more attractive it's going to be to bring in other teams and the opportunity is there for us.
MLS is going very carefully to find that 20th team and it's a big price tag and it's a very important piece of their growth strategy and they're going to make sure they do it exactly right. But in the mean time, there are probably eight or nine cities in the top 30 cities in the United States, population wise, that don't have professional soccer above the fourth division level. And that's going to be a tremendous opportunity for us to move into those markets and provide that service.
The Cosmos are unique in that they are technically in a television market that already has an MLS team, but the fact that New York is such an enormous market, I don't think anybody, including MLS, ever doubted that New York could support two teams. But there's so many fantastic cities in America that have an ability to support a team and we'd be proud to be the top of the soccer pyramid in those markets, too. I think that's our opportunity, bringing the Cosmos in only makes that opportunity more vivid and real for the cities that are considering it and the ownerships that considering it, so it's all good, I guess. I know it's a long-winded answer, I know.
SBI: How long had you guys been in talks with the Cosmos about the possibility of joining NASL?
DD: The reality is Aaron [Davidson] was talking to the Cosmos before I even joined the league a year ago at the end of March, but that was with the previous administration of the Cosmos. It pre-dates both my tenure and the current Cosmos' ownership, so it's a really long time. And like any of these things, the one thing that these discussions are not, it's not like watching a software download on your computer. There's no bar that says '28 percent complete, three minutes and 11 seconds remaining.' It's one of these things where you think you're almost there and then something happens and seems like two, three months drag on and then you think you're almost there again and then suddenly you are there.
This has been a classic case of two years-plus in the making and moments where we didn't think there was a chance of it going right and moments where we thought we were ready to announce the next day and nothing happened. We've got that kind of pipeline going with four or five other people right now and it's frustrating for me not to be able to announce and say 'Yeah, this will be announced in a week, that will be announced in two weeks and that'll be announced in three weeks.' It just doesn't work that way.
SBI: There is a lot of talk about where the Cosmos will play next season, is there any word as to what will be the site of their home games?
DD: The official answer is that they are not ready to make an announcement, so we're certainly not going to spill the beans and make an announcement for them. But just to set the record straight, they do have options that are completely known and approved by us. It's not as if we let them in the league without knowing if they could have a place to play. That's the technicality, but we're not comfortable until they're comfortable saying where they think they're headed. They are very far along and it should be more a matter of days and weeks than months before that's announced. We're happy for that and I think it will work well.
SBI: You said you can't say where, but the press release the league sent out said a record number of ownership groups had presented expansion team plans during your recent meetings in New York. How many did you hear and how much expansion are you looking at for the coming years?
DD: The door isn't shut yet on another team or even two teams, I suppose, joining between now and the start of the 2013 season. But the door is rapidly closing on that because unless the team is an existing team that is merely saying 'We're not playing in league X, we're playing in league Y,' you probably wouldn't advise the team to start from scratch this late in the year.
But we have, I would say, advanced discussions with six or seven groups that are targeting either 2013 or 2014. One of them I can say, if only because they themselves put out a press release and announced they were applying for us, that's the San Diego Flash from the NPSL (National Premier Soccer League). San Diego is obviously a great market and one of our strategies is to move the league out farther into the western part of the United States. Adding the Cosmos obviously adds greater national relevance and helps us balance out a map. We didn't have a team in the northeast other than Ottawa coming in in two year's time, but obviously another high priority for us is to get out west so San Diego makes an awful lot of sense in that regard.
SBI: The press release also said some "possible changes to the league's competiton structure for upcoming seasons" were discussed. What where some of the ideas thrown around?
DD: We didn't enact any changes, but we had a committee of experts study everything from player movement to annual operating budgets, you name it, of virtually every kind of scheduled format that's out there. We've talked about the European calendar and whether that makes sense. We've talked about what a number of teams in Latin America do, which is in effect two seasons in one and does that make sense. And we've talked about staying the way we are, and we've talked about staying the way we are but spreading the games out over a longer period of time. You know there's a lot of sentiment in U.S. Soccer that everybody's season is too short, including MLS's. And of course ours is probably a month shorter than MLS's, a couple weeks on one end and three weeks on the other depending on who is in the playoffs and so on.
All those things were discussed and analyzed and presented not in a recommendation format so much as in a just what do other people do, what impact would it have on us if we did it, what does anybody think about that. Essentialy, doing our due diligence. We might possibly enact something before the start of next season, we might not. One of the things I'm pretty proud of is we came back with the exact same 28-game schedule, everybody plays everybody four times and we have the exact same playoff format. I think if nothing else, consistency is a good thing for soccer fans.
Having said that, if we line up with nine teams next year, in order for everybody to play everybody else four times, now it's a 32-game schedule and not a 28-game schedule and what are the ramifications of that. Should we have some of our teams that are more logical rivals play each other four times but others play only three. Those are the kind of things we're looking at, nothing too wacky. Other people do it other ways.
One other thing that is interesting is that although we do have a team in Edmonton, and it's awful cold there in February and awful cold there in November, a lot of our teams are in very warm weather cities and the games in July, unless they're really special games like Tampa had a wonderful game, I think a record crowd actually for their July 4 game against the Strikers, but it can be kind of hot in Tampa in July. A lot of these things are under consideration, including how many times every team should play everybody else and what impact that it has on the travel costs, all that sort of stuff.
SBI: Promotion and relegation are talked about a lot by fans and media alike. What is NASL's current relationship with USL Pro? They are expanding themselves. Is it possible for promotion-relegation between you two down the road?
DD: One of the things that happened in the course of the break up of the USL second and third division was that USSF initiated these team ownership standards that distinguish between second division and third division. The USL teams chose to go to third division because they couldn't meet the criteria or chose not to meet the criteria because they didn't believe in them or whatever, I don't honestly know the reasonss why everybody made their individual decision. But the point is they made that decision.
That makes it kind of hard to have a promotion and relegation order between the two leagues, where the teams are jumping from third to second and second to third because not every team that got promoted would meet the qualifications. I don't think that's realistic from that practical standpoint. I think it's also fair to say also that while we have an exceedingly good, cordial, positive relationship, where we're speaking openly and honestly with each other in various board meetings where we're both participating in the same committee on the USSF level or whatever, that's fine. But I wouldn't say that we're in active discussions with USL to try and figure out how to put the two leagues together. I think that's not been the case.
You touched on MLS for a second and the reality is we've had discussions ongoing for almost a year now on a very serious level about things our two leagues can do, either officially or unofficially, to improve the development of young aspiring professionals in the United States. We believe a strong division 2 will benefit the sport in general in the United States and we also believe there are players right now who are on MLS rosters who are primarily playing in their reserve league, which is only 10 games a year, and really not getting significant minutes in MLS.
We think those players would probably be better soccer players if there was a way they could be playing on our rosters. Some of them do, on loan. Conor Shanosky is playing 90 minutes a game practically for the Strikers on loan from D.C. United. That's a great example of how that works. We've had some loan players come down and not even hold down jobs in our league, so obviously that didn't work. But I think in general we think there's got to be a solution that's beneficial to everybody, beneficial to MLS and their role in development, beneficial to us in putting better players on the field and challenging our existing players more, beneficial to the players by giving them minutes in a real environment.
I said it the other day, it's better for a 21-year-old aspiring professional to play 90 minutes for the Carolina RailHawks in front of 5,000 people in a meaninful game against real men than playing in a reserve game. Some people will argue I'm wrong about that, but I believe that to be the case.
We'd love to come up with something that our teams can do to be part of that solution to that problem because we believe that is our other mission. We have one mission with U.S. Soccer and that is to fill out the map of the United States, to bring professional soccer to cites that don't have it at a high level right now, and we can be a very useful organization that way.
We should be able to be a useful organization in grooming players as well. Last year, we managed to give 35 percent of our playing minutes to players aged 23 and under but I don't think it's that impressive a statistic if you go to 21 and under. I'd love to change that. That might require changing NCAA elibility rules, it might require a lot of things to ever have that really work. But you just kind of think it ought to be able to work, right?
SBI: We asked you about this last year. Orlando City is a team that has people talking and last year you said you would not mind in having them come up but that they weren't interested at the time. Has that changed?
DD: We have not had any discussion with Phil Rawlins and Orlando since the announcement of the Cosmos (Thursday). I think I've bumped into him on two or three occasions since the season ended last year. And he knows who we are and what we're doing and we know that they're doing a terrific job in their league and absolutely have the quality to play at a higher level but I think that's kind of their call.
If they're genuinely interested in playing in our league, they know where to reach us. We're not going to hound them on it, but I would say that they and a couple other teams in USL Pro that seem to be doing really, really well. And that's interesting to us, but we're also respectful of the fact that they're in a league and chose to be in that league and we'll wish them well in that league until such time they were to pick up the phone and say 'Are there any openings?'
SBI: Going back to loans between MLS and NASL, we've seen more of that this year than last. But why is there not more of that? It seems simple enough to send players down for a couple of months and then bring them back.
DD: I don't know for a fact why there's not more of them. I think you're probably right. Between last year and this year, the averages, we typically have probably somewhere between five and ten players total around our entire league on loan. One reason may be because our geogrpahically compatibility isn't all that great. MLS has no teams in the Southeast, we have more teams in the Southeast than anywhere else, so maybe coaches are reluctant to loan players away thousands of miles away from home. They'd be more comfortable if they were sending them to a team 50 miles away where they can occasionally see his progress or something like that.
I know in general the reluctance of some MLS coaches to loan out players is because they're fearful the player won't be played in exactly the right system or he won't be given the right minutes under the right conditions. I wonder about the validity of that argument. You certainly see in Europe a coach is willing to loan a player that they spent $5 million on the transfer market to get out to a lower division club of another country all the time. It doesn't hurt Arsenal, it doesn't hurt Barcelona to do it, so it shouldn't hurt the Chicago Fire to loan a guy out.
But I do think that some of the coaches just don't like giving up control of the player and not knowing if he's starting every night, not knowing what he does in practice, all that sort of stuff. I'd like to think the more we play, the more our games seem to be meaningful, the bigger our crowds are and the tougher the competition is, I think the more and more the coaches will realize it still probably does beat the heck out letting them play a reserve game once a month.
SBI: MLS has said they want to put a cap on expansion at some point. NASL has eight right now with more on the way. Is there a cap that you guys are trying to put on the league?
DD: I don't think that's the case, but I do think its fair to say that we have aspirations to be a truly national league and we don't ever want to be four small regional leagues with an end of season playoffs to link us together. We would want to be in San Diego, in Edmonton, in New York, in San Juan, in Florida, in Texas, whatever, and all those teams play each other. Because of that we need strong ownership groups and finding them takes some time and so I will say that you're going to see our league grow at the pace of two teams a year for the next five, six years and settle in at a number somewhere between 18, 20, 22 and not try to go much beyond that because then you really would be forced to break into a series of regional leagues where teams didn't all play one another.
Maybe in the long run that will be the plan, but at the moment that's not the plan. Right now, we sort of say if we can hit 18 teams by 2018 and 20 teams by 2020, those have a nice ring to it.
there’s only anecdotal evidence and unscientific surveys. But the reality is that it is a globalized world and the US soccer fan views the sport through a global narrative. Not an American-centric one.
everyone i talk to who is a soccer fan that refuses to watch MLS says this. That MLS is too Americanized.
You are right.
I said the national team players on those teams like Xavi were better but we were talking about leagues. If you are rated among the top CM’s in the world and all Champions league knockout players are then you are by definition elite. Your definition of elite seems fairly arbitrary players like Lampard have been nominated for the Ballon d’Or. You seem so bent on saying the EPL doesn’t develop players you are completely divorced of reality
I’m sorry but can Wilshere, Gerard and Lampard get a game on any of those teams roster I mention, No. They are good players,never they wasn’t, but not elite. Elite are players like Xavi.
Compared to the national team players from those countries they are average compared to a random player on a mid table team from those countries they are elite.
Any player that starts for a team in the knockout rounds of the Champions league is elite and anyone that disputes that point doesn’t know anything about this sport
Wilshere, Gerard and Lampard are good players, but compare that with germany, spain, italy,brazil and spain you find they are adverge.
That was not responsive to my question. The level of play is significantly higher on average in the EPL than MLS. They have “incumbency” bias–I had EPL on cable in 1993, before MLS existed. They have bona fide global stars on the plurality of EPL teams, whereas we have 2.
You’ve provided no evidence that people are or are not watching because it’s single table or not. You’ve provided no evidence that people are or are not watching because they have pro/rel. You’ve provided no evidence that people are or are not watching because they don’t have a “playoff”. You’ve provided no evidence that people are or are not watching because they are or are not on the FIFA calendar.
Also, are you both “Jess” and “Don”? Because “socialized into [a sport]” is a very strange construction…
Yeah Liverpool, Villa, Leeds and Forrest never won European titles that just magically started when foreign players started coming in. Wilshere, Gerard and Lampard are among the elite CM in the world you make no sense Suddenly starting in Chelsea and Arsenal champions league games means nothing because England’s national team sucks? Obviously Germany, Spain, Portugal and Italy are ahead of England in terms of player development that isn’t the same thing as saying the EPL doesn’t develop talent.
Garber will probably change the financial restrictions at some point but it won’t be done as the league is expanding he is smart enough to know you don’t do both at once. Your dreams about the MLS will have to wait until that is done
Garber is going to up the salary cap at one point, The restrictions will be lessen, he said it himself in an interview. England became the best when they started to import talent and if England dev. their players, why don’t they have a creative central Mid? The result of their national team failure, is because of the EPL, Importanting talent rather then dev. it. I bet you in 10 years the league will look different and will feel different.
Garber isn’t going to get rid of financial restrictions as he is still adding expanding teams that would be a huge mistake. As far as your importing the way to the top I’ll believe that when I see it but anyone that knows anything about English football knows that isn’t what happened in England. The EPL may have started in the 90’s but that isn’t when England first gained its prestige as a league
Also, sorry for the “fetishist” remark. I just get frustrated by people trying to shoehorn one particular Euro model into the US. Our landscape is just plain different.
the evidence is the television ratings. For MLS they are woeful. Just two years the MLS Cup final got beat by women’s volleyball in the ratings. Meanwhile the TV ratings for European football are way up. EPL games are starting to be shown on network TV.
globalization has changed how individuals become socialized into a sport. The American soccer fan is being socialized into soccer through a global-narrative not an American-centric one.
so its not surprising that there is a very large % of American soccer fans that do not watch MLS. It goes against how they see the global game.
to say that nobody cares about how a league is structured is just silliness. How a league is structured is the most important variable in this equation.
do you consider soccer to be a global game or not?
I’d say the right question is “can we convince the owners of teams to choose to go from a single league, to risking that their huge investment could go down to a lower league”. This is why I mentioned earlier that owners (and I’m not talking about the American ones) in leagues where promo/releg is part of the sports culture would stop it if given the chance. Do you honestly think that the MLS owners would choose to do this?
Also, the American soccer fans who are familiar and dying for promo/relegation is still a tiny portion of general sports fans in the country. Most Americans would find the idea very strange.
Lastly, again we have this thing about how we “have to” try it, and this time the reason is because it’s how the rest of the world organizes their sports leagues. The American sports league model is hardly an unsuccessful one, and it could easily be argued that promo/releg causes more instability among teams. The lack of promo/releg is not what’s keeping MLS from growing to NFL/NBA proportions, and going to that format wouldn’t cause the league to take off. As I said, there aren’t more meaningful games, it wouldn’t have the same romance here it has over there.
Again, I just want a reasoned argument that would appeal to the people with money behind the league, to give them a reason to change. The “well, everybody else is doing it” argument never worked with anybody’s mom, and it wouldn’t work for people with real money on the line.
Again you are talking about restrictions, I’m talking about 10 years from now, things in the league will be different. How do I know this, because MLS always changes it rules every year. So in 10 years it will be the same.Boca said he didn’t know, because of the situation at Rangers, not because of MLS. Leeds and Nottingham Forrest WERE YEARS AGO, and the EPL wasn’t formed till the 1990’s, this was the beginning of the EPL today, in which they import more talent then they dev. This can be seen on the national team. Many of England players are okay, however many of them are not elite players. Brazil is a good league, never said it wasn’t, however Brazil does not even come close to the 2B dollar rang and never will. There is a wide gap between the high and lower class of brazil, even though they are a growing economy. Mexico imports south American talent, however will have trouble with European players because of the drug wars in Mexico. MLS is a dev. country, and a media market. I’m not saying it will past the EPL, I’m saying it would be very close and will be the beginning of the MLS era.
So, what evidence do we have that MLS isn’t wathched because it’s too “Americanized”? I’d have to see some evidence.
What I hear fans talk about is the gameplay, their favorite players (and their goats!), their favorite teams (and their enemies!). Those things are just barely impacted by leagues structure–not no impact, just very small.
Consider Mexico. Strange division of the calendar with two “championships” per year (similar to Argentina), with strange playoffs.
Turns out that’s not how things are done in most Eurpean countries. Oh! Except where it is.
Belgium has a mini post-season, too.
Denmark doesn’t play a balanced schedule. Ukraine breaks a top-two tied finish with a golden game.
Russia is moving to an extremely odd structure.
A country’s leagues need to be structured in a way that makes the most sense for that place and time.
Powers that be in MLS think that their track is sustainable (modeled by other sports in the US) and likely to grow the sport here (any financed business, which these are, in a real way is predicated on market growth). Fact is, the current setup is what happened when people put their monies where their mouths were. That speaks volumes to me.
I still think we have things to learn from how other countries do things, but this place is not England, France, or Germany. It’s also not Mexico, Brazil, or Argentina. Like everything else in America the thing we center on will be odd and syncretic and most of all, profit-driven.
HOPEFULLY, it’ll also be beautiful and exciting.
ceu,
we could have gone the more organic route but it would have taken 50 years to go from local club to building a soccer culture to getting a D1 sanctioned league established. And even then the stadiums would have to come from somewhere. Brazil didn’t need investors to come along and create a league. You already have 80 years of culture in place.
I saw the same KC interview its why I brought him up in it he said he wasn’t sure now is the time to move to MLS and he is an American its going to be that much harder to convince non American elite players the MLS isn’t a retirement league. Brazil and Mexico are importing more impressive players at moment then the MLS. The MLS is importing journeymen and guys at the tale end of their career.
Stadium attendance isn’t were the money is especially when its 19,000 fans. The money in soccer is in TV rights and, sponsorship’s.
The EPL does still develop Champions league level talent Lampard Walcott, Gerrard, Hart, Terry, Wilshere are champions league level players developed in the EPL. The MLS isn’t at that level yet and won’t be anytime soon. There has never been a league that has become strong just on imports alone I am not sure how old you are but that is not how the EPL became what it currently is there are still a lot of domestic players that can handle that level of play. Do you know who Leeds and Nottingham Forrest are and what they achieved? The EPL didn’t become an elite league because they imported their way to the top I am not sure where you came up with that
One thing you seem to miss is teams like Man City are importing because their owners don’t have the restrictions MLS owners have. In order for the import boom to happen those restrictions need to be taken away and they won’t be even in 10 years. At best the MLS model will allow it to become like Germany a solid league but not import crazy
American soccer fans are being socialized into soccer through a global-centric view of the sport. Not an American-cenric view. Asking why we should have pro/rel is not the question. The right question is “can we do it?” and if we can do it then we have to. We live in a globalized world and more and more soccer fans (who watch euro leagues far more than MLS) see the pro/rel structure as exciting. It is the global game and this is how the global game is structured. The global game is not structured like an American sports league. So if we can manage to get pro/rel between leagues we have to try.
I think its a ways off though. You would need a D2 with a majority of teams with MLS style SSS so relegated teams dropped down into a strong league. So i don’t buy the idea that pro/rel can happen soon. It’s 10-15 years away.
Annelid,
not true. A large % of soccer fans in the U.S do not watch MLS because it is too Americanized. Globalization has changed things. US soccer fans are being socialized into the game not by MLS but through a global narrative. They see MLS and see it is not like how the game is structured everywhere else.
the strange fetishist is the MLS homer that wants our soccer league to be structured like the NFL.
First, MLS is not a 55 rank league, second You keep mention large numbers, MLS is already adverging almost 19,000 fans a game, that ranks top 10 in the world.Don’t believe me look it up. Again looking at the past couple of years, I see MLS being 10 times better then now. Bocanegra, is thinking about MLS, you know how I know, because he was at sporting kansas city game and said so in an interview. EPL got stronger by importing players, they hardly dev. players. The dev. of players happens in the lower levels and not the EPL. I live in NY and MSG always has NYRB commercials on, and they get high ratings. Again the EPL only makes 2 Billion a year, that is nothing to what the MLS will make in 10 years.Wayne Rooney is the best player of British decent in the EPL, the rest are imports.
The most recent IFFHS ranking has the MLS at 55 I doubt its that low but the fact that it is so far away from 25 makes me believe you are being very generous with that statement
Even Bocanegra isn’t thinking about heading to the MLS now that Rangers has fallen apart. However a mass flood of EPL talent is on its way for the MLS? The EPL level of play didn’t get stronger just by importing players they did develop talent in academies that are well beyond anything in the USA at the moment. In order to import top talent you need to be able to develop top talent if your domestic players aren’t EPL level you won’t attract to many EPL level players its the way it is in this sport
No you appear to be lost thinking MLS fans will just appear in large numbers. You sound as credible as the Chivas USA owner that thinks just because LA is a huge media market the fans will come and the money will be there. How did that turn out for the Chivas? This isn’t field of dreams you still need something to draw in fans.
Local TV generally doesn’t cover MLS scores but sure they will start forking over lots of money next year for MLS games.
In order for your scenario to happen the USA will have to import a lot of top level players something that isn’t happening now. The MLS will also have to grow at a very rapid rate in terms of TV viewership something that is still not happening since WNBA games still pull in more viewers. At this point a WNBA fan saying they will be at the NHL’s revenue levels is more credible.
Somehow you have convinced yourself that the Galaxy will go from being so irrelevant in LA that they don’t get any attention for their MLS cup to generating the type of revenues the Kings make.
Tim Ream and Ryan Meara are two gems in an Everest size haystack. Remember Tony Tchani and Austin Da Luz that were taken ahead of Ream…they are still here and there is no sign of them getting sold any time soon. The stucture of the NCAA doesn’t support soccer the way it does every other sport. Our National development program is changing I think our professional development program needs to grow with it.
RBNY has had far more productive academey products than draft picks(Altidore, Agudelo and now Connor Lade). Some people think that it’s just a matter of time until the league gets the money together. Perhaps this will all happen when the Cosmos join MLS.
Hi all,
Here in Brazil I find it very strange the way you guys talk about the football clubs. Here in my country football teams are born of recreational sports associations and Guilds of cities and neighborhoods.
These associations and Guilds non-profit and has no owners. There is a sense of loyalty and pride of the local population with his club and is a mutual feeling. They already tried to create clubs like you guys do, like Sao Caetano, but had a short life. I think a sacrilege when you guys talk about getting a team of a city and takes it to another. I follow football in his country of great interest to see if he can win the complôr made ​​by other sports leagues such as NFL, NBA, MLB … etc. For people watching see the games in stadiums, I think you on the right track and I believe that the success of football in his country no longer has to be stopped.
Bro, there’s too much bad blood, too much history–that just isn’t going to happen.
They split for a reason. They’re not going to kiss and make up anytime soon. It was an ugly divorce that involved custody (franchise affiliation) battles.
What’s so exciting about the Cosmos? Would you plese elaborate a little on that assertion. Coz I’m clearly missing something.
Thanks.
Ok, so we are going to decide to embrace pro/rel, but we’re not going to base it on the on the field results, we going to base it on what takes place in the stands???
Bro, you just tossed that out there to provoke some chatter, right?
I disagree with yadaki and I disagree with you, too. I check out both. Been a season ticket holder for both. There’s not a big difference between the levels of play between NASL and USL. Any gap, if it exists is a very, very small one.
So there’s an argument. Plain and simple.
Nobody cares about how the league is structured if the play is good. Only strange fetishists. Except for a very few places the top level leagues are huge cash-burners, and heavily indebted. MLS is trying to avoid that and run net profits for everyone–a model that works in America.
Presumably it works because you get an owner with deep pockets who is willing to lose $2-5M per year for a decade.
And you don’t take your whole team.
b,
not going to happen. Because if you go that high then you won’t be able to have promotion/relegation. Well it would just be much more difficult.
We know how successful soccer nations structure their leagues. It’s promotion/relegation between divisions throughout the pyramid. Once NASL is built up with 20 teams with a majority of them with SSS then pro/rel can happen. This is probably 15 years away at least.
But you’ll never see MLS getting to 30 or 40 teams. Hell, i doubt MLS goes higher than 22. It’s just not how the global game is played. MLS has learned the lesson what happens when you Americanize soccer : NO ONE WATCHES.
Also Local T.V deals will increase, I’m sorry I really think you have no clue what you are talking about.
Majority of NHL revenue come from t.v contracts in the US and American companies. Also when looking at the revenue of the EPL, the EPL only makes 2 billion a year, 2 billion behind NHL revenue.So MLS could easily past that in 10 years. Lets say in 10 years MLS have 4 T.V deals just about 400 million and more company partners. You really lack the understanding of a media power, which the USA is. MLS will be one of the richest league in soccer, because of where we are.
triple A baseball? WTF? soccer is not baseball. What works around the world is division tied together through promotion and relegation. I would say we’re still a long way from that but that should be the goal.
i’d rather see every MLS team have an U-23 side in the PDL.
Lets leave MLS out of NASL and let NASL grow into a solid division 2.
i think the 3rd division should divide into regional leagues. I’d prefer that NASL stick to a single table. One thing that turns me off about MLS is the conferences.
David Downs knows what he’s talking about. It’s refreshing to have at least one of our leagues with a commish that views soccer as the global game.
I think by 2024 we could have promotion/relegation between the two leagues.
I would like to see USL and NASL combine to form one strong second tier. Cities like San Diego, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Detroit would make good expansion candidates.
Although the NASL commish doesn’t want it, semi-independent divisions would be the way to, financially and meteorologically. Most nations have a soccer pyramid structure that divides geographically at some level. Considering the size of the United States, Canada and the Caribbean and the popularity of soccer here, it would make more sense to divide the league in the second tier. That would allow the divisions to play in different seasons, keeping the players healthy and avoiding extreme heat and cold.
who would coach them? a league appointed coach?
Ummmm, you do realize that multiple women’s professional soccer leagues have come and gone and yet the WNBA is still here.
WPS folded THIS year, even with all the advancement in the soccer culture in this country.
And don’t confuse the national-team-based Olympics and World Cup every 4 years with the day to day and year to year operation of a professional league, especially one that is guaranteed to lose money. Last I checked, there weren’t a whole lot of money-making swimming events out there, but they sure are a big draw every 4 years.
Even with the improvement in this years TV ratings the MLS still isn’t pulling in the kind of numbers that will lead to the TV revenues you mention. Ratings equal ad money which equals TV revenue money so we know the MLS is no where close to getting EPL type money in the USA. Manchester United makes more TV revenue just in North America then any MLS club the MLS truly isn’t close to making EPL money.
Of course if the MLS starts to make more money they will still need to gain prestige or they will be like the Russian, China or the Middle Eastern leagues that pay out a lot of money to a few mercenaries but can’t attract enough talent to really up the leagues level.
The NFL doesn’t need a super club because gambling, fantasy sports, the super bowl and tradition will keep it the top sport. The MLS doesn’t have any of that going for them so they can’t be compared to the NFL model no one can not even baseball. The NHL is generating huge revenues because Canada is crazy for the sport and is over half the league. Canada’s good for MLS revenue but they will never be that good, the USA will still have to drive MLS revenue.
How do you know that? MLS ratings improve 40% so far this year. Also I’m not just talking about just League T.V revenue improving, but also big local sport market T.V revenue. Again the NFL doesn’t have a super club, do you know why it’s not needed. You need T.V revenue, with that MLS model is more able to give clubs their share, which they would be able to spend on players. You don’t need a super club, the US is a media market.You only need top markets, like LA,NY and others in the league.The reason a super club is needed in Euorpe, is because the model is different Also the NHL is not a huge player in, they are the fourth rank league and make 4 billion a year. Lets say MLS in 10 years past the NHL, well you have your answer. UEFA is one of the most popular events in the world. Yet only made 1 billion, The NFL with has no global fan base, made 12 billion. US is a media capital. Mexico will improve, but MLS is improving faster, I see a couple of leagues improving in the couple of years, C.Rica and Honduras. I think Concacaf in a few years will be an exciting champions league.
Please don’t make things up and then try to pass them off as facts. FIFA does NOT cap leagues at 20 teams. And Garber has already said MLS will go over 20.
The US is huge, my guess is MLS will get up to 30-40 teams. Every other major pro sports league in the US has 30-32 teams. 24 is the MINIMUM, but I think MLS will eventually blow through that number even if it stops there for a few years to let things settle.
Except there won’t be a magic explosion in MLS tv ratings to bring in EPL talent within 10 years. At the moment the WNBA gets higher ratings then MLS games the MLS has a long way to go before its even a blip in Newark or LA markets simply making avalaible direct kick won’t generate the revenues that an EPL club brings in. The amount of competition MLS has in LA makes it impossible that it will break through not even the Kings winning the Stanley cup made much noise in LA yet the MLS will miraculously become a huge player in 10 years?
The MLS might have a chance if it was to develop a super club but the MLS model won’t allow that so instead they have a Galaxy that can win an MLS cup and doesn’t even get a parade. Even if we are generous about the type of TV money the MLS makes in the USA it will still be below what Mexico pulls in. There is nothing but MLS fans hopes and wishes that points to the MLS being able to have EPL type cash given the current business model its design to avoid throwing around that type of money
Sorry, I forgot the “fewer meaningless end of season games” argument, which is one of conveniently choosing facts. It comes from seeing the bottom teams fighting off relegation, but ignores all the meaningless mid-table matches played by teams who aren’t really threatened by relegation, and have no chance at qualifying for a Europe/promotion playoff spot.
Plus, you pick baseball, which traditionally has the smallest number of teams make the playoffs. I don’t really like having a large number of teams in the playoffs, but when you have more than baseball, it does create more meaningful games at the end of the season, as teams fight to make the playoffs, or get a better seed. And as MLS attendances rise, the home field advantage will only increase and become more desirable.
As for the romance of the little team making it big, the reality of it is that generally the teams that make it to the top do so backed more by money of a rich owner rather than just on dreams. Unfancied Blackburn won the Premier League title not based on them building up a team on hard work with local player, but because home town Jack Walker backed them with cash to buy players. And it was early in the history of the new league, when it was far less expensive to do so. Then billionaire Al Fayed came along just a little later, wanting to do the same with Fulham, famously saying he was to creating a Man United of the south, until he found out just how that would cost, so now Fulham are happy being a mid-table regular, and things are only getting more expensive as time advance.
Plus, there have been many other attempts to do so based on dreams of money when you make it big rather than money in the bank, but the dream money never quite materializes, and many of those clubs end up struggling to stay alive. This phenomenon has basically created a situation where such stories will be far more difficult, since they’re trying to stop the idea of a big money owner coming in and spending his own money, far beyond the means of the club, so we’ll also see less of it in the future.
But this romance comes from the history of the league and the central place the sport has in the culture. The romance people chase in Europe already exists, in the US you’re saying if we do this, it will create romance – basically putting the cart before the horse. The reality is, MLS needs more money to become more legitimate, and the wealthy owners aren’t going to invest in a new league in the US if it’s partly based on the ephemeral idea of romance. I’m not pro business, I’m just trying to look at all the facts and use those to decide, not pick which model I like best and try to craft a way to back it up. The big money US owners didn’t get into the Premier League because of the romance, they did it because they thought they could make money. I’m not saying I like it, but that’s just how it is.
US soccer fans dream of a pro league some day rivaling the NBA and NFL. Again, I’m not against the idea of promo/releg, and saying Europe should copy us, but their history is different. No big money owner is going to buy the Cowboys or Lakers if they’re in a league where they could end up doing a Sheffield Wednesday, a relatively large club that has disappeared from the top of the league for ages. That’s just reality, and the US league has to be based on reality.
Not really the case–the size guideline (with FIFA, provided there is money to be made, all rules are more like guidelines) is about total games played.
So if you don’t play a balanced schedule, there’s no reason to stop at 20.
How about MLS buys two NASL expansion teams in potential MLS cities. Use these two league owned teams for the best reserve team players from across the league to develope. Play meaningful games with longer seasons and more minutes. Maybe the coaches could pick from the existing MLS reserve rosters like a draft to select the best 25 players each. Benefits: test new markets, offer meaningful games and more minutes to the best reservists for better and faster developement.
yes, this is the way to develop the third league. develop the second with new investors and expansion as it is now.
You have markets like Newyork and LA that are huge sprot markets. I’m sorry but the business model of MLS is better, why, because it allow a clubs in 10 years the T.V money will be bigger and no country is more of a T.V market then MLS. You don’t even need foreign markets, because of the US being the capital of media. I see MLS importing talent more, like the EPL. The EPL buys more players then they dev. However the lower levels dev. players. This is why NASL geting bigger is important in 10 years, NASL will have academies, meaning more Americans being dev.